Meanwhile the good Earl of Kent had returned in disguise, and dressed like a serving-man, and calling himself Caius, had become the king's attendant. Lear now sent his servant Caius with letters to his daughter, that she might be prepared to receive him, while he and his train followed after. But it seems that Gonerill had been beforehand with him, sending letters also to Regan, advising her not to receive so great a train as he was bringing with him. When Lear arrived and made inquiry for his daughter and her husband, he was told that they were weary with traveling all night, and could not see him. The old king was very angry, and insisted that they should see him. They therefore came to greet him, and who should he see in their company but the hated Gonerill, who had come to tell her own story, and set her sister against the king her father! Lear was mistaken in expecting kinder treatment of Regan than he had received from her sister Gonerill. As if willing to outdo her sister, she declared that she thought fifty knights were too many to wait upon him; that five-and-twenty were enough. Then Lear, nigh heartbroken, turned to Gonerill, and said that he would go back with her; for her fifty doubled five-andtwenty, and so her love was twice as much as Regan's. But Gonerill excused herself, and said, what need of so many as five-andtwenty, or even ten, or five, when he might be waited upon by her servants or her sister's servants? So these two wicked daughters, as if they strove to exceed each other in cruelty to their old father who had been so good to them, by little and little would have taken away from him all his train, all that was left to show that he had once been a king! So terrible was the king's anger, and so bitterly did he feel the ingratitude of his daughters, that his wits became unsettled, and calling for his horses, he went forth into the tempest that was then raging. Alone he set out, and presently was found by his servant Caius, exposed to all the fury of the storm, on a wild, unsheltered heath. During the night the poor king became quite mad. He raved terribly against his daughters' ill-usage; and the next day the good Caius, who was, you will remember, the Earl of Kent, removed him to the castle of Dover, in order that he might be among friends. Then the faithful earl embarked for France, and hastened to the court of Cordelia. There he represented in such moving terms the pitiful condition of her royal father, and set out in such lively colors the wicked behavior of her sisters, that this good and loving child, with many tears, besought the king, her husband, that he would give her leave to embark for England with an army sufficient to subdue these daughters and their husbands, and restore the king, her father, to his throne; which being granted, she set forth, and with a royal army landed at Dover. Lear, having by some chance escaped from the guardians which the good Earl of Kent had put over him to take care of him, was found by some of Cordelia's train, wandering about the fields near Dover, in a pitiable condition, singing aloud to himself, and wearing on his head a crown, which he had made of straw, and nettles, and other wild weeds that he had picked up in the cornfields. He was brought back, and carefully tended by skillful doctors, until he was in a condition to see his daughter, who waited impatiently for his recovery with a heart full of love for her old and sorely-tried father. A tender sight it was to see the meeting between this father and daughter; to see the struggles between the joy of this poor old king at beholding again his once darling child, and the shame at receiving such kindness from her whom he had cast off for so small a fault. He fell on his knees to beg pardon of his child; and she, good lady, knelt all the while to ask a blessing of him, and told him that it did not become him to kneel, but it was her duty, for she was his child, his true child Cordelia ! And she kissed him, as she said, to kiss away all her sisters' unkindness, and said that they might be ashamed of themselves to turn their old, kind father with his white beard out into the cold air, when her enemy's dog, though it had bit her (as she prettily expressed it), should have stayed by her fire on such a night as that, and warmed himself. Then she told her father how she had come from France on purpose to bring him assistance, and how she would always be dutiful and loving to him, and that he should never leave her again. So we will leave this old king in the protection of this faithful and dear child. As for those cruel daughters, they and their husbands perished miserably, as they well deserved to do. Adapted from LAMB'S "Tales from Shakespeare." THE INCHCAPE ROCK No stir in the air, no stir in the sea, Without either sign or sound of their shock, |