initial commit of ebook 709HEADmain

2 files changed, 6466 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/prcur10.txt b/old/prcur10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b85697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/prcur10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6466 @@
+*****The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Princess and Curdie*****
+#4 in our series by George MacDonald
+
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.  Do not remove this.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+
+The Princess and Curdie
+
+by George MacDonald
+
+November, 1996  [Etext #709]
+
+
+*****The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Princess and Curdie*****
+******This file should be named prcur10.txt or prcur10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, prcur11.txt.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, prcur10a.txt.
+
+This etext was created by Jo Churcher, Scarborough, Ontario
+(jchurche@io.org)
+
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
+of the official release dates, for time for better editing.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.  To be sure you have an
+up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
+in the first week of the next month.  Since our ftp program has
+a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
+look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
+new copy has at least one byte more or less.
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text
+files per month:  or 400 more Etexts in 1996 for a total of 800.
+If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
+total should reach 80 billion Etexts.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by the December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only 10% of the present number of computer users.  2001
+should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it
+will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001.
+
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+
+All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/BU":  and are
+tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (BU = Benedictine
+University).  (Subscriptions to our paper newsletter go to BU.)
+
+For these and other matters, please mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg
+P. O. Box  2782
+Champaign, IL 61825
+
+When all other email fails try our Executive Director:
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email
+(Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail).
+
+******
+If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please
+FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives:
+[Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type]
+
+ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu
+login:  anonymous
+password:  your@login
+cd etext/etext90 through /etext96
+or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information]
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET INDEX?00.GUT
+for a list of books
+and
+GET NEW GUT for general information
+and
+MGET GUT* for newsletters.
+
+**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
+(Three Pages)
+
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
+tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
+Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
+Benedictine University (the "Project").  Among other
+things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
+     cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     net profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Association / Benedictine
+     University" within the 60 days following each
+     date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
+     your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
+scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
+free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
+you can think of.  Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
+Association / Benedictine University".
+
+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+The Princess and Curdie
+
+by George MacDonald
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+1 The Mountain
+2 The White Pigeon
+3 The Mistress of the Silver Moon
+4 Curdie's Father and Mother
+5 The Miners
+6 The Emerald
+7 What Is in a Name?
+8 Curdie's Mission
+9 Hands
+10 The Heath
+11 Lina
+12 More Creatures
+13 The Baker's Wife
+14 The Dogs of Gwyntystorm
+15 Derba and Barbara
+16 The Mattock
+17 The Wine Cellar
+18 The King's Kitchen
+19 The King's Chamber
+20 Counterplotting
+21 The Loaf
+22 The Lord Chamberlain
+23 Dr Kelman
+24 The Prophecy
+25 The Avengers
+26 The Vengeance
+27 More Vengeance
+28 The Preacher
+29 Barbara
+30 Peter
+31 The Sacrifice
+32 The King's Army
+33 The Battle
+34 Judgement
+35 The End
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1
+The Mountain
+
+
+Curdie was the son of Peter the miner.  He lived with his father
+and mother in a cottage built on a mountain, and he worked with his
+father inside the mountain.
+
+A mountain is a strange and awful thing.  In old times, without
+knowing so much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people
+were yet more afraid of mountains.  But then somehow they had not
+come to see how beautiful they are as well as awful, and they hated
+them - and what people hate they must fear.  Now that we have
+learned to look at them with admiration, perhaps we do not feel
+quite awe enough of them.  To me they are beautiful terrors.
+
+I will try to tell you what they are.  They are portions of the
+heart of the earth that have escaped from the dungeon down below,
+and rushed up and out.  For the heart of the earth is a great
+wallowing mass, not of blood, as in the hearts of men and animals,
+but of glowing hot, melted metals and stones.  And as our hearts
+keep us alive, so that great lump of heat keeps the earth alive: it
+is a huge power of buried sunlight - that is what it is.
+
+Now think: out of that cauldron, where all the bubbles would be as
+big as the Alps if it could get room for its boiling, certain
+bubbles have bubbled out and escaped - up and away, and there they
+stand in the cool, cold sky - mountains.  Think of the change, and
+you will no more wonder that there should be something awful about
+the very look of a mountain: from the darkness - for where the
+light has nothing to shine upon, much the same as darkness - from
+the heat, from the endless tumult of boiling unrest - up, with a
+sudden heavenward shoot, into the wind, and the cold, and the
+starshine, and a cloak of snow that lies like ermine above the
+blue-green mail of the glaciers; and the great sun, their
+grandfather, up there in the sky; and their little old cold aunt,
+the moon, that comes wandering about the house at night; and
+everlasting stillness, except for the wind that turns the rocks and
+caverns into a roaring organ for the young archangels that are
+studying how to let out the pent-up praises of their hearts, and
+the molten music of the streams, rushing ever from the bosoms of
+the glaciers fresh born.
+
+Think, too, of the change in their own substance - no longer molten
+and soft, heaving and glowing, but hard and shining and cold. 
+Think of the creatures scampering over and burrowing in it, and the
+birds building their nests upon it, and the trees growing out of
+its sides, like hair to clothe it, and the lovely grass in the
+valleys, and the gracious flowers even at the very edge of its
+armour of ice, like the rich embroidery of the garment below, and
+the rivers galloping down the valleys in a tumult of white and
+green!  And along with all these, think of the terrible precipices
+down which the traveller may fall and be lost, and the frightful
+gulfs of blue air cracked in the glaciers, and the dark profound
+lakes, covered like little arctic oceans with floating lumps of
+ice.
+
+All this outside the mountain!  But the inside, who shall tell what
+lies there?  Caverns of awfullest solitude, their walls miles
+thick, sparkling with ores of gold or silver, copper or iron, tin
+or mercury, studded perhaps with precious stones - perhaps a brook,
+with eyeless fish in it, running, running ceaselessly, cold and
+babbling, through banks crusted with carbuncles and golden topazes,
+or over a gravel of which some of the stones arc rubies and
+emeralds, perhaps diamonds and sapphires - who can tell? - and
+whoever can't tell is free to think - all waiting to flash, waiting
+for millions of ages - ever since the earth flew off from the sun,
+a great blot of fire, and began to cool.
+
+Then there are caverns full of water, numbingly cold, fiercely hot
+- hotter than any boiling water.  From some of these the water
+cannot get out, and from others it runs in channels as the blood in
+the body: little veins bring it down from the ice above into the
+great caverns of the mountain's heart, whence the arteries let it
+out again, gushing in pipes and clefts and ducts of all shapes and
+kinds, through and through its bulk, until it springs newborn to
+the light, and rushes down the Mountainside in torrents, and down
+the valleys in rivers - down, down, rejoicing, to the mighty lungs
+of the world, that is the sea, where it is tossed in storms and
+cyclones, heaved up in billows, twisted in waterspouts, dashed to
+mist upon rocks, beaten by millions of tails, and breathed by
+millions of gills, whence at last, melted into vapour by the sun,
+it is lifted up pure into the air, and borne by the servant winds
+back to the mountaintops and the snow, the solid ice, and the
+molten stream.
+
+Well, when the heart of the earth has thus come rushing up among
+her children, bringing with it gifts of all that she possesses,
+then straightway into it rush her children to see what they can
+find there.  With pickaxe and spade and crowbar, with boring chisel
+and blasting powder, they force their way back: is it to search for
+what toys they may have left in their long-forgotten nurseries?
+Hence the mountains that lift their heads into the clear air, and
+are dotted over with the dwellings of men, are tunnelled and bored
+in the darkness of their bosoms by the dwellers in the houses which
+they hold up to the sun and air.
+
+Curdie and his father were of these: their business was to bring to
+light hidden things; they sought silver in the rock and found it,
+and carried it out.  Of the many other precious things in their
+mountain they knew little or nothing.  Silver ore was what they
+were sent to find, and in darkness and danger they found it.  But
+oh, how sweet was the air on the mountain face when they came out
+at sunset to go home to wife and mother!  They did breathe deep
+then!
+
+The mines belonged to the king of the country, and the miners were
+his servants, working under his overseers and officers.  He was a
+real king - that is, one who ruled for the good of his people and
+not to please himself, and he wanted the silver not to buy rich
+things for himself, but to help him to govern the country, and pay
+the ones that defended it from certain troublesome neighbours, and
+the judges whom he set to portion out righteousness among the
+people, that so they might learn it themselves, and come to do
+without judges at all.  Nothing that could be got from the heart of
+the earth could have been put to better purposes than the silver
+the king's miners got for him.  There were people in the country
+who, when it came into their hands, degraded it by locking it up in
+a chest, and then it grew diseased and was called mammon, and bred
+all sorts of quarrels; but when first it left the king's hands it
+never made any but friends, and the air of the world kept it clean.
+
+About a year before this story began, a series of very remarkable
+events had just ended.  I will narrate as much of them as will
+serve to show the tops of the roots of my tree.
+
+Upon the mountain, on one of its many claws, stood a grand old
+house, half farmhouse, half castle, belonging to the king; and
+there his only child, the Princess Irene, had been brought up till
+she was nearly nine years old, and would doubtless have continued
+much longer, but for the strange events to which I have referred.
+
+At that time the hollow places of the mountain were inhabited by
+creatures called goblins, who for various reasons and in various
+ways made themselves troublesome to all, but to the little princess
+dangerous.  Mainly by the watchful devotion and energy of Curdie,
+however, their designs had been utterly defeated, and made to
+recoil upon themselves to their own destruction, so that now there
+were very few of them left alive, and the miners did not believe
+there was a single goblin remaining in the whole inside of the
+mountain.
