Next morning when Prince Dolor awoke he perceived that his room was empty. Very uncomfortable he felt, of course; and just a little frightened. Especially when he began to call again and again, but nobody answered. "Nurse--dear nurse--please come back!" he called out. "Come back, and I will be the best boy in all the land." And when she did not come back, and nothing but silence answered his lamentable call, he very nearly began to cry. "This won't do," he said at last, dashing the tears from his eyes. "It's just like a baby, and I'm a big boy--shall be a man some day. What has happened, I wonder? I'll go and see." He sprang out of bed and crawled from room to room on his knees. "What in the world am I to do?" thought he, and sat down in the middle of the floor, half inclined to believe that it would be better to give up entirely, lay himself down and die. This feeling, however, did not last long. He jumped up and looked out of the window. No help there. At first he only saw the broad bleak sunshiny plain. But, by-and-by, in the mud around the base of the tower he saw clearly the marks of horses' feet, and just in the spot where the deaf mute always tied his great black charger, there lay the remains of a bundle of hay. "Yes, that's it. He has come and gone, taking nurse with him. Poor nurse! how glad she must have been to go!" That was Prince Dolor's first thought. His second was one of indignation at her cruelty. He decided that it would be easier to die here alone than out in the world, among the terrible doings which he had just beheld. The deaf mute had come--contrived somehow to make the nurse understand that the king was dead, and that she need have no fear in going back to the capital. "I hope she'll enjoy it," said the Prince. And then a kind of remorse smote him for feeling so bitterly towards her, after all the years she had taken care of him--grudgingly, perhaps, still, she had taken care of him. For the second time he tried to dress himself, and then to do everything he could for himself--even to sweeping the hearth and putting on more coals. He then thought of his godmother. Not of calling her or asking her to help him--she had evidently left him to help himself, and he was determined to try his best to do it, being a very proud and independent boy--but he remembered her tenderly. After his first despair, he was comfortable and happy in his solitude, but when it was time to go to bed, he was very lonely, even his little lark was silent and as for his traveling cloak, either he never thought about it, or else it had been spirited away--for he made no use of it, nor attempted to do so.