After long doubt, she put her finger to her lips, and taking the Prince's slate--with a sponge tied to it, ready to rub out the writing in a minute--she wrote: "You are a king." Prince Dolor started. His face grew pale and then flushed all over; his eyes glistened; he held himself erect. Lame as he was, anybody could see he was born to be a king. "Hush!" said the nurse, as he was beginning to speak. And then, terribly frightened all the while, she wrote down in a few sentences, his history. How his parents had died, how his uncle had stolen the throne, and sent him to end his days in this lonely tower. "I, too," added she, bursting into tears. "Unless, indeed, you could get out into the world, and fight for your rights like a man. And fight for me also, My Prince, that I may not die in this desolate place." "Poor old nurse," said the boy tenderly. For somehow, boy as he was, when he heard he was born to be a king, he felt like a man--like a king--who could afford to be tender because he was strong. He scarcely slept that night, and barely listened to the singing of the lark. Things more important were in his mind. "Suppose," thought he, "I were to go into the world, no matter how it hurts me. The people might only laugh at me, but still I might show them I could do something. At any rate, I might go and see if there was anything for me to do. Godmother, help me!" It was so long since he had asked for help, that he was hardly surprised when he got no answer. He sprang out of bed, dressed himself, and leaped to the corner where lay his traveling-cloak and unrolled it. Then he jumped into the middle of it, said his charm, and was out through the skylight immediately. "Good-bye, pretty lark!" he shouted, as he passed it on the wing. "You have been my pleasure, now I must go and work. Sing to old nurse until I come back again. Good-bye!" But as the cloak hung motionless in air, he suddenly remembered that he had not made up his mind where to go--indeed, he did not know, and there was nobody to tell him. "Godmother," he cried, "you know what I want. Tell me where I ought to go; show me whatever I ought to see--never mind what I like." This journey was not for pleasure as before. He was not a baby now, to do nothing but play. Men work, this much Prince Dolor knew. As the cloak started off, over freezing mountain tops, and desolate forests, smiling plains and great lakes, he was often rather frightened. But he crouched down, and wrapping himself up in his bearskin waited for what was to happen. After some time he heard a murmur in the distance, and stretching his chin over the edge of the cloak, Prince Dolor saw--far, far below him, yet with his gold spectacles and silver ears on he could distinctly hear and see--a great city!