"Sir William!"

After a moment--

"Ho, Sir William Herbert! Hie thee hither, and list to the strangest
dream that ever . . . Sir William! dost hear? Man, I did think me
changed to a pauper, and . . . Ho there! Guards! Sir William! What! is
there no groom of the chamber in waiting? Alack! it shall go hard with--"

"What aileth thee?" asked a whisper near him. "Who art thou calling?"

"Sir William Herbert. Who art thou?"

"I? Who should I be, but thy sister Nan? Oh, Tom, I had forgot! Thou'rt
mad yet--poor lad, thou'rt mad yet: would I had never woke to know it
again! But prithee master thy tongue, lest we be all beaten till we
die!"

The startled Prince sprang partly up, but a sharp reminder from his
stiffened bruises brought him to himself, and he sank back among his foul
straw with a moan and the ejaculation--

"Alas! it was no dream, then!"

In a moment all the heavy sorrow and misery which sleep had banished were
upon him again, and he realised that he was no longer a petted prince in
a palace, with the adoring eyes of a nation upon him, but a pauper, an
outcast, clothed in rags, prisoner in a den fit only for beasts, and
consorting with beggars and thieves.