It was no repentant and shamefaced son that entered the Queen’s room that night. Hamlet had steeled his heart to do what he considered his duty, and tell his mother the truth. He would speak daggers, though he used none; he would reveal to her the true character of the man she had taken for her second husband. When, therefore, the Queen, in accordance with Polonius’s advice, began to take him roundly to task for his strange behaviour, he retorted in such a strange, and even menacing, manner that she was quite alarmed, and shouted for help. Polonius, hidden behind the arras, echoed her cry. Hamlet, thinking it was the King, and that the hour for vengeance had come, drew his sword. “How now! A rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!” he exclaimed, and made a pass through the arras. [Illustration: “How now! A rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!”] There was a cry from behind, “O, I am slain!” and the fall of a heavy body. “O me, what hast thou done?” exclaimed the Queen. “Nay, I know not. Is it--the King?” said Hamlet, in a harsh whisper. “Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this!” moaned the Queen, wringing her hands in dismay. “A bloody deed! Almost as bad, good mother, as kill a King and marry with his brother,” said Hamlet solemnly. “As kill a King?” echoed the Queen, astounded. “Ay, lady, it was my word.” Hamlet lifted the arras, and found that, after all, it was not the guilty murderer whom he had hoped to punish, but the meddlesome old Chamberlain, who had fallen a victim to his sudden impulse. His task of vengeance had still to be accomplished. “Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell,” said the young Prince, gazing at him sorrowfully. “I took thee for thy better; take thy fortune! Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.” Thus the officious old man’s prying ways met their punishment. And Hamlet’s lack of resolution, too, brought its penalty; for if he had had strength of will to carry out what he believed to be his duty, he would not have thus trusted to the blind impulse of the moment, and a comparatively innocent life would not have been sacrificed. But he had matters too important waiting to spare much time for regret. Letting the arras fall on the henceforth silent prattler, Hamlet turned to his mother. In the most forcible manner he pointed out to the Queen how blameworthy had been her conduct. In vivid language he sketched a portrait of her two husbands, showing how noble had been the one brother, and how contemptible was the other. What strange delusion could have cheated the Queen, after knowing her first husband, to have married such a wretched being as Claudius? “O Hamlet, speak no more!” implored the Queen. “These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears; no more, sweet Hamlet.”