Ting-a-ling | Page 3

are tired.
To-night and to-morrow you shall be lodged and feasted daintily and
the day after we will have a celebration, when you shall be beaten with
sticks, and shall fight a tiger, and be tossed by a bull, and be bowstrung,
and beheaded, and drawn and quartered, and we will have a nice time.
Bear him away to his soft couch."
[Illustration]

The guards then led the Prince away to be kept a prisoner until the day
for the celebration. The room to which he was conducted was
comfortable, and he soon had a plenteous supper laid out before him, of
which he partook with great avidity. Having finished his meal, he sat
down to reflect upon his condition, but feeling very sleepy, and
remembering that he would have a whole day of leisure, to-morrow, for
such reflections, he concluded to go to bed. Before doing so, however,
he wished to make all secure for the night. Examining the door, he
found there was no lock to it; and being unwilling to remain all night
liable to intrusion, he pondered the matter for some minutes, and then
took up a wide and very heavy stool, and, having partially opened the
door, he put the stool up over it, resting it partly on the door and partly
on the surrounding woodwork, so that if any one tried to come in, and
pushed the door open, the stool would fall down and knock the
intruder's head off. Having arranged this to his satisfaction, the Prince
went to bed.
That evening the Princess Aufalia was in great grief, for she had heard
of the sentence pronounced upon the Prince, and felt herself the cause
of it. What other reason she had to grieve over the Prince's death, need
not be told. Her handmaidens fully sympathized with her; and one of
them, Nerralina, the handsomest and most energetic of them all, soon
found, by proper inquiry, that the Prince was confined in the fourth
story of the "Tower of Tears." So they devised a scheme for his rescue.
Each one of the young ladies contributed her scarf; and when they were
all tied together, the conclave decided that they made a rope plenty long
enough to reach from the Prince's window to the ground.
Thus much settled, it only remained to get this means of escape to the
prisoner. This the lady Nerralina volunteered to do. Waiting until the
dead of night, she took off her slippers, and with the scarf-rope rolled
up into a ball under her arm, she silently stepped past the drowsy
sentinels, and, reaching the Prince's room, pushed open the door, and
the stool fell down and knocked her head off. Her body lay in the
doorway, but her head rolled into the middle of the room.
Notwithstanding the noise occasioned by this accident, the Prince did

not awake; but in the morning, when he was up and nearly dressed, he
was astonished at seeing a lady's head in the middle of the room.
[Illustration]
"Hallo!" said he. "Here's somebody's head."
Picking it up, he regarded it with considerable interest. Then seeing the
body in the doorway, he put the head and it together, and, finding they
fitted, came to the conclusion that they belonged to each other, and that
the stool had done the mischief. When he saw the bundle of scarfs lying
by the body, he unrolled it, and soon imagined the cause of the lady's
visit.
"Poor thing!" he said; "doubtless the Princess sent her here with this,
and most likely with a message also, which now I shall never hear. But
these poor women! what do they know? This rope will not bear a man
like me. Well! well! this poor girl is dead. I will pay respect to her."
And so he picked her up, and put her on his bed, thinking at the time
that she must have fainted when she heard the stool coming, for no
blood had flowed. He fitted on the head, and then he covered her up
with the sheet; but, in pulling this over her head, he uncovered her feet,
which he now perceived to be slipperless.
[Illustration]
"No shoes! Ah me! Well, I will be polite to a lady, even if she is dead."
And so he drew off his own yellow boots, and put them on her feet,
which was easy enough, as they were a little too big for her. He had
hardly done this, and dressed himself, when he heard some one
approaching; and hastily removing the fallen stool, he got behind the
door just as a fat old fellow entered with a broadsword in one hand, and
a pitcher of hot water and some towels in the other. Glancing at the bed,
and seeing the