+
+The king had been so pleased with the boy - then approaching
+thirteen years of age - that when he carried away his daughter he
+asked him to accompany them; but he was still better pleased with
+him when he found that he preferred staying with his father and
+mother.  He was a right good king and knew that the love of a boy
+who would not leave his father and mother to be made a great man
+was worth ten thousand offers to die for his sake, and would prove
+so when the right time came.  As for his father and mother, they
+would have given him up without a grumble, for they were just as
+good as the king, and he and they understood each other perfectly;
+but in this matter, not seeing that he could do anything for the
+king which one of his numerous attendants could not do as well,
+Curdie felt that it was for him to decide.  So the king took a kind
+farewell of them all and rode away, with his daughter on his horse
+before him.
+
+A gloom fell upon the mountain and the miners when she was gone,
+and Curdie did not whistle for a whole week.  As for his verses,
+there was no occasion to make any now.  He had made them only to
+drive away the goblins, and they were all gone - a good riddance -
+only the princess was gone too!  He would rather have had things as
+they were, except for the princess's sake.  But whoever is diligent
+will soon be cheerful, and though the miners missed the household
+of the castle, they yet managed to get on without them.
+Peter and his wife, however, were troubled with the fancy that they
+had stood in the way of their boy's good fortune.  it would have
+been such a fine thing for him and them, too, they thought, if he
+had ridden with the good king's train.  How beautiful he looked,
+they said, when he rode the king's own horse through the river that
+the goblins had sent out of the hill!  He might soon have been a
+captain, they did believe!  The good, kind people did not reflect
+that the road to the next duty is the only straight one, or that,
+for their fancied good, we should never wish our children or
+friends to do what we would not do ourselves if we were in their
+position.  We must accept righteous sacrifices as well as make
+them.
+
+
+CHAPTER 2
+The White Pigeon
+
+When in the winter they had had their supper and sat about the
+fire, or when in the summer they lay on the border of the
+rock-margined stream that ran through their little meadow close by
+the door of their cottage, issuing from the far-up whiteness often
+folded in clouds, Curdie's mother would not seldom lead the
+conversation to one peculiar personage said and believed to have
+been much concerned in the late issue of events.
+
+That personage was the great-great-grandmother of the princess, of
+whom the princess had often talked, but whom neither Curdie nor his
+mother had ever seen.  Curdie could indeed remember, although
+already it looked more like a dream than he could account for if it
+had really taken place, how the princess had once led him up many
+stairs to what she called a beautiful room in the top of the tower,
+where she went through all the - what should he call it? - the
+behaviour of presenting him to her grandmother, talking now to her
+and now to him, while all the time he saw nothing but a bare
+garret, a heap of musty straw, a sunbeam, and a withered apple. 
+Lady, he would have declared before the king himself, young or old,
+there was none, except the princess herself, who was certainly
+vexed that he could not see what she at least believed she saw.
+
+As for his mother, she had once seen, long before Curdie was born,
+a certain mysterious light of the same description as one Irene
+spoke of, calling it her grandmother's moon; and Curdie himself had
+seen this same light, shining from above the castle, just as the
+king and princess were taking their leave.  Since that time neither
+had seen or heard anything that could be supposed connected with
+her.  Strangely enough, however, nobody had seen her go away.  if
+she was such an old lady, she could hardly be supposed to have set
+out alone and on foot when all the house was asleep.  Still, away
+she must have gone, for, of course, if she was so powerful, she
+would always be about the princess to take care of her.
+
+But as Curdie grew older, he doubted more and more whether Irene
+had not been talking of some dream she had taken for reality: he
+had heard it said that children could not always distinguish
+betwixt dreams and actual events.  At the same time there was his
+mother's testimony: what was he to do with that?  His mother,
+through whom he had learned everything, could hardly be imagined by
+her own dutiful son to have mistaken a dream for a fact of the
+waking world.
+
+So he rather shrank from thinking about it, and the less he thought
+about it, the less he was inclined to believe it when he did think
+about it, and therefore, of course, the less inclined to talk about
+it to his father and mother; for although his father was one of
+those men who for one word they say think twenty thoughts, Curdie
+was well assured that he would rather doubt his own eyes than his
+wife's testimony.
+
+There were no others to whom he could have talked about it.  The
+miners were a mingled company - some good, some not so good, some
+rather bad - none of them so bad or so good as they might have
+been; Curdie liked most of them, and was a favourite with all; but
+they knew very little about the upper world, and what might or
+might not take place there.  They knew silver from copper ore; they
+understood the underground ways of things, and they could look very
+wise with their lanterns in their hands searching after this or
+that sign of ore, or for some mark to guide their way in the
+hollows of the earth; but as to great-great-grandmothers, they
+would have mocked Curdie all the rest of his life for the absurdity
+of not being absolutely certain that the solemn belief of his
+father and mother was nothing but ridiculous nonsense.  Why, to
+them the very word 'great-great-grandmother' would have been a
+week's laughter!  I am not sure that they were able quite to
+believe there were such persons as great-great-grandmothers; they
+had never seen one.  They were not companions to give the best of
+help toward progress, and as Curdie grew, he grew at this time
+faster in body than in mind - with the usual consequence, that he
+was getting rather stupid - one of the chief signs of which was
+that he believed less and less in things he had never seen.  At the
+same time I do not think he was ever so stupid as to imagine that
+this was a sign of superior faculty and strength of mind.  Still,
+he was becoming more and more a miner, and less and less a man of
+the upper world where the wind blew.  On his way to and from the
+mine he took less and less notice of bees and butterflies, moths
+and dragonflies, the flowers and the brooks and the clouds.  He was
+gradually changing into a commonplace man.
+
+There is this difference between the growth of some human beings
+and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in
+the other a continuous resurrection.  One of the latter sort comes
+at length to know at once whether a thing is true the moment it
+comes before him; one of the former class grows more and more
+afraid of being taken in, so afraid of it that he takes himself in
+altogether, and comes at length to believe in nothing but his
+dinner: to be sure of a thing with him is to have it between his
+teeth.
+
+Curdie was not in a very good way, then, at that time.  His father
+and mother had, it is true, no fault to find with him and yet - and
+yet - neither of them was ready to sing when the thought of him
+came up.  There must be something wrong when a mother catches
+herself sighing over the time when her boy was in petticoats, or a
+father looks sad when he thinks how he used to carry him on his
+shoulder.  The boy should enclose and keep, as his life, the old
+child at the heart of him, and never let it go.  He must still, to
+be a right man, be his mother's darling, and more, his father's
+pride, and more.  The child is not meant to die, but to be forever
+fresh born.
+
+Curdie had made himself a bow and some arrows, and was teaching
+himself to shoot with them.  One evening in the early summer, as he
+was walking home from the mine with them in his hand, a light
+flashed across his eyes.  He looked, and there was a snow-white
+pigeon settling on a rock in front of him, in the red light of the
+level sun.  There it fell at once to work with one of its wings, in
+which a feather or two had got some sprays twisted, causing a
+certain roughness unpleasant to the fastidious creature of the air.
+
+It was indeed a lovely being, and Curdie thought how happy it must
+be flitting through the air with a flash - a live bolt of light. 
+For a moment he became so one with the bird that he seemed to feel
+both its bill and its feathers, as the one adjusted the other to
+fly again, and his heart swelled with the pleasure of its
+involuntary sympathy.  Another moment and it would have been aloft
+in the waves of rosy light - it was just bending its little legs to
+spring: that moment it fell on the path broken-winged and bleeding
+from Curdie's cruel arrow.
+
+With a gush of pride at his skill, and pleasure at his success, he
+ran to pick up his prey.  I must say for him he picked it up gently
+- perhaps it was the beginning of his repentance.  But when he had
+the white thing in his hands its whiteness stained with another red
+than that of the sunset flood in which it had been revelling - ah
+God! who knows the joy of a bird, the ecstasy of a creature that
+has neither storehouse nor barn! - when he held it, I say, in his
+victorious hands, the winged thing looked up in his face - and with
+such eyes! - asking what was the matter, and where the red sun had
+gone, and the clouds, and the wind of its flight.  Then they
+closed, but to open again presently, with the same questions in
+them.
+
+And as they closed and opened, their look was fixed on his.  It did
+not once flutter or try to get away; it only throbbed and bled and
+looked at him.  Curdie's heart began to grow very large in his
+bosom.  What could it mean?  It was nothing but a pigeon, and why
+should he not kill a pigeon?  But the fact was that not till this
+very moment had he ever known what a pigeon was.  A good many
+discoveries of a similar kind have to be made by most of us.  Once
+more it opened its eyes - then closed them again, and its throbbing
+ceased.  Curdie gave a sob: its last look reminded him of the
+princess - he did not know why.  He remembered how hard he had
+laboured to set her beyond danger, and yet what dangers she had had
+to encounter for his sake: they had been saviours to each other -
+and what had he done now?  He had stopped saving, and had begun
+killing!  What had he been sent into the world for?  Surely not to
+be a death to its joy and loveliness.  He had done the thing that
+was contrary to gladness; he was a destroyer!  He was not the
+Curdie he had been meant to be!
+
+Then the underground waters gushed from the boy's heart.  And with
+the tears came the remembrance that a white pigeon, just before the
+princess went away with her father, came from somewhere - yes, from
+the grandmother's lamp, and flew round the king and Irene and
+himself, and then flew away: this might be that very pigeon!
+Horrible to think!  And if it wasn't, yet it was a white pigeon,
+the same as this.  And if she kept a great Many pigeons - and white
+ones, as Irene had told him, then whose pigeon could he have killed
+but the grand old princess's?
