“The morrow must we pay two pennies to him that owns this hole; two pennies, mark ye—­all this money for a half-year’s rent, else out of this we go.  Show what thou’st gathered with thy lazy begging.”

The Prince said—­

“Offend me not with thy sordid matters.  I tell thee again I am the King’s son.”

A sounding blow upon the Prince’s shoulder from Canty’s broad palm sent him staggering into goodwife Canty’s arms, who clasped him to her breast, and sheltered him from a pelting rain of cuffs and slaps by interposing her own person.  The frightened girls retreated to their corner; but the grandmother stepped eagerly forward to assist her son.  The Prince sprang away from Mrs. Canty, exclaiming—­

“Thou shalt not suffer for me, madam.  Let these swine do their will upon me alone.”

This speech infuriated the swine to such a degree that they set about their work without waste of time.  Between them they belaboured the boy right soundly, and then gave the girls and their mother a beating for showing sympathy for the victim.

“Now,” said Canty, “to bed, all of ye.  The entertainment has tired me.”

The light was put out, and the family retired.  As soon as the snorings of the head of the house and his mother showed that they were asleep, the young girls crept to where the Prince lay, and covered him tenderly from the cold with straw and rags; and their mother crept to him also, and stroked his hair, and cried over him, whispering broken words of comfort and compassion in his ear the while.  She had saved a morsel for him to eat, also; but the boy’s pains had swept away all appetite—­at least for black and tasteless crusts.  He was touched by her brave and costly defence of him, and by her commiseration; and he thanked her in very noble and princely words, and begged her to go to her sleep and try to forget her sorrows.  And he added that the King his father would not let her loyal kindness and devotion go unrewarded.  This return to his ‘madness’ broke her heart anew, and she strained him to her breast again and again, and then went back, drowned in tears, to her bed.

As she lay thinking and mourning, the suggestion began to creep into her mind that there was an undefinable something about this boy that was lacking in Tom Canty, mad or sane.  She could not describe it, she could not tell just what it was, and yet her sharp mother-instinct seemed to detect it and perceive it.  What if the boy were really not her son, after all?  Oh, absurd!  She almost smiled at the idea, spite of her griefs and troubles.  No matter, she found that it was an idea that would not ‘down,’ but persisted in haunting her.  It pursued her, it harassed her, it clung to her, and refused to be put away or ignored.  At last she perceived that there was not going to be any peace for her until she should devise a test that should prove, clearly and without question, whether this lad was her son or