On the day of the baptism, neither the gentle tinkling sound, nor the sweet perfume, which had heretofore announced her presence, were perceptible.

That she had not deserted the ducal house altogether was shown by the fact that the lock on the temple of the first-born twined itself into a perfect curl.

The lock on the left temple of the second son remained brown, and not a sign of grey could be discovered even with a magnifying glass.

The heart of the young mother was filled with alarm, and she called the old nurse who had taken care of her dead husband when he was a baby, to ask her what had happened at his baptism, and the old woman burst into tears, and ended by betraying the gloomy forecasts of the Astrologer and wise men.

That a Greylock should go through life without the white curl was unheard of, was awful! And the old nurse called the poor little creature, "an ill-starred child, a dear pitiable princeling." Then the mother recalled her last dream, in which she had seen a dragon attack her youngest boy.