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The light was put out, and the family retired. As soon as the snorings
of the head of the house and his mother showed that they were asleep, the
young girls crept to where the Prince lay, and covered him tenderly from
the cold with straw and rags; and their mother crept to him also, and
stroked his hair, and cried over him, whispering broken words of comfort
and compassion in his ear the while. She had saved a morsel for him to
eat, also; but the boy's pains had swept away all appetite--at least for
black and tasteless crusts. He was touched by her brave and costly
defence of him, and by her commiseration; and he thanked her in very
noble and princely words, and begged her to go to her sleep and try to
forget her sorrows. And he added that the King his father would not let
her loyal kindness and devotion go unrewarded. This return to his
'madness' broke her heart anew, and she strained him to her breast again
and again, and then went back, drowned in tears, to her bed.
As she lay thinking and mourning, the suggestion began to creep into her
mind that there was an undefinable something about this boy that was
lacking in Tom Canty, mad or sane. She could not describe it, she could
not tell just what it was, and yet her sharp mother-instinct seemed to
detect it and perceive it. What if the boy were really not her son,
after all? Oh, absurd! She almost smiled at the idea, spite of her
griefs and troubles. No matter, she found that it was an idea that would
not 'down,' but persisted in haunting her. It pursued her, it harassed
her, it clung to her, and refused to be put away or ignored. At last she
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