+Suddenly everything round about him seemed against him.  The red
+sunset stung him; the rocks frowned at him; the sweet wind that had
+been laving his face as he walked up the hill dropped - as if he
+wasn't fit to be kissed any more.  Was the whole world going to
+cast him out?  Would he have to stand there forever, not knowing
+what to do, with the dead pigeon in his hand?  Things looked bad
+indeed.  Was the whole world going to make a work about a pigeon -
+a white pigeon?  The sun went down.  Great clouds gathered over the
+west, and shortened the twilight.  The wind gave a howl, and then
+lay down again.  The clouds gathered thicker.  Then came a
+rumbling.  He thought it was thunder.  It was a rock that fell
+inside the mountain.  A goat ran past him down the hill, followed
+by a dog sent to fetch him home.  He thought they were goblin
+creatures, and trembled.  He used to despise them.  And still he
+held the dead pigeon tenderly in his hand.
+
+It grew darker and darker.  An evil something began to move in his
+heart.  'What a fool I am!' he said to himself.  Then he grew
+angry, and was just going to throw the bird from him and whistle,
+when a brightness shone all round him.  He lifted his eyes, and saw
+a great globe of light - like silver at the hottest heat: he had
+once seen silver run from the furnace.  It shone from somewhere
+above the roofs of the castle: it must be the great old princess's
+moon!  How could she be there?  Of course she was not there!  He
+had asked the whole household, and nobody knew anything about her
+or her globe either.  it couldn't be!  And yet what did that
+signify, when there was the white globe shining, and here was the
+dead white bird in his hand?  That moment the pigeon gave a little
+flutter.  'It's not dead!' cried Curdie, almost with a shriek.  The
+same instant he was running full speed toward the castle, never
+letting his heels down, lest he should shake the poor, wounded
+bird.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3
+The Mistress of the Silver Moon
+
+
+When Curdie reached the castle, and ran into the little garden in
+front of it, there stood the door wide open.  This was as he had
+hoped, for what could he have said if he had had to knock at it?
+Those whose business it is to open doors, so often mistake and shut
+them!  But the woman now in charge often puzzled herself greatly to
+account for the strange fact that however often she shut the door,
+which, like the rest, she took a great deal of unnecessary trouble
+to do, she was certain, the next time she went to it, to find it
+open.  I speak now of the great front door, of course: the back
+door she as persistently kept wide: if people could only go in by
+that, she said, she would then know what sort they were, and what
+they wanted.  But she would neither have known what sort Curdie
+was, nor what he wanted, and would assuredly have denied him
+admittance, for she knew nothing of who was in the tower.  So the
+front door was left open for him, and in he walked.
+But where to go next he could not tell.  It was not quite dark: a
+dull, shineless twilight filled the place.  All he knew was that he
+must go up, and that proved enough for the present, for there he
+saw the great staircase rising before him.  When he reached the top
+of it, he knew there must be more stairs yet, for he could not be
+near the top of the tower.  Indeed by the situation of the stairs,
+he must be a good way from the tower itself.  But those who work
+well in the depths more easily understand the heights, for indeed
+in their true nature they are one and the same; miners are in
+mountains; and Curdie, from knowing the ways of the king's mines,
+and being able to calculate his whereabouts in them, was now able
+to find his way about the king's house.  He knew its outside
+perfectly, and now his business was to get his notion of the inside
+right with the outside.
+
+So he shut his eyes and made a picture of the outside of it in his
+mind.  Then he came in at the door of the picture, and yet kept the
+picture before him all the time - for you can do that kind of thing
+in your mind - and took every turn of the stair over again, always
+watching to remember, every time he turned his face, how the tower
+lay, and then when he came to himself at the top where he stood, he
+knew exactly where it was, and walked at once in the right
+direction.
+
+On his way, however, he came to another stair, and up that he went,
+of course, watching still at every turn how the tower must lie.  At
+the top of this stair was yet another - they were the stairs up
+which the princess ran when first, without knowing it, she was on
+her way to find her great-great-grandmother.  At the top of the
+second stair he could go no farther, and must therefore set out
+again to find the tower, which, as it rose far above the rest of
+the house, must have the last of its stairs inside itself.
+
+Having watched every turn to the very last, he still knew quite
+well in what direction he must go to find it, so he left the stair
+and went down a passage that led, if not exactly toward it, yet
+nearer it.  This passage was rather dark, for it was very long,
+with only one window at the end, and although there were doors on
+both sides of it, they were all shut.  At the distant window
+glimmered the chill east, with a few feeble stars in it, and its
+like was dreary and old, growing brown, and looking as if it were
+thinking about the day that was just gone.  Presently he turned
+into another passage, which also had a window at the end of it; and
+in at that window shone all that was left of the sunset, just a few
+ashes, with here and there a little touch of warmth: it was nearly
+as sad as the east, only there was one difference - it was very
+plainly thinking of tomorrow.
+
+But at present Curdie had nothing to do with today or tomorrow; his
+business was with the bird, and the tower where dwelt the grand old
+princess to whom it belonged.  So he kept on his way, still
+eastward, and came to yet another passage, which brought him to a
+door.  He was afraid to open it without first knocking.  He
+knocked, but heard no answer.  He was answered nevertheless; for
+the door gently opened, and there was a narrow stair - and so steep
+that, big lad as he was, he, too, like the Princess Irene before
+him, found his hands needful for the climbing.  And it was a long
+climb, but he reached the top at last - a little landing, with a
+door in front and one on each side.  Which should he knock at?
+
+As he hesitated, he heard the noise of a spinning wheel.  He knew
+it at once, because his mother's spinning wheel had been his
+governess long ago, and still taught him things.  It was the
+spinning wheel that first taught him to make verses, and to sing,
+and to think whether all was right inside him; or at least it had
+helped him in all these things.  Hence it was no wonder he should
+know a spinning wheel when he heard it sing - even although as the
+bird of paradise to other birds was the song of that wheel to the
+song of his mother's.
+
+He stood listening, so entranced that he forgot to knock, and the
+wheel went on and on, spinning in his brain songs and tales and
+rhymes, till he was almost asleep as well as dreaming, for sleep
+does not always come first.  But suddenly came the thought of the
+poor bird, which had been lying motionless in his hand all the
+time, and that woke him up, and at once he knocked.
+
+'Come in, Curdie,' said a voice.
+
+Curdie shook.  It was getting rather awful.  The heart that had
+never much heeded an army of goblins trembled at the soft word of
+invitation.  But then there was the red-spotted white thing in his
+hand!  He dared not hesitate, though.  Gently he opened the door
+through which the sound came, and what did he see?  Nothing at
+first - except indeed a great sloping shaft of moonlight that came
+in at a high window, and rested on the floor.  He stood and stared
+at it, forgetting to shut the door.
+
+'Why don't you come in, Curdie?' said the voice.  'Did you never
+see moonlight before?'
+
+'Never without a moon,' answered Curdie, in a trembling tone, but
+gathering courage.
+
+'Certainly not,' returned the voice, which was thin and quavering:
+'I never saw moonlight without a moon.'
+
+'But there's no moon outside,' said Curdie.
+
+'Ah! but you're inside now,' said the voice.
+
+The answer did not satisfy Curdie; but the voice went on.
+
+'There are more moons than you know of, Curdie.  Where there is one
+sun there are many moons - and of many sorts.  Come in and look out
+of my window, and you will soon satisfy yourself that there is a
+moon looking in at it.'
+
+The gentleness of the voice made Curdie remember his manners.  He
+shut the door, and drew a step or two nearer to the moonlight.
+
+All the time the sound of the spinning had been going on and on,
+and Curdie now caught sight of the wheel.  Oh, it was such a thin,
+delicate thing - reminding him of a spider's web in a hedge.  It
+stood in the middle of the moonlight, and it seemed as if the
+moonlight had nearly melted it away.  A step nearer, he saw, with
+a start, two little hands at work with it.  And then at last, in
+the shadow on the other side of the moonlight which came like
+silver between, he saw the form to which the hands belonged: a
+small withered creature, so old that no age would have seemed too
+great to write under her picture, seated on a stool beyond the
+spinning wheel, which looked very large beside her, but, as I said,
+very thin, like a long-legged spider holding up its own web, which
+was the round wheel itself She sat crumpled together, a filmy thing
+that it seemed a puff would blow away, more like the body of a fly
+the big spider had sucked empty and left hanging in his web, than
+anything else I can think of.
+
+When Curdie saw her, he stood still again, a good deal in wonder,
+a very little in reverence, a little in doubt, and, I must add, a
+little in amusement at the odd look of the old marvel.  Her grey
+hair mixed with the moonlight so that he could not tell where the
+one began and the other ended.  Her crooked back bent forward over
+her chest, her shoulders nearly swallowed up her head between them,
+and her two little hands were just like the grey claws of a hen,
+scratching at the thread, which to Curdie was of course invisible
+across the moonlight.  Indeed Curdie laughed within himself, just
+a little, at the sight; and when he thought of how the princess
+used to talk about her huge, great, old grandmother, he laughed
+more.  But that moment the little lady leaned forward into the
+moonlight, and Curdie caught a glimpse of her eyes, and all the
+laugh went out of him.
+
+'What do you come here for, Curdie?' she said, as gently as before.
+
+Then Curdie remembered that he stood there as a culprit, and worst
+of all, as one who had his confession yet to make.  There was no
+time to hesitate over it.
+
+'Oh, ma'am!  See here,' he said, and advanced a step or two,
+holding out the pigeon.
+
+'What have you got there?' she asked.
+
+Again Curdie advanced a few steps, and held out his hand with the
+pigeon, that she might see what it was, into the moonlight.  The
+moment the rays fell upon it the pigeon gave a faint flutter.  The
+old lady put out her old hands and took it, and held it to her
+bosom, and rocked it, murmuring over it as if it were a sick baby.
+
+When Curdie saw how distressed she was he grew sorrier still, and
+said:
+'I didn't mean to do any harm, ma'am.  I didn't think of its being
+yours.'
+
+'Ah, Curdie!  If it weren't mine, what would become of it now?' she
+returned.  'You say you didn't mean any harm: did you mean any
+good, Curdie?'
