"What a strange coincidence!" cried the Red King, flushing and twiddling at his sword-hilt uneasily. "These coincidences do happen quite startlingly sometimes. Ha-hum!" He coughed and frowned forbiddingly. "Surely, none of your men could have stolen my mother's pies (and, indeed, one of them was yours), Your Majesty. They would not have been so mean!" "They would not have been so reckless," corrected Red Rex. "No, no! it took courage to make such an attempt; great courage, my boy!" "Courage!" cried Harold. "I call it something else,--to steal the pies of a poor widow and deprive her son of his desserts. I call it mean and disgraceful!" "Tut, tut, boy! You do not know what you are saying!" blustered the War-Lord, growing very red. "Often it takes courage to do what others call an ill deed. And an ill deed is ill, only as you look at it; so I say! Everything depends upon the point of view; remember that. Suppose the man who stole those pies was starving and needed them for his comfort?" "Suppose, indeed!" retorted Harold. "Suppose he came to our front door and asked my mother for them, like a gentleman? She would not have refused to sell, if he had money. She would have given, if he had none. She is like that, is my good mother!" The Red King shook his head. "Suppose the man was an enemy, and too proud to ask a favor? All's fair in war, my boy. Everybody knows that." "Then war is all wrong, as we always said," Harold replied. "Right is right, and wrong is wrong. Stealing is stealing, and meanness is meanness,--war or no war. If war makes men think differently from the rule of every day, there is nothing to be said for it. Hello!" Harold interrupted himself, for something else had suddenly caught his eye. He had been making his way toward the pile of pie-plates, and now he stooped and picked up something lying on the grass beside them. It was a queer, old-fashioned bonnet. As he touched it out fell a rolled-up calico apron. One of the strings was gone. Harold's eyes leaped from it to the Red King's bundled-up wrist. The other apron-string was doing duty as a bandage there. "Ho! Ho!" cried Harold, staring at the Red King's purpling face. "This is the old woman's bonnet, and her apron. A disguise! I begin to see! You, Your Majesty,--you were the old woman yourself!" "You are very sharp, youngster!" said Red Rex sulkily. "Begone to your home and leave me to finish my work." "If I go," said Harold slowly, "I shall tell the whole town what I have discovered. The news will travel through the Five Kingdoms--how a King disguised as an old woman stole six pies--" "Hold!" cried Red Rex sternly. "Enough of this impertinence! Remember to whom you speak, boy! I am a King." "Yes, you are that King. But I thought always it was the '_Knave_ of Hearts who stole the tarts,' not the King. How did Your Majesty manage to do it?" asked Harold curiously.