"And you bet there was," Pearl replied. "What did they do but all git together one day, after they got the crop cut, and they drawed up a list of things that he couldn't do, and then they goes to him, and says they: 'Sign this, yer Highness;' and he takes the paper and wipes his glasses on his hanky, and he reads them all over polite enough, and then he says, says he, handing it back: 'The divil I will!'" "Did he really say that, Pearlie?" her Mother asked. "Did he?" Pearl said scornfully. "He said worse than that, Ma; and then they says, says they: 'Sign it, or there'll be another man on yer job.' And says he, brave as ye please: 'I'll see ye some place before I sign it,' and with that what did they do but jist sit down where they were, lit their pipes, as unconcerned as could be, and says they: 'Take yer time, your Highness, we're not in a hurry; we bro't our dinners,' says they, 'an' we'll stay right here till ye find yer pen,' and they just sat there on their hunkers talkin' about the crops and the like o' that, until he signed it; which he did very bad-mannered, and flung it back at them and says he: 'There now, bad cess to yez, small good it'll do yez, for I'm the King,' says he, 'an' I'll do as I blame please, so I will. The King can do no wrong,' says he. 'Well, then,' says one of them, foldin' up the Magna Charta and puttin' it away careful in his breast pocket, 'the King can't break his word, I guess,' and wid that he winks at the rest of them, and they says, says they: 'That's one on you, yer Majesty!' But they couldn't put him in good humour, and they do say, Ma, that when the company was gone that that man cut up somethin' rough, cursed and swore, and chewed up sticks, and frothed at the mouth like a mad dog, and sure, the very next day, when he was driving through a place called 'The Wash,' drunk as an owl, he dropped his crown, and his little satchel wid all his good clothes in it, and him being the way he was he never heard them splash. When he missed them he felt awful, and went back to hunt for them, puddlin' round in his bare feet for hours, and some say he had et too many lampreys, whatever that is, for his breakfast, but anyway, he got a cowld in his head and he died, so he did." "Wasn't that a bad state for the poor man to die in, childer dear," said Mrs. Watson, wishing to give Pearl's story a moral value; "and him full of wickedness and cursin'!" "And lampwicks, too, Ma!" Bugsey added. "Where he wuz now?" asked Danny, who had a theological bent. "Faith, now, that's not an easy thing to say for certain," said the father gravely. "Things look pretty bad for him, I'm thinkin'." After some discussion as to John's present address, Pearlie summed it up with a fine blending of charity and orthodoxy by saying: "Well, we just hope he's gone to the place where we're afraid he isn't."