+
+'No,' answered Curdie.
+
+'Remember, then, that whoever does not mean good is always in
+danger of harm.  But I try to give everybody fair play; and those
+that are in the wrong are in far more need of it always than those
+who are in the right: they can afford to do without it.  Therefore
+I say for you that when you shot that arrow you did not know what
+a pigeon is.  Now that you do know, you are sorry.  It is very
+dangerous to do things you don't know about.'
+
+'But, please, ma'am - I don't mean to be rude or to contradict
+you,' said Curdie, 'but if a body was never to do anything but what
+he knew to be good, he would have to live half his time doing
+nothing.'
+
+'There you are much mistaken,' said the old quavering voice.  'How
+little you must have thought!  Why, you don't seem even to know the
+good of the things you are constantly doing.  Now don't mistake me. 
+I don't mean you are good for doing them.  It is a good thing to
+eat your breakfast, but you don't fancy it's very good of you to do
+it.  The thing is good, not you.'
+
+Curdie laughed.
+
+'There are a great many more good things than bad things to do. 
+Now tell me what bad thing you have done today besides this sore
+hurt to my little white friend.'
+While she talked Curdie had sunk into a sort of reverie, in which
+he hardly knew whether it was the old lady or his own heart that
+spoke.  And when she asked him that question, he was at first much
+inclined to consider himself a very good fellow on the whole.  'I
+really don't think I did anything else that was very bad all day,'
+he said to himself.  But at the same time he could not honestly
+feel that he was worth standing up for.  All at once a light seemed
+to break in upon his mind, and he woke up and there was the
+withered little atomy of the old lady on the other side of the
+moonlight, and there was the spinning wheel singing on and on in
+the middle of it!
+
+'I know now, ma'am; I understand now,' he said.  'Thank you, ma'am,
+for spinning it into me with your wheel.  I see now that I have
+been doing wrong the whole day, and such a many days besides!
+Indeed, I don't know when I ever did right, and yet it seems as if
+I had done right some time and had forgotten how.  When I killed
+your bird I did not know I was doing wrong, just because I was
+always doing wrong, and the wrong had soaked all through me.'
+
+'What wrong were you doing all day, Curdie?  It is better to come
+to the point, you know,' said the old lady, and her voice was
+gentler even than before.
+
+'I was doing the wrong of never wanting or trying to be better. 
+And now I see that I have been letting things go as they would for
+a long time.  Whatever came into my head I did, and whatever didn't
+come into my head I didn't do.  I never sent anything away, and
+never looked out for anything to come.  I haven't been attending to
+my mother - or my father either.  And now I think of it, I know I
+have often seen them looking troubled, and I have never asked them
+what was the matter.  And now I see, too, that I did not ask
+because I suspected it had something to do with me and my
+behaviour, and didn't want to hear the truth.  And I know I have
+been grumbling at my work, and doing a hundred other things that
+are wrong.'
+
+'You have got it, Curdie,' said the old lady, in a voice that
+sounded almost as if she had been crying.  'When people don't care
+to be better they must be doing everything wrong.  I am so glad you
+shot my bird!'
+
+'Ma'am!' exclaimed Curdie.  'How can you be?'
+
+'Because it has brought you to see what sort you were when you did
+it, and what sort you will grow to be again, only worse, if you
+don't mind.  Now that you are sorry, my poor bird will be better. 
+Look up, my dovey.'
+
+The pigeon gave a flutter, and spread out one of its red-spotted
+wings across the old woman's bosom.
+
+'I will mend the little angel,' she said, 'and in a week or two it
+will be flying again.  So you may ease your heart about the
+pigeon.'
+
+'Oh, thank you!  Thank you!' cried Curdie.  'I don't know how to
+thank you.'
+
+'Then I will tell you.  There is only one way I care for.  Do
+better, and grow better, and be better.  And never kill anything
+without a good reason for it.'
+
+'Ma'am, I will go and fetch my bow and arrows, and you shall burn
+them yourself.'
+
+'I have no fire that would burn your bow and arrows, Curdie.'
+
+'Then I promise you to burn them all under my mother's porridge pot
+tomorrow morning.'
+
+'No, no, Curdie.  Keep them, and practice with them every day, and
+grow a good shot.  There are plenty of bad things that want
+killing, and a day will come when they will prove useful.  But I
+must see first whether you will do as I tell you.'
+
+'That I will!' said Curdie.  'What is it, ma'am?'
+
+'Only something not to do,' answered the old lady; 'if you should
+hear anyone speak about me, never to laugh or make fun of me.'
+
+'Oh, ma'am!' exclaimed Curdie, shocked that she should think such
+a request needful.
+
+'Stop, stop,' she went on.  'People hereabout sometimes tell very
+odd and in fact ridiculous stories of an old woman who watches what
+is going on, and occasionally interferes.  They mean me, though
+what they say is often great nonsense.  Now what I want of you is
+not to laugh, or side with them in any way; because they will take
+that to mean that you don't believe there is any such person a bit
+more than they do.  Now that would not be the case - would it,
+Curdie?'
+
+'No, indeed, ma'am.  I've seen you.'
+
+The old woman smiled very oddly.
+
+'Yes, you've seen me,' she said.  'But mind,' she continued, 'I
+don't want you to say anything - only to hold your tongue, and not
+seem to side with them.'
+
+'That will be easy,'said Curdie,'now that I've seen you with my
+very own eyes, ma'am.'
+
+'Not so easy as you think, perhaps,' said the old lady, with
+another curious smile.  'I want to be your friend,' she added after
+a little pause, 'but I don't quite know yet whether you will let
+me.'
+'Indeed I will, ma'am,' said Curdie.
+
+'That is for me to find out,' she rejoined, with yet another
+strange smile.  'in the meantime all I can say is, come to me again
+when you find yourself in any trouble, and I will see what I can do
+for you - only the canning depends on yourself.  I am greatly
+pleased with you for bringing me my pigeon, doing your best to set
+right what you had set wrong.'
+
+As she spoke she held out her hand to him, and when he took it she
+made use of his to help herself up from her stool, and - when or
+how it came about, Curdie could not tell - the same instant she
+stood before him a tall, strong woman - plainly very old, but as
+grand as she was old, and only rather severe-looking.  Every trace
+of the decrepitude and witheredness she showed as she hovered like
+a film about her wheel, had vanished.  Her hair was very white, but
+it hung about her head in great plenty, and shone like silver in
+the moonlight.  Straight as a pillar she stood before the
+astonished boy, and the wounded bird had now spread out both its
+wings across her bosom, like some great mystical ornament of
+frosted silver.
+
+'Oh, now I can never forget you!' cried Curdie.  'I see now what
+you really are!'
+
+'Did I not tell you the truth when I sat at my wheel?' said the old
+lady.
+
+'Yes, ma'am,' answered Curdie.
+
+'I can do no more than tell you the truth now,' she rejoined.  'It
+is a bad thing indeed to forget one who has told us the truth.  Now
+go.'
+
+Curdie obeyed, and took a few steps toward the door.  'Please,
+ma'am - what am I to call you?' he was going to say; but when he
+turned to speak, he saw nobody.  Whether she was there or not he
+could not tell, however, for the moonlight had vanished, and the
+room was utterly dark.  A great fear, such as he had never before
+known, came upon him, and almost overwhelmed him.  He groped his
+way to the door, and crawled down the stair - in doubt and anxiety
+as to how he should find his way out of the house in the dark.  And
+the stair seemed ever so much longer than when he came up.  Nor was
+that any wonder, for down and down he went, until at length his
+foot struck a door, and when he rose and opened it, he found
+himself under the starry, moonless sky at the foot of the tower.
+
+He soon discovered the way out of the garden, with which he had
+some acquaintance already, and in a few minutes was climbing the
+mountain with a solemn and cheerful heart.  It was rather dark, but
+he knew the way well.  As he passed the rock from which the poor
+pigeon fell wounded with his arrow, a great joy filled his heart at
+the thought that he was delivered from the blood of the little
+bird, and he ran the next hundred yards at full speed up the hill. 
+Some dark shadows passed him: he did not even care to think what
+they were, but let them run.  When he reached home, he found his
+father and mother waiting supper for him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4
+Curdie's Father and Mother
+
+
+The eyes of the fathers and mothers are quick to read their
+children's looks, and when Curdie entered the cottage, his parents
+saw at once that something unusual had taken place.  When he said
+to his mother, 'I beg your pardon for being so late,' there was
+something in the tone beyond the politeness that went to her heart,
+for it seemed to come from the place where all lovely things were
+born before they began to grow in this world.  When he set his
+father's chair to the table, an attention he had not shown him for
+a long time, Peter thanked him with more gratitude than the boy had
+ever yet felt in all his life.  It was a small thing to do for the
+man who had been serving him since ever he was born, but I suspect
+there is nothing a man can be so grateful for as that to which he
+has the most right.
+
+There was a change upon Curdie, and father and mother felt there
+must be something to account for it, and therefore were pretty sure
+he had something to tell them.  For when a child's heart is all
+right, it is not likely he will want to keep anything from his
+parents.  But the story of the evening was too solemn for Curdie to
+come out with all at once.  He must wait until they had had their
+porridge, and the affairs of this world were over for the day.
+
+But when they were seated on the grassy bank of the brook that went
+so sweetly blundering over the great stones of its rocky channel,
+for the whole meadow lay on the top of a huge rock, then he felt
+that the right hour had come for sharing with them the wonderful
+things that had come to him.  It was perhaps the loveliest of all
+hours in the year.  The summer was young and soft, and this was the
+warmest evening they had yet had - dusky, dark even below, while
+above, the stars were bright and large and sharp in the blackest
+blue sky.  The night came close around them, clasping them in one
+universal arm of love, and although it neither spoke nor smiled,
+seemed all eye and ear, seemed to see and hear and know everything
+they said and did.  It is a way the night has sometimes, and there
+is a reason for it.  The only sound was that of the brook, for
+there was no wind, and no trees for it to make its music upon if
+there had been, for the cottage was high up on the mountain, on a
+great shoulder of stone where trees would not grow.
