For it was one thing to egg on a Remora to kill a Firedrake, and quite another to find the princes if they were alive, and restore them if they were dead! But the prince said he had his plan, and he stayed that night at the ambassador's.

Next morning he rose very early, before anyone else was up, that he might not have to say "Good-bye" to Lady Rosalind.

Then he flew in a moment to the old lonely castle, where nobody went for fear of ghosts, ever since the Court retired to Falkenstein.
How still it was, how deserted; not a sign of life, and yet the prince was looking everywhere _for some living thing_.

He hunted the castle through in vain, and then went out to the stable-yard; but all the dogs, of course, had been taken away, and the farmers had offered homes to the poultry.

At last, stretched at full length in a sunny place, the prince found a very old, half-blind, miserable cat.