"What's all this?" he cried, his voice snarling with anger, and his small eyes shot with red. "Haven't I given orders that you're never to touch that thing again?" At the sound of the man's voice both children had jumped from their chairs and stood, stiff as ramrods, facing the speaker. The boy had raised his hand to the side of his head in salute. "Please, sir," said the girl, "we're both so very fond of music." "Silence," commanded the man, who was no other than their father, Frederick William, King of Prussia. "Fritz can speak for himself; he doesn't need a girl to defend him." "Wilhelmina has told you, sir," said the boy, "how much we both love music. Indeed I'd rather listen to it than do anything else, and I want to learn how to play it for myself. I don't care anything about being a soldier." The King's face was almost purple with anger. He looked as though he would box the boy's ears on the spot, but he held himself in check. "You little brat!" he cried. "A soldier you shall be, and nothing else! Do you think the kingdom of Prussia can be ruled by a crazy fool of a musician? Don't talk to me of harpsichords, or books, or pictures. You're not to be a woman, but a king!" The boy knew his father too well to attempt any answer; there was no one in Prussia who would dare speak freely before King Frederick William. After scowling at his son in silence for some minutes the man spoke again. "Listen to my orders and see that you obey them. From to-day your music-masters are discharged, every instrument is moved from the palace, and if either of you two is found playing such things I will have you locked in your rooms for a week to live on barley and water. Now, sir, step before me to the hair-dresser. I'll have those locks of yours shorn so that you'll look less like a girl and more like a grenadier." Fritz, keeping back the tears in mingled shame and terror, walked to the door and paced down the hall before his father. He tried to hold himself straight like a soldier, but it was hard when he felt as though he were being marched to execution. The King handed the boy over to the hair-dresser, and in fifteen minutes the curls were all gone and Fritz's hair was close-cropped like a man's. As soon as he was free he ran to his mother's room, and there the gentle Queen, Sophia Dorothea, took him in her arms and comforted him. She knew how sensitive her little son was, how absolutely different from his father, and she could sympathize with both the children's suffering under the King's cruelty.