THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE HEMPSEED. 27

 

 

 

 

ing towards the happy island where the guests were
expected. On board the boats there were musicians whose
songs united in sweet melody, and youths who strewed the
track of each boat with flowers. Livery moment one or
another of those barges touched the island; and the noble
guests of Prince Orfano-Orfana stepped upon the soft lawns
and the golden sands that were spread around the hospitable
castle.

The tutor Doubtless was the person charged by the
prince to inform Hempseed that he was not to be present
at that brilliant feast.

Such was the severe manner in which his father pun-
ished him.

It would be an untruth to say that Prince Hempseed
received this sad news without sorrow. He loved his father
and mother too much, and was too anxious to preserve their
affection and merit their good opinion, to treat this punish-
ment lightly. He did not therefore conceal from his tutor
his sorrow, his distress, and his tears.

At the same time, when he remembered the cause which
had driven him in an unguarded moment to treat his sister
Olympia harshly, he felt that he was more deserving of pity
than blame. He was sorry for having offended her, and
for having provoked his father’s anger; but he thought also
that his sister should not have been so thoughtless, hard-
hearted, and unkind in respect to poor birds at the point of