“I’m glad you did,” returned the prince, “for I want to be troubled by neither man nor boy. Yet I wonder who they could be. Did they say why they wanted to find me?”
“No, they did not say, and I would not ask; what cared I about their reasons?”
“Yet you care enough for me, it appears, to say you would have sent them to me if you knew I had been lonely. What was the appearance of the man?”
“He was old, but very strong, though not so big as me—or you. His hair was long and white; so was his beard. He wore a long dark robe, and carried a very big staff.”
Bladud had no difficulty in recognising the description of his friend the Hebrew.
“And the boy; what was he like?”
“Like all boys, active and impudent.”
“I am afraid,” returned the prince with a slight smile, “that your acquaintance with boys cannot have been extensive—they are not all active and impudent.”
“Most of those that have crossed my path are so. At all events, this one was, for when I pointed out the direction you had gone—which was just the opposite way from here—he said, ‘I don’t believe you!’ and when I leaped on him to give him his deserts, he dodged me, and fled into the woods like a squirrel. It was as well, for I should have killed him.”
“I am not sorry he escaped you, then,” said Bladud, with a laugh, “though I scarcely think you would have killed the poor lad even if you had caught him.”