+
+There, to the accompaniment of the water, as it hurried down to the
+valley and the sea, talking busily of a thousand true things which
+it could not understand, Curdie told his tale, outside and in, to
+his father and mother.  What a world had slipped in between the
+mouth of the mine and his mother's cottage!  Neither of them said
+a word until he had ended.
+
+'Now what am I to make of it, Mother? it's so strange!' he said,
+and stopped.
+
+'It's easy enough to see what Curdie has got to make of it, isn't
+it, Peter?' said the good woman, turning her face toward all she
+could see of her husband's.
+
+'it seems so to me,' answered Peter, with a smile which only the
+night saw, but his wife felt in the tone of his words.  They were
+the happiest couple in that country, because they always understood
+each other, and that was because they always meant the same thing,
+and that was because they always loved what was fair and true and
+right better, not than anything else, but than everything else put
+together.
+
+'Then will you tell Curdie?' said she.
+
+'You can talk best, Joan,' said he.  'You tell him, and I will
+listen - and learn how to say what I think,' he added.
+
+'I,' said Curdie, 'don't know what to think.'
+
+'it does not matter so much,' said his mother.  'If only you know
+what to make of a thing, you'll know soon enough what to think of
+it.  Now I needn't tell you, surely, Curdie, what you've got to do
+with this?'
+
+'I suppose you mean, Mother,' answered Curdie, 'that I must do as
+the old lady told me?'
+
+'That is what I mean: what else could it be?  Am I not right,
+Peter?'
+
+'Quite right, Joan,' answered Peter, 'so far as my judgement goes. 
+It is a very strange story, but you see the question is not about
+believing it, for Curdie knows what came to him.'
+
+'And you remember, Curdie,' said his mother, 'that when the
+princess took you up that tower once before, and there talked to
+her great-great-grandmother, you came home quite angry with her,
+and said there was nothing in the place but an old tub, a heap of
+straw - oh, I remember your inventory quite well! - an old tub, a
+heap of straw, a withered apple, and a sunbeam.  According to your
+eyes, that was all there was in the great, old, musty garret.  But
+now you have had a glimpse of the old princess herself!'
+
+'Yes, Mother, I did see her - or if I didn't -' said Curdie very
+thoughtfully - then began again.  'The hardest thing to believe,
+though I saw it with my own eyes, was when the thin, filmy creature
+that seemed almost to float about in the moonlight like a bit of
+the silver paper they put over pictures, or like a handkerchief
+made of spider threads, took my hand, and rose up.  She was taller
+and stronger than you, Mother, ever so much! - at least, she looked
+so.'
+
+'And most certainly was so, Curdie, if she looked so,' said Mrs
+Peterson.
+
+'Well, I confess,' returned her son, 'that one thing, if there were
+no other, would make me doubt whether I was not dreaming, after
+all, wide awake though I fancied myself to be.'
+
+'Of course,' answered his mother, 'it is not for me to say whether
+you were dreaming or not if you are doubtful of it yourself; but it
+doesn't make me think I am dreaming when in the summer I hold in my
+hand the bunch of sweet peas that make my heart glad with their
+colour and scent, and remember the dry, withered-looking little
+thing I dibbled into the hole in the same spot in the spring.  I
+only think how wonderful and lovely it all is.  It seems just as
+full of reason as it is of wonder.  How it is done I can't tell,
+only there it is!  And there is this in it, too, Curdie - of which
+you would not be so ready to think - that when you come home to
+your father and mother, and they find you behaving more like a
+dear, good son than you have behaved for a long time, they at least
+are not likely to think you were only dreaming.'
+
+'Still,' said Curdie, looking a little ashamed, 'I might have
+dreamed my duty.'
+
+'Then dream often, my son; for there must then be more truth in
+your dreams than in your waking thoughts.  But however any of these
+things may be, this one point remains certain: there can be no harm
+in doing as she told you.  And, indeed, until you are sure there is
+no such person, you are bound to do it, for you promised.'
+
+'it seems to me,' said his father, 'that if a lady comes to you in
+a dream, Curdie, and tells you not to talk about her when you wake,
+the least you can do is to hold your tongue.'
+
+'True, Father!  Yes, Mother, I'll do it,' said Curdie.
+
+Then they went to bed, and sleep, which is the night of the soul,
+next took them in its arms and made them well.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5
+The Miners
+
+
+It much increased Curdie's feeling of the strangeness of the whole
+affair, that, the next morning, when they were at work in the mine,
+the party of which he and his father were two, just as if they had
+known what had happened to him the night before, began talking
+about all manner of wonderful tales that were abroad in the
+country, chiefly, of course, those connected with the mines, and
+the mountains in which they lay.  Their wives and mothers and
+grandmothers were their chief authorities.  For when they sat by
+their firesides they heard their wives telling their children the
+selfsame tales, with little differences, and here and there one
+they had not heard before, which they had heard their mothers and
+grandmothers tell in one or other of the same cottages.
+
+At length they came to speak of a certain strange being they called
+Old Mother Wotherwop.  Some said their wives had seen her.  It
+appeared as they talked that not one had seen her more than once. 
+Some of their mothers and grandmothers, however, had seen her also,
+and they all had told them tales about her when they were children. 
+They said she could take any shape she liked, but that in reality
+she was a withered old woman, so old and so withered that she was
+as thin as a sieve with a lamp behind it; that she was never seen
+except at night, and when something terrible had taken place, or
+was going to take place - such as the falling in of the roof of a
+mine, or the breaking out of water in it.
+
+She had more than once been seen - it was always at night - beside
+some well, sitting on the brink of it, and leaning over and
+stirring it with her forefinger, which was six times as long as any
+of the rest.  And whoever for months after drank of that well was
+sure to be ill.  To this, one of them, however, added that he
+remembered his mother saying that whoever in bad health drank of
+the well was sure to get better.  But the majority agreed that the
+former was the right version of the story- for was she not a witch,
+an old hating witch, whose delight was to do mischief?  One said he
+had heard that she took the shape of a young woman sometimes, as
+beautiful as an angel, and then was most dangerous of all, for she
+struck every man who looked upon her stone-blind.
+
+Peter ventured the question whether she might not as likely be an
+angel that took the form of an old woman, as an old woman that took
+the form of an angel.  But nobody except Curdie, who was holding
+his peace with all his might, saw any sense in the question.  They
+said an old woman might be very glad to make herself look like a
+young one, but who ever heard of a young and beautiful one making
+herself look old and ugly?
+
+Peter asked why they were so much more ready to believe the bad
+that was said of her than the good.  They answered, because she was
+bad.  He asked why they believed her to be bad, and they answered,
+because she did bad things.  When he asked how they knew that, they
+said, because she was a bad creature.  Even if they didn't know it,
+they said, a woman like that was so much more likely to be bad than
+good.  Why did she go about at night?  Why did she appear only now
+and then, and on such occasions?  One went on to tell how one night
+when his grandfather had been having a jolly time of it with his
+friends in the market town, she had served him so upon his way home
+that the poor man never drank a drop of anything stronger than
+water after it to the day of his death.  She dragged him into a
+bog, and tumbled him up and down in it till he was nearly dead.
+
+'I suppose that was her way of teaching him what a good thing water
+was,' said Peter; but the man, who liked strong drink, did not see
+the joke.
+
+'They do say,' said another, 'that she has lived in the old house
+over there ever since the little princess left it.  They say too
+that the housekeeper knows all about it, and is hand and glove with
+the old witch.  I don't doubt they have many a nice airing together
+on broomsticks.  But I don't doubt either it's all nonsense, and
+there's no such person at all.'
+
+'When our cow died,' said another, 'she was seen going round and
+round the cowhouse the same night.  To be sure she left a fine calf
+behind her - I mean the cow did, not the witch.  I wonder she
+didn't kill that, too, for she'll be a far finer cow than ever her
+mother was.'
+
+'My old woman came upon her one night, not long before the water
+broke out in the mine, sitting on a stone on the hillside with a
+whole congregation of cobs about her.  When they saw my wife they
+all scampered off as fast as they could run, and where the witch
+was sitting there was nothing to be seen but a withered bracken
+bush.  I made no doubt myself she was putting them up to it.'
+
+And so they went on with one foolish tale after another, while
+Peter put in a word now and then, and Curdie diligently held his
+peace.  But his silence at last drew attention upon it, and one of
+them said:
+
+'Come, young Curdie, what are you thinking of?'
+
+'How do you know I'm thinking of anything?' asked Curdie.
+
+'Because you're not saying anything.'
+
+'Does it follow then that, as you are saying so much, you're not
+thinking at all?' said Curdie.
+
+'I know what he's thinking,' said one who had not yet spoken; 'he's
+thinking what a set of fools you are to talk such rubbish; as if
+ever there was or could be such an old woman as you say!  I'm sure
+Curdie knows better than all that comes to.'
+
+'I think,' said Curdie, 'it would be better that he who says
+anything about her should be quite sure it is true, lest she should
+hear him, and not like to be slandered.'
+
+'But would she like it any better if it were true?' said the same
+man.  'If she is What they say - I don't know - but I never knew a
+man that wouldn't go in a rage to be called the very thing he was.'
+
+'if bad things were true of her, and I knew it,' said Curdie, 'I
+would not hesitate to say them, for I will never give in to being
+afraid of anything that's bad.  I suspect that the things they
+tell, however, if we knew all about them, would turn out to have
+nothing but good in them; and I won't say a word more for fear I
+should say something that mightn't be to her mind.'
