rags, with a hot face and glowing eyes. As soon as he reached the great gate, he seized the bars, and tried to shake them, shouting —

“Open! Unbar the gates!”

The soldier that had maltreated Tom obeyed promptly; and as the prince burst through the portal, half-smothered with royal wrath, the soldier fetched him a sounding box on the ear that sent him whirling to the roadway, and said —

“Take that, thou beggar’s spawn, for what thou got’st me from his Highness!”

The crowd roared with laughter.

The prince picked himself out of the mud, and made fiercely at the sentry, shouting —

“I am the Prince of Wales, my person is sacred; and thou shalt hang for laying thy hand upon me!”