All attempts to make the King serviceable to the troop had failed. He had
stubbornly refused to act; moreover, he was always trying to escape. He
had been thrust into an unwatched kitchen, the first day of his return;
he not only came forth empty-handed, but tried to rouse the housemates.
He was sent out with a tinker to help him at his work; he would not work;
moreover, he threatened the tinker with his own soldering-iron; and
finally both Hugo and the tinker found their hands full with the mere
matter of keeping his from getting away. He delivered the thunders of
his royalty upon the heads of all who hampered his liberties or tried to
force him to service. He was sent out, in Hugo's charge, in company with
a slatternly woman and a diseased baby, to beg; but the result was not
encouraging--he declined to plead for the mendicants, or be a party to
their cause in any way.

Thus several days went by; and the miseries of this tramping life, and
the weariness and sordidness and meanness and vulgarity of it, became
gradually and steadily so intolerable to the captive that he began at
last to feel that his release from the hermit's knife must prove only a
temporary respite from death, at best.

But at night, in his dreams, these things were forgotten, and he was on
his throne, and master again. This, of course, intensified the
sufferings of the awakening--so the mortifications of each succeeding
morning of the few that passed between his return to bondage and the
combat with Hugo, grew bitterer and bitterer, and harder and harder to
bear.

The morning after that combat, Hugo got up with a heart filled with
vengeful purposes against the King. He had two plans, in particular.