The sound which greeted his ears is one which we have heard many times, but Prince Dolor, who had lived all his days in the dead silence of Hopeless Tower, heard it for the first time. And oh! If you had seen his face.
He listened, and listened, and looked and looked. The motion of the animals delighted him; cows walking, horses galloping, little lambs and calves running races across the meadows, were a great treat for him to watch.
"Godmother," he said, having now begun to believe that, whether he saw her or not, she could hear him "Godmother, I should like better to see a creature like myself. Couldn't you show me just one little boy?"
Suddenly, a shrill whistle startled him, even through his silver ears, and looking downwards, he saw start up from behind a bush on a common, something 
Neither a sheep, nor a horse, nor a cow nothing upon four legs. This creature had only two; but they were long, straight and strong. And it had a lithe active body, and a curly head of black hair. It was a boy about the Prince's own age but, oh! so different. His face was almost as red as his hands, and his shaggy hair was matted like the backs of the sheep he was tending. But he was a rather nice-looking lad; and seemed so bright and healthy and "jolly," that the little Prince watched him with great admiration.
"Might he come and play with me? I would drop down to the ground to him, or fetch him up to me."
But the cloak, usually so obedient, disobeyed him now. There was evidently some things which his godmother could or would not give. The cloak hung high in air, never attempting to descend. The shepherd lad took it for a large bird, and shading his eyes, looked up at it, then turned round and stretched himself, for he had been half asleep, and his dog had been guarding the sheep.
The boy called to the dog and they started off together for a race across the fields. Prince Dolor watched them with great excitement, for a while, then the sweet, pale face grew a trifle paler, the lips began to quiver and the eyes to fill.
"How nice it must be to run like that!" he said softly, thinking that never no, never in this world would he be able to do the same.
"I think I had rather not look at him again," said the poor little Prince, drawing himself back into the centre of his cloak, and resuming his favorite posture, sitting like a Turk, with his arms wrapped around his feeble useless legs.
"You're no good to me," he said, patting them mournfully. "You never will be any good to me. I wonder why I have you at all; I wonder why I was born at all, since I was not to grow up like other little boys."
Prince Dolor sat a good while thus, and seemed to grow years older in a few minutes.
Then he fancied the cloak began to rock gently to and fro, with a soothing kind of motion, as if he were in somebody's arms; somebody who did not speak, but loved and comforted him without need of words.
He had placed himself so he could see nothing but the sky, and had taken off his silver ears, as well as his gold spectacles what was the use of either when he had no legs to walk or run? Up from below there rose a delicious sound.
You have heard it hundreds of times, my children, and so have I. When I was a child I thought there was nothing so sweet; and I think so still.
It was just the song of a lark, mounting higher and higher, until it came so close that Prince Dolor could distinguish its quivering wings and tiny body, almost too tiny to contain such a gush of music.
"Oh, you beautiful, beautiful bird!" cried he; "I should dearly like to take you in and cuddle you. That is, if I might if I dared."
He was so absorbed that he forget all regret and pain, forgot everything in the world except the little lark, and he was just wondering if it would soar out of sight, when it suddenly closed its wings, as larks do when they mean to drop to the ground. But, instead of dropping to the ground, it dropped right into the little boy's breast.
When he came in sight of Hopeless Tower, a painful thought struck him.
"My pretty bird, what am I to do with you? If I take you into my room and shut you up there, you will surely die for I heard my nurse once say that the nicest thing she ever ate in her life was lark pie!"
The little boy shivered all over at the thought, and in another minute he had made up his mind.
"No, my bird, nothing so dreadful shall happen to you if I can help it; I would rather do without you altogether. Fly away, my darling! Good-bye my merry, merry bird."
Opening his two caressing hands, in which, as for protection, he had folded it, he let the lark go. It lingered a minute, perched on the rim of the cloak, and looked at him with eyes of almost human tenderness; then away it flew.
But, sometime after, when Prince Dolor had eaten his supper, and gone to bed, suddenly he heard outside the window a little faint carol faint but cheerful even though it was the middle of the night.
The dear little lark, it had not flown away after all, but had remained about the tower and he listened to its singing and went to sleep very happy.
CHAPTER VII.
After this journey which had given the Prince so much pain, his desire to see the world had somehow faded away. He contented himself with reading his books, and looking out of the tower windows, and listening to his beloved little lark, which had come home with him that day, and had never left him again.
True, it kept out of the way; but though his nurse sometimes faintly heard it, and said, "What is that horrid noise outside?" she never got the faintest chance to make the lark into a pie.
All during the winter the little bird cheered and amused him. He scarcely needed anything more not even his traveling cloak, which lay bundled unnoticed in a corner, tied up in its many knots.
Prince Dolor was now a big boy. Not tall alas! he never could be that, with his poor little shrunken legs. But he was stout and strong, with great sturdy shoulders, and muscular arms, upon which he could swing himself about almost as well as a monkey. His face, too, was very handsome; thinner, firmer, more manly; but still the sweet face of his childhood his mother's own face.
The boy was not a stupid boy either. He could learn almost anything he chose and he did choose, which was more than half the battle. He never gave up his lessons until he had learned them all never thought it a punishment that he had to work at them, and that they cost him a deal of trouble sometimes.
"But," thought he, "men work, and it must be so grand to be a man; a prince too; and I fancy princes work harder than anybody except kings.
The princes I read about generally turn into kings. I wonder" the boy was always wondering "Nurse" and one day he startled her with a sudden question "tell me shall I ever be a king?"
