Page:Wha Katy Did Next - Coolidge (1886).djvu/131

 old keep which has been the scene of so many tragedies, and is known as the Tower of London. Here they were shown various rooms and chapels and prisons; and among the rest the apartments where Queen Elizabeth, when a friendless young Princess, was shut up for many months by her sister, Queen Mary. Katy had read somewhere, and now told Amy, the pretty legend of the four little children who lived with their parents in the Tower, and used to play with the royal captive; and how one little boy brought her a key which he had picked up on the ground, and said, "Now you can go out when you will, lady;" and how the Lords of the Council, getting wind of it, sent for the children to question them, and frightened them and their friends almost to death, and forbade them to go near the Princess again.

A story about children always brings the past much nearer to a child, and Amy's imagination was so excited by this tale, that when they got to the darksome closet which is said to have been the prison of Sir Walter