the old man licked his thin lips as though to taste the last sweet vestige

of some dainty morsel.

And then Chance carried a little leather ball beneath the window where the

old man stood; and as the child ran, laughing, to recover it, De Vac's eyes

fell upon him, and his former plan for revenge melted as the fog before the

noonday sun; and in its stead there opened to him the whole hideous plot of

fearsome vengeance as clearly as it were writ upon the leaves of a great

book that had been thrown wide before him. And, in so far as he could

direct, he varied not one jot from the details of that vividly conceived

masterpiece of hellishness during the twenty years which followed.

The little boy who so innocently played in the garden of his royal father

was Prince Richard, the three-year-old son of Henry III of England. No

published history mentions this little lost prince; only the secret

archives of the kings of England tell the story of his strange and

adventurous life. His name has been blotted from the records of men; and

the revenge of De Vac has passed from the eyes of the world; though in his

time it was a real and terrible thing in the hearts of the English.

CHAPTER III

For nearly a month, the old man haunted the palace, and watched in the

gardens for the little Prince until he knew the daily routine of his tiny

life with his nurses and governesses.

He saw that when the Lady Maud accompanied him, they were wont to repair to

the farthermost extremities of the palace grounds where, by a little

postern gate, she admitted a certain officer of the Guards to whom the

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