+
+They all burst into a loud laugh.
+
+'Hear the parson!' they cried.  'He believes in the witch!  Ha!
+ha!'
+
+'He's afraid of her!'
+
+'And says all she does is good!'
+
+'He wants to make friends with her, that she may help him to find
+the silver ore.'
+
+'Give me my own eyes and a good divining rod before all the witches
+in the world!  And so I'd advise you too, Master Curdie; that is,
+when your eyes have grown to be worth anything, and you have
+learned to cut the hazel fork.'
+Thus they all mocked and jeered at him, but he did his best to keep
+his temper and go quietly on with his work.  He got as close to his
+father as he could, however, for that helped him to bear it.  As
+soon as they were tired of laughing and mocking, Curdie was
+friendly with them, and long before their midday meal all between
+them was as it had been.
+
+But when the evening came, Peter and Curdie felt that they would
+rather walk home together without other company, and therefore
+lingered behind when the rest of the men left the mine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6
+The Emerald
+
+
+Father and son had seated themselves on a projecting piece of rock
+at a corner where three galleries met - the one they had come along
+from their work, one to the right leading out of the mountain, and
+the other to the left leading far into a portion of it which had
+been long disused.  Since the inundation caused by the goblins, it
+had indeed been rendered impassable by the settlement of a quantity
+of the water, forming a small but very deep lake, in a part where
+there was a considerable descent.
+
+They had just risen and were turning to the right, when a gleam
+caught their eyes, and made them look along the whole gallery.  Far
+up they saw a pale green light, whence issuing they could not tell,
+about halfway between floor and roof of the passage.  They saw
+nothing but the light, which was like a large star, with a point of
+darker colour yet brighter radiance in the heart of it, whence the
+rest of the light shot out in rays that faded toward the ends until
+they vanished.  It shed hardly any light around it, although in
+itself it was so bright as to sting the eyes that beheld it. 
+Wonderful stories had from ages gone been current in the mines
+about certain magic gems which gave out light of themselves, and
+this light looked just like what might be supposed to shoot from
+the heart of such a gem.
+
+They went up the old gallery to find out what it could be.  To
+their surprise they found, however, that, after going some
+distance, they were no nearer to it, so far as they could judge,
+than when they started.  It did not seem to move, and yet they
+moving did not approach it.  Still they persevered, for it was far
+too wonderful a thing to lose sight of, so long as they could keep
+it.  At length they drew near the hollow where the water lay, and
+still were no nearer the light.  Where they expected to be stopped
+by the water, however, water was none: something had taken place in
+some part of the mine that had drained it off, and the gallery lay
+open as in former times.
+
+And now, to their surprise, the light, instead of being in front of
+them, was shining at the same distance to the right, where they did
+not know there was any passage at all.  Then they discovered, by
+the light of the lanterns they carried, that there the water had
+broken through, and made an entrance to a part of the mountain of
+which Peter knew nothing.  But they were hardly well into it, still
+following the light, before Curdie thought he recognized some of
+the passages he had so often gone through when he was watching the
+goblins.
+
+After they had advanced a long way, with many turnings, now to the
+right, now to the left, all at once their eyes seemed to come
+suddenly to themselves, and they became aware that the light which
+they had taken to be a great way from them was in reality almost
+within reach of their hands.
+
+The same instant it began to grow larger and thinner, the point of
+light grew dim as it spread, the greenness melted away, and in a
+moment or two, instead of the star, a dark, dark and yet luminous
+face was looking at them with living eyes.  And Curdie felt a great
+awe swell up in his heart, for he thought he had seen those eyes
+before.
+
+'I see you know me, Curdie,' said a voice.
+
+'if your eyes are you, ma'am, then I know you,' said Curdie.  'But
+I never saw your face before.'
+
+'Yes, you have seen it, Curdie,' said the voice.  And with that the
+darkness of its complexion melted away, and down from the face
+dawned out the form that belonged to it, until at last Curdie and
+his father beheld a lady, beautiful exceedingly, dressed in
+something pale green, like velvet, over which her hair fell in
+cataracts of a rich golden colour.  it looked as if it were pouring
+down from her head, and, like the water of the Dustbrook, vanishing
+in a golden vapour ere it reached the floor.  It came flowing from
+under the edge of a coronet of gold, set with alternated pearls and
+emeralds.  In front of the crown was a great emerald, which looked
+somehow as if out of it had come the light they had followed. 
+There was no ornament else about her, except on her slippers, which
+were one mass of gleaming emeralds, of various shades of green, all
+mingling lovelily like the waving of grass in the wind and sun. 
+She looked about five-and-twenty years old.  And for all the
+difference, Curdie knew somehow or other, he could not have told
+how, that the face before him was that of the old princess, Irene's
+great-great-grandmother.
+
+By this time all around them had grown light, and now first they
+could see where they were.  They stood in a great splendid cavern,
+which Curdie recognized as that in which the goblins held their
+state assemblies.  But, strange to tell, the light by which they
+saw came streaming, sparkling, and shooting from stones of many
+colours in the sides and roof and floor of the cavern - stones of
+all the colours of the rainbow, and many more.  It was a glorious
+sight - the whole rugged place flashing with colours - in one spot
+a great light of deep carbuncular red, in another of sapphirine
+blue, in another of topaz yellow; while here and there were groups
+of stones of all hues and sizes, and again nebulous spaces of
+thousands of tiniest spots of brilliancy of every conceivable
+shade.  Sometimes the colours ran together, and made a little river
+or lake of lambent, interfusing, and changing tints, which, by
+their variegation, seemed to imitate the flowing of water, or waves
+made by the wind.
+
+Curdie would have gazed entranced, but that all the beauty of the
+cavern, yes, of all he knew of the whole creation, seemed gathered
+in one centre of harmony and loveliness in the person of the
+ancient lady who stood before him in the very summer of beauty and
+strength.  Turning from the first glance at the circuadjacent
+splendour, it dwindled into nothing as he looked again at the lady. 
+Nothing flashed or glowed or shone about her, and yet it was with
+a prevision of the truth that he said,
+
+'I was here once before, ma'am.'
+
+'I know that, Curdie,' she replied.
+
+'The place was full of torches, and the walls gleamed, but nothing
+as they do now, and there is no light in the place.'
+
+'You want to know where the light comes from?' she said, smiling.
+
+'Yes, ma'am.'
+
+'Then see: I will go out of the cavern.  Do not be afraid, but
+watch.'
+
+She went slowly out.  The moment she turned her back to go, the
+light began to pale and fade; the moment she was out of their sight
+the place was black as night, save that now the smoky yellow-red of
+their lamps, which they thought had gone out long ago, cast a dusky
+glimmer around them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7
+What Is in a Name?
+
+
+For a time that seemed to them long, the two men stood waiting,
+while still the Mother of Light did not return.  So long was she
+absent that they began to grow anxious: how were they to find their
+way from the natural hollows of the mountain crossed by goblin
+paths, if their lamps should go out?  To spend the night there
+would mean to sit and wait until an earthquake rent the mountain,
+or the earth herself fell back into the smelting furnace of the sun
+whence she had issued - for it was all night and no faintest dawn
+in the bosom of the world.
+
+So long did they wait unrevisited, that, had there not been two of
+them, either would at length have concluded the vision a home-born
+product of his own seething brain.  And their lamps were going out,
+for they grew redder and smokier!  But they did not lose courage,
+for there is a kind of capillary attraction in the facing of two
+souls, that lifts faith quite beyond the level to which either
+could raise it alone: they knew that they had seen the lady of
+emeralds, and it was to give them their own desire that she had
+gone from them, and neither would yield for a moment to the half
+doubts and half dreads that awoke in his heart.
+
+And still she who with her absence darkened their air did not
+return.  They grew weary, and sat down on the rocky floor, for wait
+they would - indeed, wait they must.  Each set his lamp by his
+knee, and watched it die.  Slowly it sank, dulled, looked lazy and
+stupid.  But ever as it sank and dulled, the image in his mind of
+the Lady of Light grew stronger and clearer.  Together the two
+lamps panted and shuddered.  First one, then the other went out,
+leaving for a moment a great, red, evil-smelling snuff.  Then all
+was the blackness of darkness up to their very hearts and
+everywhere around them.  Was it?  No.  Far away - it looked miles
+away - shone one minute faint point of green light - where, who
+could tell?  They only knew that it shone.  it grew larger, and
+seemed to draw nearer, until at last, as they watched with
+speechless delight and expectation, it seemed once more within
+reach of an outstretched hand.  Then it spread and melted away as
+before, and there were eyes - and a face - and a lovely form - and
+lo! the whole cavern blazing with lights innumerable, and gorgeous,
+yet soft and interfused - so blended, indeed, that the eye had to
+search and see in order to separate distinct spots of special
+colour.
+
+The moment they saw the speck in the vast distance they had risen
+and stood on their feet.  When it came nearer they bowed their
+heads.  Yet now they looked with fearless eyes, for the woman that
+was old yet young was a joy to see, and filled their hearts with
+reverent delight.  She turned first to Peter.
+
+'I have known you long,' she said.  'I have met you going to and
+from the mine, and seen you working in it for the last forty
+years.'
+
+'How should it be, madam, that a grand lady like you should take
+notice of a poor man like me?' said Peter, humbly,
+
+but more foolishly than he could then have understood.
+
+'I am poor as well as rich,' said she.  'I, too, work for my bread,
+and I show myself no favour when I pay myself my own wages.  Last
+night when you sat by the brook, and Curdie told you about my
+pigeon, and my spinning, and wondered whether he could believe that
+he had actually seen me, I heard what you said to each other.  I am
+always about, as the miners said the other night when they talked
+of me as Old Mother Wotherwop.'
+
+The lovely lady laughed, and her laugh was a lightning of delight
+in their souls.
