When the King clapped his hands twice, in rushed twenty-four armed guards. "Bind me this dog!" quoth the King, pointing to the Prince. "Is this the way you treat a stranger?" cried the Prince. "Aye," said the King, merrily. "We will treat you royally! You are tired. So tonight and tomorrow you shall be lodged and feasted daintily. The day after, we will have a celebration -- when you shall be beaten with sticks, and shall fight a tiger, and be tossed by a bull, and be bowstrung, and beheaded, and drawn and quartered . . . and we will have the nicest time!" American humorist novelist Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902) wrote novels including the popular Rudder Grange -- yet it may have been in his delightful works for children that he struck his happiest literary notes.