The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett Read Free Book Online

broke in one of the audience, and his exclamation was followed by a dozen of like nature from the others. Who wouldn’t have liked ketchin’ one?
    When he told of the deep endless-seeming forests, and of the herdsmen and shepherds who played on their pipes and made songs about high deeds and bravery, they grinned with pleasure without knowing they were grinning. They did not really know that in this neglected, broken-flagged enclosure, shut in on one side by smoke-blackened, poverty-stricken houses, and on the other by a deserted and forgotten sunken graveyard, they heard the rustle of green forest boughs where birds nested close, the swish of the summer wind in the river reeds, and the tinkle and laughter and rush of brooks running.
    They heard more or less of it all through the Lost Prince story, because Prince Ivor had loved lowland woods and mountain forests and all out-of-door life. When Marco pictured him tall and strong-limbed and young, winning all the people when he rode smiling among them, the boys grinned again with unconscious pleasure.
    ‘Wisht ’e ’adn’t got lost!’ someone cried out.
    When they heard of the unrest and dissatisfaction of the Samavians, they began to get restless themselves. When Marco reached the part of the story in which the mob rushed into the palace and demanded their prince from the king, they ejaculated scraps of bad language. ‘The old geezer had got him hidden somewhere in some dungeon, or he’d killed him out an’ out – that’swhat he’d been up to!’ they clamoured. ‘Wisht the lot of us had been there then – wisht we ’ad. We’d ’ave give’ ’im wot for, anyway!’
    ‘An’ ’im walkin’ out o’ the place so early in the mornin’ just singin’ like that! ’E ’ad ’im follered an’ done for!’ they decided with various exclamations of boyish wrath. Somehow, the fact that the handsome royal lad had strolled into the morning sunshine singing made them more savage. Their language was extremely bad at this point.
    But if it was bad here, it became worse when the old shepherd found the young huntsman’s half-dead body in the forest. He
had
‘bin “done for”
in the back
! ’E’d bin give’ no charnst. G-r-r-r!’ they groaned in chorus. ‘Wisht
they’d
bin there when ’e’d bin ’it! They’d ’ave done fur somebody’ themselves. It was a story which had a queer effect on them. It made them think they saw things; it fired their blood; it set them wanting to fight for ideals they knew nothing about – adventurous things, for instance, and high and noble young princes who were full of the possibility of great and good deeds. Sitting upon the broken flagstones of the bit of ground behind the deserted graveyard, they were suddenly dragged into the world of romance, and noble young princes and great and good deeds became as real as the sunken gravestones, and far more interesting.
    And then the smuggling across the frontier of the unconscious prince in the bullock cart loaded with sheepskins! They held their breaths. Would the old shepherd get him past the line! Marco, who was lost in the recital himself, told it as if he had been present.He felt as if he had, and as this was the first time he had ever told it to thrilled listeners, his imagination got him in its grip, and his heart jumped in his breast as he was sure the old man’s must have done when the guard stopped his cart and asked him what he was carrying out of the country. He knew he must have had to call up all his strength to force his voice into steadiness.
    And then the good monks! He had to stop to explain what a monk was, and when he described the solitude of the ancient monastery, and its walled gardens full of flowers and old simples to be used for healing, and the wise monks walking in the silence and the sun, the boys stared a little helplessly, but still as if they were vaguely pleased by the picture.
    And then there was no more to tell – no more. There it broke off, and