+
+'Yes,' she went on, 'you have got to thank me that you are so poor,
+Peter.  I have seen to that, and it has done well for both you and
+me, my friend.  Things come to the poor that can't get in at the
+door of the rich.  Their money somehow blocks it up.  It is a great
+privilege to be poor, Peter - one that no man ever coveted, and but
+a very few have sought to retain, but one that yet many have
+learned to prize.  You must not mistake, however, and imagine it a
+virtue; it is but a privilege, and one also that, like other
+privileges, may be terribly misused.  Had you been rich, my Peter,
+you would not have been so good as some rich men I know.  And now
+I am going to tell you what no one knows but myself: you, Peter,
+and your wife both have the blood of the royal family in your
+veins.  I have been trying to cultivate your family tree, every
+branch of which is known to me, and I expect Curdie to turn out a
+blossom on it.  Therefore I have been training him for a work that
+must soon be done.  I was near losing him, and had to send my
+pigeon.  Had he not shot it, that would have been better; but he
+repented, and that shall be as good in the end.'
+
+She turned to Curdie and smiled.
+
+'Ma'am,' said Curdie, 'may I ask questions?'
+
+'Why not, Curdie?'
+
+'Because I have been told, ma'am, that nobody must ask the king
+questions.'
+
+'The king never made that law,' she answered, with some
+displeasure.  'You may ask me as many as you please - that is, so
+long as they are sensible.  Only I may take a few thousand years to
+answer some of them.  But that's nothing.  Of all things time is
+the cheapest.'
+
+'Then would you mind telling me now, ma'am, for I feel very
+confused about it - are you the Lady of the Silver Moon?'
+
+'Yes, Curdie; you may call me that if you like.  What it means is
+true.'
+
+'And now I see you dark, and clothed in green, and the mother of
+all the light that dwells in the stones of the earth!  And up there
+they call you Old Mother Wotherwop!  And the Princess Irene told me
+you were her great-great-grandmother!  And you spin the spider
+threads, and take care of a whole people of pigeons; and you are
+worn to a pale shadow with old age; and are as young as anybody can
+be, not to be too young; and as strong, I do believe, as I am.'
+
+The lady stooped toward a large green stone bedded in the rock of
+the floor, and looking like a well of grassy light in it.  She laid
+hold of it with her fingers, broke it out, and gave it to Peter.
+'There!' cried Curdie.  'I told you so.  Twenty men could not have
+done that.  And your fingers are white and smooth as any lady's in
+the land.  I don't know what to make of it.'
+
+'I could give you twenty names more to call me, Curdie, and not one
+of them would be a false one.  What does it matter how many names
+if the person is one?'
+
+'Ah!  But it is not names only, ma'am.  Look at what you were like
+last night, and what I see you now!'
+
+'Shapes are only dresses, Curdie, and dresses are only names.  That
+which is inside is the same all the time.'
+
+'But then how can all the shapes speak the truth?'
+
+'it would want thousands more to speak the truth, Curdie; and then
+they could not.  But there is a point I must not let you mistake
+about.  It is one thing the shape I choose to put on, and quite
+another the shape that foolish talk and nursery tale may please to
+put upon me.  Also, it is one thing what you or your father may
+think about me, and quite another what a foolish or bad man may see
+in me.  For instance, if a thief were to come in here just now, he
+would think he saw the demon of the mine, all in green flames, come
+to protect her treasure, and would run like a hunted wild goat.  I
+should be all the same, but his evil eyes would see me as I was
+not.'
+
+'I think I understand,' said Curdie.
+
+'Peter,' said the lady, turning then to him, 'you will have to give
+up Curdie for a little while.'
+'So long as he loves us, ma'am, that will not matter - much.'
+
+'Ah! you are right there, my friend,' said the beautiful princess. 
+And as she said it she put out her hand, and took the hard, horny
+hand of the miner in it, and held it for a moment lovingly.
+
+'I need say no more,' she added, 'for we understand each other -
+you and I, Peter.'
+
+The tears came into Peter's eyes.  He bowed his head in
+thankfulness, and his heart was much too full to speak.
+
+Then the great old, young, beautiful princess turned to Curdie.
+
+'Now, Curdie, are you ready?' she said.
+
+'Yes, ma'am,' answered Curdie.
+
+'You do not know what for.'
+
+'You do, ma'am.  That is enough.'
+
+'You could not have given me a better answer, or done more to
+prepare yourself, Curdie,' she returned, with one of her radiant
+smiles.  'Do you think you will know me again?'
+
+'I think so.  But how can I tell what you may look like next?'
+
+'Ah, that indeed!  How can you tell?  Or how could I expect you
+should?  But those who know me well, know me whatever new dress or
+shape or name I may be in; and by and by you will have learned to
+do so too.'
+
+'But if you want me to know you again, ma'am, for certain sure,'
+said Curdie, 'could you not give me some sign, or tell me something
+about you that never changes - or some other way to know you, or
+thing to know you by?'
+
+'No, Curdie; that would be to keep you from knowing me.  You must
+know me in quite another way from that.  It would not be the least
+use to you or me either if I were to make you know me in that way. 
+It would be but to know the sign of Me - not to know me myself.  it
+would be no better than if I were to take this emerald out of my
+crown and give it to you to take home with you, and you were to
+call it me, and talk to it as if it heard and saw and loved you. 
+Much good that would do you, Curdie!  No; you must do what you can
+to know me, and if you do, you will.  You shall see me again in
+very different circumstances from these, and, I will tell you so
+much, it may be in a very different shape.  But come now, I will
+lead you out of this cavern; my good Joan will be getting too
+anxious about you.  One word more: you will allow that the men knew
+little what they were talking about this morning, when they told
+all those tales of Old Mother Wotherwop; but did it occur to you to
+think how it was they fell to talking about me at all?  It was
+because I came to them; I was beside them all the time they were
+talking about me, though they were far enough from knowing it, and
+had very little besides foolishness to say.'
+
+As she spoke she turned and led the way from the cavern, which, as
+if a door had been closed, sank into absolute blackness behind
+them.  And now they saw nothing more of the lady except the green
+star, which again seemed a good distance in front of them, and to
+which they came no nearer, although following it at a quick pace
+through the mountain.  Such was their confidence in her guidance,
+however, and so fearless were they in consequence, that they felt
+their way neither with hand nor foot, but walked straight on
+through the pitch-dark galleries.  When at length the night of the
+upper world looked in at the mouth of the mine, the green light
+seemed to lose its way among the stars, and they saw it no more.
+
+Out they came into the cool, blessed night.  It was very late, and
+only starlight.  To their surprise, three paces away they saw,
+seated upon a stone, an old country-woman, in a cloak which they
+took for black.  When they came close up to it, they saw it was
+red.
+
+'Good evening!' said Peter.
+
+'Good evening!' returned the old woman, in a voice as old as
+herself.
+
+But Curdie took off his cap and said:
+
+'I am your servant, Princess.'
+
+The old woman replied:
+
+'Come to me in the dove tower tomorrow night, Curdie - alone.'
+
+'I will, ma'am,' said Curdie.
+
+So they parted, and father and son went home to wife and mother -
+two persons in one rich, happy woman.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 8
+Curdie's Mission
+
+
+The next night Curdie went home from the mine a little earlier than
+usual, to make himself tidy before going to the dove tower.  The
+princess had not appointed an exact time for him to be there; he
+would go as near the time he had gone first as he could.  On his
+way to the bottom of the hill, he met his father coming up.  The
+sun was then down, and the warm first of the twilight filled the
+evening.  He came rather wearily up the hill: the road, he thought,
+must have grown steeper in parts since he was Curdie's age.  His
+back was to the light of the sunset, which closed him all round in
+a beautiful setting, and Curdie thought what a grand-looking man
+his father was, even when he was tired.  It is greed and laziness
+and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take the
+dignity out of a man, and make him look mean.
+
+'Ah, Curdie!  There you are!' he said, seeing his son come bounding
+along as if it were morning with him and not evening.
+
+'You look tired, Father,' said Curdie.
+
+'Yes, my boy.  I'm not so young as you.'
+
+'Nor so old as the princess,' said Curdie.
+
+'Tell me this,' said Peter, 'why do people talk about going
+downhill when they begin to get old?  It seems to me that then
+first they begin to go uphill.'
+
+'You looked to me, Father, when I caught sight of you, as if you
+had been climbing the hill all your life, and were soon to get to
+the top.'
+'Nobody can tell when that will be,' returned Peter.  'We're so
+ready to think we're just at the top when it lies miles away.  But
+I must not keep you, my boy, for you are wanted; and we shall be
+anxious to know what the princess says to you- that is, if she will
+allow you to tell us.'
+
+'I think she will, for she knows there is nobody more to be trusted
+than my father and mother,' said Curdie, with
+
+pride.
+
+And away he shot, and ran, and jumped, and seemed almost to fly
+down the long, winding, steep path, until he came to the gate of
+the king's house.
+
+There he met an unexpected obstruction: in the open door stood the
+housekeeper, and she seemed to broaden herself out until she almost
+filled the doorway.
+
+'So!' she said, 'it's you, is it, young man?  You are the person
+that comes in and goes out when he pleases, and keeps running up
+and down my stairs without ever saying by your leave, or even
+wiping his shoes, and always leaves the door open!  Don't you know
+this is my house?'
+
+'No, I do not,' returned Curdie respectfully.  'You forget, ma'am,
+that it is the king's house.'
+
+'That is all the same.  The king left it to me to take care of -
+and that you shall know!'
+
+'Is the king dead, ma'am, that he has left it to you?' asked
+Curdie, half in doubt from the self-assertion of the woman.
+
+'Insolent fellow!' exclaimed the housekeeper.  'Don't you see by my
+dress that I am in the king's service?'
+
+'And am I not one of his miners?'
