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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.
One was to inflict upon the lad what would be, to his proud spirit and
'imagined' royalty, a peculiar humiliation; and if he failed to
accomplish this, his other plan was to put a crime of some kind upon the
King, and then betray him into the implacable clutches of the law.
In pursuance of the first plan, he purposed to put a 'clime' upon the
King's leg; rightly judging that that would mortify him to the last and
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