The woman stood, perplexed beyond expression. So long a time had passed by since her crime if it were a crime and her sentence, that she now seldom thought of either. She had even grown used to her punishment. And the little prince whom she at first hated, she had learned to love at least, enough to feel sorry for him.
The Prince noticed that her feeling toward him was changing and did not shrink from her.
"Nurse dear nurse," said he, one day, "I don't mean to vex you, but tell me what is a king? Shall I ever be one?"
Then the idea came to her what harm would it be, even if he did know his own history? Perhaps he ought to know it for there had been many changes in Nomansland, as in most other countries. Something might happen who could tell? Possibly a crown would yet be set upon those pretty, fair curls which she began to think prettier than ever when she saw the imaginary crown upon them.
She sat down, considering whether her oath, "never to say a word to Prince Dolor about himself," would be broken, if she were to take a pencil and write, what was to be told. It was a miserable deception. But then, she was an unhappy woman, more to be pitied than scorned.
After long doubt, she put her finger to her lips, and taking the Prince's slate with a sponge tied to it, ready to rub out the writing in a minute she wrote:
"You are a king."
Prince Dolor started. His face grew pale and then flushed all over; his eyes glistened; he held himself erect. Lame as he was, anybody could see he was born to be a king.
"Hush!" said the nurse, as he was beginning to speak. And then, terribly frightened all the while, she wrote down in a few sentences, his history. How his parents had died, how his uncle had stolen the throne, and sent him to end his days in this lonely tower.
"I, too," added she, bursting into tears. "Unless, indeed, you could get out into the world, and fight for your rights like a man. And fight for me also, My Prince, that I may not die in this desolate place."
"Poor old nurse," said the boy tenderly. For somehow, boy as he was, when he heard he was born to be a king, he felt like a man like a king who could afford to be tender because he was strong.
He scarcely slept that night, and barely listened to the singing of the lark. Things more important were in his mind.
"Suppose," thought he, "I were to go into the world, no matter how it hurts me. The people might only laugh at me, but still I might show them I could do something. At any rate, I might go and see if there was anything for me to do. Godmother, help me!"
It was so long since he had asked for help, that he was hardly surprised when he got no answer. He sprang out of bed, dressed himself, and leaped to the corner where lay his traveling-cloak and unrolled it.
Then he jumped into the middle of it, said his charm, and was out through the skylight immediately.
"Good-bye, pretty lark!" he shouted, as he passed it on the wing. "You have been my pleasure, now I must go and work. Sing to old nurse until I come back again. Good-bye!"
But as the cloak hung motionless in air, he suddenly remembered that he had not made up his mind where to go indeed, he did not know, and there was nobody to tell him.
"Godmother," he cried, "you know what I want. Tell me where I ought to go; show me whatever I ought to see never mind what I like."
This journey was not for pleasure as before. He was not a baby now, to do nothing but play. Men work, this much Prince Dolor knew. As the cloak started off, over freezing mountain tops, and desolate forests, smiling plains and great lakes, he was often rather frightened. But he crouched down, and wrapping himself up in his bearskin waited for what was to happen.
After some time he heard a murmur in the distance, and stretching his chin over the edge of the cloak, Prince Dolor saw far, far below him, yet with his gold spectacles and silver ears on he could distinctly hear and see a great city!
Suppose you were to see a large city from the upper air; where, with your ears and eyes open, you could take in everything at once. What would it look like? How would you feel about it? I hardly know myself.
Do you?
Prince Dolor was as bewildered as a blind person who is suddenly made to see.
He gazed down on the city below him, and then put his hand over his eyes.
"I can't bear to look at it, it is so beautiful so dreadful. And I don't understand it not one bit. I wish I had some one to tell me about it."
"Do you? Then pray speak to me."
The voice that squeaked out this reply came from a great black and white bird that flew into the cloak and began walking round and round on the edge of it with a dignified stride.
"I haven't the honor of your acquaintance," said the boy politely.
"My name is Mag and I shall be happy to tell you everything you want to know. My family is very old; we have builded in this palace for many years. I am well acquainted with the King, the Queen, and the little princes and princesses also the maids of honor, and all the inhabitants of the city. I talk a great deal, but I always talk sense, and I dare say I shall be very useful to a poor, little, ignorant boy like you."
"I am a prince," said the other gently.
"All right. And I am a magpie."
She settled herself at his elbow and began to chatter away, pointing out with one skinny claw every object of interest, evidently believing, as no doubt all its inhabitants did, that there was no city in the world like the great capital of Nomansland.
Mag said that it was the finest city in the world but there were a few things in it that surprised Prince Dolor. One half the people seemed so happy and contented and the other half were so poor and miserable. "I would try to make it a little more equal if I were king," he said.
"But you're not the king," returned the magpie loftily. "Shall I show you the royal palace?"
It was a magnificent palace covering many acres of ground. It had terraces and gardens; battlements and towers. But since the Queen died the windows through which she looked at the Beautiful Mountains, had been closed and boarded up. The room was so little that no one cared to use it.
"I should like to see the King," said Prince Dolor, and as he spoke Mag flew down to the palace roof, where the cloak rested, settling down between the great stocks of chimneys as comfortably as if on the ground.
Mag pecked at the tiles with her beak and immediately a little hole opened, a sort of door, through which could be seen distinctly the chamber below.
"Now pop down on your knees and take a peep at his Majesty."