and waited on him, and says, “Will yo' Grace have some o' dis or some o' dat?” and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to him. But the old man got pretty silent by and by--didn't have much to say, and didn't look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on around that duke.  He seemed to have something on his mind.  So, along in the afternoon, he says: “Looky here, Bilgewater,” he says, “I'm nation sorry for you, but you ain't the only person that's had troubles like that.” “No?” “No you ain't.  You ain't the only person that's ben snaked down wrongfully out'n a high place.” “Alas!” “No, you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth.”  And, by jings, _he_ begins to cry. “Hold!  What do you mean?” “Bilgewater, kin I trust you?” says the old man, still sort of sobbing. “To the bitter death!”  He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it, and says, “That secret of your being:  speak!” “Bilgewater, I am the late Dauphin!” You bet you, Jim and me stared this time.  Then the duke says: “You are what?” “Yes, my friend, it is too true--your eyes is lookin' at this very moment on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the Sixteen and Marry Antonette.” “You!  At your age!  No!  You mean you're the late Charlemagne; you must be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least.” “Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude.  Yes, gentlemen, you see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin', exiled, trampled-on, and sufferin' rightful King of France.” Well, he cried and took on so that me and Jim didn't know hardly what to do, we was so sorry--and so glad and proud we'd got him with us, too.  So we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort _him_. But he said it warn't no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all could do him any good; though he said it often made him feel easier and