By this time she had crept to the slumbering boy's side, with the candle,

shaded, in her hand. She bent heedfully and warily over him, scarcely

breathing in her suppressed excitement, and suddenly flashed the light in

his face and struck the floor by his ear with her knuckles. The

sleeper's eyes sprang wide open, and he cast a startled stare about him

--but he made no special movement with his hands.

The poor woman was smitten almost helpless with surprise and grief; but

she contrived to hide her emotions, and to soothe the boy to sleep again;

then she crept apart and communed miserably with herself upon the

disastrous result of her experiment. She tried to believe that her Tom's

madness had banished this habitual gesture of his; but she could not do

it. "No," she said, "his HANDS are not mad; they could not unlearn so

old a habit in so brief a time. Oh, this is a heavy day for me!"

Still, hope was as stubborn now as doubt had been before; she could not

bring herself to accept the verdict of the test; she must try the thing

again--the failure must have been only an accident; so she startled the

boy out of his sleep a second and a third time, at intervals--with the

same result which had marked the first test; then she dragged herself to

bed, and fell sorrowfully asleep, saying, "But I cannot give him up--oh

no, I cannot, I cannot--he MUST be my boy!"

The Prince and The Pauper