One winter night, when all the plain was white with moonlight, there was seen crossing it, a great tall, black horse, ridden by a man also big and equally black, carrying before him on the saddle a woman and a child. The sad fierce-looking woman was a criminal under sentence of death, but her sentence had been changed. She was to inhabit the lonely tower with the child; she was to live as long as the child lived--no longer. This, in order that she might take the utmost care of him; for those who put him there were equally afraid of his dying and of his living. And yet he was only a little gentle boy, with a sweet smile. He was very tired with his long journey and was clinging to the man's neck, for he was rather frightened. The tired little boy was Prince Dolor. He was not dead at all. His grand funeral had been a pretence; a wax figure having been put in his place, while he was spirited away by the condemned woman and the black man. The latter was deaf and dumb, so could tell nothing. When they reached the foot of the tower, there was light enough to see a huge chain dangling half way from the parapet. The deaf mute took from his saddle-wallet a sort of ladder, arranged in pieces like a puzzle, fitted it together, and lifted it up to meet the chain. Then he mounted to the top of the tower, and slung from it a chair, in which the woman and child placed themselves and were drawn up, never to come down again. The man descended the ladder, took it to pieces and disappeared across the plain. Every month he came and fastened his horse to the foot of the tower and climbed it as before, laden with provisions and many other things. He always saw the Prince, so as to make sure that the child was alive and well, and then went away until the following month. Prince Dolor had every luxury that even a Prince could need, and the one thing wanting--love, never having known, he did not miss. His nurse was very kind to him, though she was a wicked woman. Perhaps it made her better to be shut up with an innocent child. By-and-by he began to learn lessons--not that his nurse had been ordered to teach him, but she did it partly to amuse herself. She was not a stupid woman, and Prince Dolor was by no means a stupid child; so they got on very well. When he grew older he began reading the books which the mute brought to him. As they told him of the things in the outside world he longed to see them. From this time a change came over the boy. He began to look sad and thin, and to shut himself up for hours without speaking. His nurse had been forbidden, on pain of death, to tell him anything about himself. He knew he was Prince Dolor, because she always addressed him as "My prince" and "your Royal Highness," but what a prince was, he had not the least idea.