A Stirring Encounter.
More sentries were about the Palace, and the guardroom was full of soldiers, but no one interfered with the Prince’s page, who went straight to the gates, and without the slightest attempt at concealment walked across to the banks of the canal, along by its edge to the end, passed round, and made for his father’s house.
Twice over he saw men whom his ready imagination suggested as belonging to the corps of spies who kept the comers and goers from the Palace under observation, but he would not notice them.
“Let them watch if they like. I’m doing something I’m proud of, and not ashamed.”
In this spirit he made for the house, and reached it, to find that the battered door had been replaced by a new one, which looked bright and glistening in its coats of fresh paint.
He knocked and rang boldly, and as he waited he glanced carelessly to right and left, to see that one of the men he had passed in the Park had followed, and was sauntering slowly along in his direction.
“How miserably ashamed of himself a fellow like that must feel!” he thought.
At that moment there was the rattling of a chain inside, and the door was opened as far as the links would allow.
“Oh, it’s you, Master Francis,” said the housekeeper, whose scared and troubled face began to beam with a smile; and directly after he was admitted, and the door closed and fastened once more.
Frank confined his words to friendly inquiries as to the old servant’s health, and she hesitated after replying, as if expecting that he would begin to question her; but he went on upstairs, and shut himself in the gloomy-looking room overlooking the Park. Then, obeying his first impulse, he walked to the window to throw back the shutters.