His attendant knight, Sir Nicolas Romford, told Sir Giles Musgrave that he had really never seemed so happy since his deliverance, and Sir Nicolas had waited on him ever since his capture, six years previously. He led the youth along to the royal rooms, asking on the way after his sheep and the goodwife who had sent him presents of eggs, then showing him the bullfinch, that greeted his return with loving chirps, and when released from its cage came and sat upon his shoulder and played with his hair, ‘A better pet than a fierce hawk, eh, Hal?’ he said. He laughed when he found that Harry thought he had spent all this time in a dark underground dungeon with fetters on his feet. ‘Oh no!’ he said; ‘they were kindly jailors. They dealt better with me than with my Master.’ ‘Sir, sir, that terrible ride through Cheapside!’ said Harry. ‘We heard of it at Derwent-side, and we longed to have our pikes at the throats of the villain traitors.’ The King looked as if he hardly remembered that cruel procession, when he was set upon a sorry jade with his feet tied to the stirrups, and shouts of ‘Behold the traitor!’ around him. Then with a sweet smile of sudden recollection, he said, ‘Ah! I recall it, and how I rejoiced to be led in the steps of my Lord, and how the cries sounded, “We will not have this man to reign over us!” Gratias ago, unworthy me, who by my own fault could not reign.’ Harry was silenced, awe-struck, and by-and-by the King took him to see his old chamber in the White Tower, up a winding stone stair. It was not much inferior to the royal lodgings, except in the matter of dais, canopy, and tapestry, and the window looked out into the country, so that the King said he had loved it, and it had many a happy thought connected with it. Hal followed him in a sort of silent wonder, if not awe, not daring to answer him in monosyllables. This was not quite the hermit of Derwentdale. It was a broader man--not with the breadth of full strength, but of inactivity and advance of years, though the fiftieth year was only lately completed--and the royal robe of crimson, touched with gold, suited him far less than the brown serge of the anchoret. The face was no longer thin, sunburnt, and worn, but pale, and his checks slightly puffed, and the eyes and smile, with more of the strange look of innocent happiness than of old, and of that which seemed to bring back to his young visitor the sense of peace and well-being that the saintly hermit had always given him.