"Mater!" whispered Clarence in admiration, "you're the limit!" "And all the reward he gets," the Queen went on, pressing her advantage, "all the reward _we_ get--for providing that you can sleep safe and warm in your beds--instead of being drowned in them--is violence and rude remarks! Really, if you have any consciences left you ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves!" They undoubtedly were. For a moment or two there was a hush, and then the whole mob broke into tumultuous cheers--for the Queen, the King, and more particularly the Crown Prince. Never since their accession had the Royal Family been so popular. "There now," said the Queen, when she and her family were weary of bowing their acknowledgments, "that will do. Now go quietly away, like respectable loyal persons, and tell all the other citizens what we're doing for them." "I must say, my love," observed the King, after the crowd had melted away in a vastly different mood from that in which they had come, "you showed wonderful presence of mind. I quite thought myself we should have been massacred." "And so we _should_ have been, Sidney," she replied, "if I'd left it to _you_!" On re-entering the Palace they heard that the Council was still sitting. "_Let_ 'em sit!" cried Clarence. "This'll be a bit of a suck for them. What price a Republic _now_, eh?" "They simply _daren't_ depose us!" said the Queen, "now the dear people are with us heart and soul!" Some time later, while they were sitting in the lapis-lazuli Chamber, a page entered to announce that a messenger had just arrived with tidings which he wished to communicate to their Majesties in private. "Tell him to come in," said the Queen. "I do hope it isn't some fresh trouble!" The messenger brought grave news. The Marshal, it appeared, had been killed while hunting in the Forest. Particulars were wanting, but there was no doubt that he was dead. "How very very sad!" exclaimed the Queen. "The poor dear Marshal! To be cut off like this in the prime of life! It must have been a wild boar, I suppose--_or_ a bear. But, whichever it was, it is a terrible loss. I don't know exactly how long the Court ought to go into mourning for an ex-Regent--but at _least_ a month!" She was shocked, of course, by the suddenness of it. At the same time she could not help a renewed sense of gratitude to Providence, which had once more gone out of its way to smooth her path. "I've always said hunting these wild animals is a very dangerous sport," said King Sidney. "Glad you've given it up, my boy!" "Fed up with it, Guv'nor. But I dare say I shall go in for it again--some day or other," Clarence replied, while he was thinking that it would have to be a day when he discovered what had become of his irresistible sword, and when he could find a horse among his numerous stud that would permit him to get on its back.