After being called “Sir” Miles, Hendon has to force back a smile because he still is amused at what he considers to be his young friend’s gentle madness in pretending to be Prince of Wales. But as far as a title is concerned, Hendon thinks: “An empty and foolish title is mine, and yet it is something to have deserved it, for I think it is more honor to be held worthy to be a spectre-knight in his Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows, than to be held base enough to be an earl in some of the real kingdoms of this world.”
As a constable comes to take them away, and as the prince is about to resist, Hendon, playing along with the prince’s “madness,” reminds the prince that the laws are, after all, his laws: “your laws are the wholesome breath of your own royalty; shall their source resist them, yet require the branches to respect them? Apparently, one of these laws has been broken; when the king is on his throne again, can it ever grieve him to remember that when he was seemingly a private person he loyally sunk the king in the citizen and submitted to its authority?” The prince agrees with Hendon that even the king himself should obey the king’s laws. This is great wisdom for a young boy to consider and agree to.
When the woman is called to testify to the worth of the pig (the contents of the stolen bundle), she tells the judge that it is worth three shillings and eightpence. At this announcement, the judge has the court cleared. Then the judge asks if the woman is aware that if the pig is indeed worth that much, the young lad must hang for his crime, for it is the law of the land that if someone steals property worth more than “thirteen pence ha’penny,” one must hang. Immediately, the woman is horrified at the idea of so young a person being hanged, and she announces that the pig is worth only eight pence, in reality. As she is leaving, the constable offers to buy the pig for the eight pence. When she refuses, he blackmails her by threatening her with perjury—punishable by death. She then lets the corrupt constable have the pig for eight pence. In the meantime, Hendon has been concealed, listening to the entire transaction. The judge then gives the prince a short lecture and sentences him to a minor jail sentence, to be followed by a public flogging. As the prince is about to resist, Hendon steps forward and stays his young friend’s objections. As the constable is leading the prince off to jail, Hendon asks for a word with the official; Hendon asks the constable to allow the boy to escape. The constable balks indignantly, of course, until Hendon tells him that he witnessed the constable’s blackmailing the woman and getting her pig for only eight pence.
The constable maintains that he was only “jesting” with the woman, but Hendon threatens to consult the judge about the penalty for such “jesting.” The constable despairs; he is well aware that the judge does not allow such abuses of the law. Hendon explains, furthermore, that such a crime is called Non compos mentis lex talionis sic transit gloria Mundi—legalistic Latin claptrap, of course, a favorite comic device of Twain. Furthermore, says Hendon, the punishment for such “jesting” is death—“death by the halter, without ransom, commutation or benefit of clergy.”
The constable is horrified and promises to “turn [his] back” while the young boy escapes. In fact, he will even spend the night battering down a door to make it seem as if the lad escaped; that way, the judge won’t mind because “the judge hath a loving charity for this poor lad.”
