A deep hush pervaded the Abbey.  At this impressive moment, a startling apparition intruded upon the scene—­an apparition observed by none in the absorbed multitude, until it suddenly appeared, moving up the great central aisle.  It was a boy, bareheaded, ill shod, and clothed in coarse plebeian garments that were falling to rags.  He raised his hand with a solemnity which ill comported with his soiled and sorry aspect, and delivered this note of warning—­

“I forbid you to set the crown of England upon that forfeited head.  I am the King!”

In an instant several indignant hands were laid upon the boy; but in the same instant Tom Canty, in his regal vestments, made a swift step forward, and cried out in a ringing voice—­

“Loose him and forbear!  He is the King!”

A sort of panic of astonishment swept the assemblage, and they partly rose in their places and stared in a bewildered way at one another and at the chief figures in this scene, like persons who wondered whether they were awake and in their senses, or asleep and dreaming.  The Lord Protector was as amazed as the rest, but quickly recovered himself, and exclaimed in a voice of authority—­

“Mind not his Majesty, his malady is upon him again—­seize the vagabond!”

He would have been obeyed, but the mock-King stamped his foot and cried out—­

“On your peril!  Touch him not, he is the King!”

The hands were withheld; a paralysis fell upon the house; no one moved, no one spoke; indeed, no one knew how to act or what to say, in so strange and surprising an emergency.  While all minds were struggling to right themselves, the boy still moved steadily forward, with high port and confident mien; he had never halted from the beginning; and while the tangled minds still floundered helplessly, he stepped upon the platform, and the mock-King ran with a glad face to meet him; and fell on his knees before him and said—­

“Oh, my lord the King, let poor Tom Canty be first to swear fealty to thee, and say, ‘Put on thy crown and enter into thine own again!’”

The Lord Protector’s eye fell sternly upon the new-comer’s face; but straightway the sternness vanished away, and gave place to an expression of wondering surprise.  This thing happened also to the other great officers.  They glanced at each other, and retreated a step by a common and unconscious impulse.  The thought in each mind was the same:  “What a strange resemblance!”

The Lord Protector reflected a moment or two in perplexity, then he said, with grave respectfulness—­

“By your favour, sir, I desire to ask certain questions which—­”

“I will answer them, my lord.”

The Duke asked him many questions about the Court, the late King, the prince, the princesses—­the boy answered them correctly and without hesitating.  He described the rooms of state in the palace, the late King’s apartments, and those of the Prince of Wales.