rewarding his poor servant, it ill became such a worm as he to ignore the

divine favor. So Brus took the gold zecchins and De Vac the key, and the

little prince played happily among the flowers of his royal father's

garden, and all were satisfied; which was as it should have been.

That night, De Vac took the key to a locksmith on the far side of London;

one who could not possibly know him or recognize the key as belonging to

the palace. Here he had a duplicate made, waiting impatiently while the

old man fashioned it with the crude instruments of his time.

From this little shop, De Vac threaded his way through the dirty lanes and

alleys of ancient London, lighted at far intervals by an occasional smoky

lantern, until he came to a squalid tenement but a short distance from the

palace.

A narrow alley ran past the building, ending abruptly at the bank of the

Thames in a moldering wooden dock, beneath which the inky waters of the

river rose and fell, lapping the decaying piles and surging far beneath the

dock to the remote fastnesses inhabited by the great fierce dock rats and

their fiercer human antitypes.

Several times De Vac paced the length of this black alley in search of the

little doorway of the building he sought. At length he came upon it, and,

after repeated pounding with the pommel of his sword, it was opened by a

slatternly old hag.

"What would ye of a decent woman at such an ungodly hour ?" she grumbled.

"Ah, 'tis ye, my lord ?" she added, hastily, as the flickering rays of the

candle she bore lighted up De Vac's face. "Welcome, my Lord, thrice

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