Page:The sleeping beauty (IA sleepingbeauty00evanrich).pdf/54

 The issue of this proclamation caused a great deal of interest and excitement throughout the kingdom. All the people came out of their houses to gaze at it, for they had never seen its like before, and though very few of them knew how to read they realised that it must mean something very important. So they sent for clerks and scholars to read it to them, paying a penny apiece for the service, which pennies, the clerks and scholars, being usually extra-ordinarily needy persons, were very glad to earn. It usually took about three hours to read the proclamation and to explain it; and one must admit that it might have been expressed in fewer words. To do so, however, would not have been dignified, for this proclamation was what is called a legal instrument.

The very next day into each town and village of the kingdom the King’s officers came riding. Before them went a trumpeter who stopped at the head of each street and blew a loud call. Having thus commanded attention he marched past the houses calling in a loud voice:

“Bring out your spinning-wheels. Bring out your spinning-wheels!”

So the people brought them out, not without grumbling, for a spinning-wheel is a very useful thing to have in a house, and in those days people spun and wove their own cloth to make their clothes. But they were afraid to disobey the King’s order.

And the spinning-wheels were of all shapes and sizes, some of them new and some of them hundreds of years old, and there was hardly a house that did not possess one of some kind or another. They were all collected together and loaded into waggons and taken to the capital, where