yonder is his breakfast—­and mine, but I have no hunger now; so, let the rats have it—­speed, speed! that is the word!” As he wormed his swift way through the noisy multitudes upon the Bridge he several times said to himself—­clinging to the thought as if it were a particularly pleasing one—­“He grumbled, but he went—­he went, yes, because he thought Miles Hendon asked it, sweet lad—­he would ne’er have done it for another, I know it well.”

Chapter XIV.  ‘Le Roi est mort—­vive le Roi.’

Toward daylight of the same morning, Tom Canty stirred out of a heavy sleep and opened his eyes in the dark.  He lay silent a few moments, trying to analyse his confused thoughts and impressions, and get some sort of meaning out of them; then suddenly he burst out in a rapturous but guarded voice—­

“I see it all, I see it all!  Now God be thanked, I am indeed awake at last!  Come, joy! vanish, sorrow!  Ho, Nan!  Bet! kick off your straw and hie ye hither to my side, till I do pour into your unbelieving ears the wildest madcap dream that ever the spirits of night did conjure up to astonish the soul of man withal! . . .  Ho, Nan, I say!  Bet!”

A dim form appeared at his side, and a voice said—­

“Wilt deign to deliver thy commands?”

“Commands? . . .  O, woe is me, I know thy voice!  Speak thou—­who am I?”

“Thou?  In sooth, yesternight wert thou the Prince of Wales; to-day art thou my most gracious liege, Edward, King of England.”

Tom buried his head among his pillows, murmuring plaintively—­

“Alack, it was no dream!  Go to thy rest, sweet sir—­leave me to my sorrows.”

Tom slept again, and after a time he had this pleasant dream.  He thought it was summer, and he was playing, all alone, in the fair meadow called Goodman’s Fields, when a dwarf only a foot high, with long red whiskers and a humped back, appeared to him suddenly and said, “Dig by that stump.”  He did so, and found twelve bright new pennies—­wonderful riches!  Yet this was not the best of it; for the dwarf said—­

“I know thee.  Thou art a good lad, and a deserving; thy distresses shall end, for the day of thy reward is come.  Dig here every seventh day, and thou shalt find always the same treasure, twelve bright new pennies.  Tell none—­keep the secret.”

Then the dwarf vanished, and Tom flew to Offal Court with his prize, saying to himself, “Every night will I give my father a penny; he will think I begged it, it will glad his heart, and I shall no more be beaten.  One penny every week the good priest that teacheth me shall have; mother, Nan, and Bet the other four.  We be done with hunger and rags, now, done with fears and frets and savage usage.”

In his dream he reached his sordid home all out of breath, but with eyes dancing with grateful enthusiasm; cast four of his pennies into his mother’s lap and cried out—­