off, and I was left in total darkness and in solitude. Still I brooded on my throne, unable to sleep for the weight of my robes and for the sad thoughts that passed through my mind, and mechanically counted the hours as they stole slowly by.[Pg 23]

[Pg 23]

'At length the clock in the hall downstairs struck eleven, and as the last beat echoed through the empty rooms, a light appeared underneath the door opposite the throne. Little heed did I give to this at first, imagining that one of the ministers, on retiring, had omitted to remove his boots and leave them in the hall, and was now returning to place them there. The light, however, remained, and to my increasing wonderment some one tried the handle of the door, which was then opened very cautiously and in there crept, on hands and knees, my old friend the Prime Minister. As soon as he was well within the room and had quietly closed the door, he leapt to his feet and executed the most astonishing capers that were ever danced. With the liveliest satisfaction expressed all over his mobile features, he pirouetted round the room with the greatest animation, and daringly accomplished the giddiest somersaults that were ever turned. At last, nearly exhausted with this vigorous performance, he ran up to the throne, grasped me by the hand, which he wrung most heartily, and for all the world was his good old self again.

'He now bade me follow him, and in utter silence we both crept out of the throne-room, through the ante-room, down the stairs, across the hall, and out by the front door into the garden.

'We now traversed the terrace and crossed the tennis lawn, and stepping gently across the Rhododendron beds, scrambled as carefully as possible over the[Pg 24] barbed-wire fence and found ourselves in the kitchen garden. Passing through innumerable beds of cabbages, beetroots, turnips, brussels sprouts, and broccoli, we at last stood in front of an old broken-down hen-house. The Minister knocked very gently three distinct times and gave a low musical call, which was immediately answered from within. The door now opened just sufficiently to admit one person at a time, and the Prime Minister crept in, dragging me after him, and then closing the door as quickly and as quietly as possible.

[Pg 24]

'You may imagine my surprise when I discovered my two other old cronies seated amongst the hay newly strewn on the floor, the fat old roosters chortling wisely the while on their perches in the roof of the shed. Two or three candles, that 

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