+
+'Ah! that goes for nothing.  I am one of his household.  You are an
+out-of-doors labourer.  You are a nobody.  You carry a pickaxe.  I
+carry the keys at my girdle.  See!'
+
+'But you must not call one a nobody to whom the king has spoken,'
+said Curdie.
+
+'Go along with you!' cried the housekeeper, and would have shut the
+door in his face, had she not been afraid that when she stepped
+back he would step in ere she could get it in motion, for it was
+very heavy and always seemed unwilling to shut.  Curdie came a pace
+nearer.  She lifted the great house key from her side, and
+threatened to strike him down with it, calling aloud on Mar and
+Whelk and Plout, the menservants under her, to come and help her. 
+Ere one of them could answer, however, she gave a great shriek and
+turned and fled, leaving the door wide open.
+
+Curdie looked behind him, and saw an animal whose gruesome oddity
+even he, who knew so many of the strange creatures, two of which
+were never the same, that used to live inside the mountain with
+their masters the goblins, had never seen equalled.  Its eyes were
+flaming with anger, but it seemed to be at the housekeeper, for it
+came cowering and creeping up and laid its head on the ground at
+Curdie's feet.  Curdie hardly waited to look at it, however, but
+ran into the house, eager to get up the stairs before any of the
+men should come to annoy - he had no fear of their preventing him. 
+Without halt or hindrance, though the passages were nearly dark, he
+reached the door of the princess's workroom, and knocked.
+
+'Come in,' said the voice of the princess.
+
+Curdie opened the door - but, to his astonishment, saw no room
+there.  Could he have opened a wrong door?  There was the great
+sky, and the stars, and beneath he could see nothing only darkness!
+But what was that in the sky, straight in front of him?  A great
+wheel of fire, turning and turning, and flashing out blue lights!
+
+'Come in, Curdie,' said the voice again.
+
+'I would at once, ma'am,' said Curdie, 'if I were sure I was
+standing at your door.'
+
+'Why should you doubt it, Curdie?'
+
+'Because I see neither walls nor floor, only darkness and the great
+sky.'
+'That is all right, Curdie.  Come in.'
+
+Curdie stepped forward at once.  He was indeed, for the very crumb
+of a moment, tempted to feel before him with his foot; but he saw
+that would be to distrust the princess, and a greater rudeness he
+could not offer her.  So he stepped straight in - I will not say
+without a little tremble at the thought of finding no floor beneath
+his foot.  But that which had need of the floor found it, and his
+foot was satisfied.
+
+No sooner was he in than he saw that the great revolving wheel in
+the sky was the princess's spinning wheel, near the other end of
+the room, turning very fast.  He could see no sky or stars any
+more, but the wheel was flashing out blue - oh, such lovely
+sky-blue light! - and behind it of course sat the princess, but
+whether an old woman as thin as a skeleton leaf, or a glorious lady
+as young as perfection, he could not tell for the turning and
+flashing of the wheel.
+
+'Listen to the wheel,' said the voice which had already grown dear
+to Curdie: its very tone was precious like a jewel, not as a jewel,
+for no jewel could compare with it in preciousness.
+
+And Curdie listened and listened.
+
+'What is it saying?' asked the voice.
+
+'It is singing,' answered Curdie.
+
+'What is it singing?'
+
+Curdie tried to make out, but thought he could not; for no sooner
+had he got hold of something than it vanished again.
+
+Yet he listened, and listened, entranced with delight.
+
+'Thank you, Curdie, said the voice.
+
+'Ma'am,' said Curdie, 'I did try hard for a while, but I could not
+make anything of it.'
+
+'Oh yes, you did, and you have been telling it to me!  Shall I tell
+you again what I told my wheel, and my wheel told you, and you have
+just told me without knowing it?'
+
+'Please, ma'am.'
+
+Then the lady began to sing, and her wheel spun an accompaniment to
+her song, and the music of the wheel was like the music of an
+Aeolian harp blown upon by the wind that bloweth where it listeth. 
+Oh, the sweet sounds of that spinning wheel!  Now they were gold,
+now silver, now grass, now palm trees, now ancient cities, now
+rubies, now mountain brooks, now peacock's feathers, now clouds,
+now snowdrops, and now mid-sea islands.  But for the voice that
+sang through it all, about that I have no words to tell.  It would
+make you weep if I were able to tell you what that was like, it was
+so beautiful and true and lovely.  But this is something like the
+words of its song:
+
+
+The stars are spinning their threads, And the clouds are the dust
+that flies, And the suns are weaving them up For the time when the
+sleepers shall rise.
+
+The ocean in music rolls, And gems are turning to eyes, And the
+trees are gathering souls For the day when the sleepers shall rise.
+
+The weepers are learning to smile, And laughter to glean the sighs;
+Burn and bury the care and guile, For the day when the sleepers
+shall rise.
+
+oh, the dews and the moths and the daisy red, The larks and the
+glimmers and flows!  The lilies and sparrows and daily bread, And
+the something that nobody knows!
+
+
+The princess stopped, her wheel stopped, and she laughed.  And her
+laugh was sweeter than song and wheel; sweeter than running brook
+and silver bell; sweeter than joy itself, for the heart of the
+laugh was love.
+
+'Come now, Curdie, to this side of my wheel, and you will find me,'
+she said; and her laugh seemed sounding on still in the words, as
+if they were made of breath that had laughed.
+
+Curdie obeyed, and passed the wheel, and there she stood to receive
+him! - fairer than when he saw her last, a little younger still,
+and dressed not in green and emeralds, but in pale blue, with a
+coronet of silver set with pearls, and slippers covered with opals
+that gleamed every colour of the rainbow.  It was some time before
+Curdie could take his eyes from the marvel of her loveliness. 
+Fearing at last that he was rude, he turned them away; and, behold,
+he was in a room that was for beauty marvellous!  The lofty ceiling
+was all a golden vine, Whose great clusters of carbuncles, rubies,
+and chrysoberyls hung down like the bosses of groined arches, and
+in its centre hung the most glorious lamp that human eyes ever saw
+- the Silver Moon itself, a globe of silver, as it seemed, with a
+heart of light so wondrous potent that it rendered the mass
+translucent, and altogether radiant.
+
+The room was so large that, looking back, he could scarcely see the
+end at which he entered; but the other was only a few yards from
+him - and there he saw another wonder: on a huge hearth a great
+fire was burning, and the fire was a huge heap of roses, and yet it
+was fire.  The smell of the roses filled the air, and the heat of
+the flames of them glowed upon his face.  He turned an inquiring
+look upon the lady, and saw that she was now seated in an ancient
+chair, the legs of which were crusted with gems, but the upper part
+like a nest of daisies and moss and green grass.
+
+'Curdie,' she said in answer to his eyes, 'you have stood more than
+one trial already, and have stood them well: now I am going to put
+you to a harder.  Do you think you are prepared for it?'
+
+'How can I tell, ma'am,' he returned, 'seeing I do not know what it
+is, or what preparation it needs?  Judge me yourself, ma'am.'
+
+'It needs only trust and obedience,' answered the lady.
+
+'I dare not say anything, ma'am.  If you think me fit, command me.'
+
+'it will hurt you terribly, Curdie, but that will be all; no real
+hurt but much good will come to you from it.'
+
+Curdie made no answer but stood gazing with parted lips in the
+lady's face.
+
+'Go and thrust both your hands into that fire,' she said quickly,
+almost hurriedly.
+
+Curdie dared not stop to think.  It was much too terrible to think
+about.  He rushed to the fire, and thrust both of his hands right
+into the middle of the heap of flaming roses, and his arms halfway
+up to the elbows.  And it did hurt!  But he did not draw them back. 
+He held the pain as if it were a thing that would kill him if he
+let it go - as indeed it would have done.  He was in terrible fear
+lest it should conquer him.
+
+But when it had risen to the pitch that he thought he could bear it
+no longer, it began to fall again, and went on growing less and
+less until by contrast with its former severity it had become
+rather pleasant.  At last it ceased altogether, and Curdie thought
+his hands must be burned to cinders if not ashes, for he did not
+feel them at all.  The princess told him to take them out and look
+at them.  He did so, and found that all that was gone of them was
+the rough, hard skin; they were white and smooth like the
+princess's.
+
+'Come to me,' she said.
+
+He obeyed and saw, to his surprise, that her face looked as if she
+had been weeping.
+
+'Oh, Princess!  What is the matter?' he cried.  'Did I make a noise
+and vex you?'
+
+'No, Curdie, she answered; 'but it was very bad.'
+
+'Did you feel it too then?'
+
+'Of course I did.  But now it is over, and all is well.  Would you
+like to know why I made You put your hands in the fire?'
+Curdie looked at them again - then said:
+
+'To take the marks of the work off them and make them fit for the
+king's court, I suppose.'
+
+'No, Curdie,' answered the princess, shaking her head, for she was
+not pleased with the answer.  'It would be a poor way of making
+your hands fit for the king's court to take off them signs of his
+service.  There is a far greater difference on them than that.  Do
+you feel none?'
+
+'No, ma'am.'
+
+'You will, though, by and by, when the time comes.  But perhaps
+even then you might not know what had been given you, therefore I
+will tell you.  Have you ever heard what some philosophers say -
+that men were all animals once?'
+
+'No, ma'am.'
+
+'it is of no consequence.  But there is another thing that is of
+the greatest consequence - this: that all men, if they do not take
+care, go down the hill to the animals' country; that many men are
+actually, all their lives, going to be beasts.  People knew it
+once, but it is long since they forgot it.'
+
+'I am not surprised to hear it, ma'am, when I think of some of our
+miners.'
+
+'Ah!  But you must beware, Curdie, how you say of this man or that
+man that he is travelling beastward.  There are not nearly so many
+going that way as at first sight you might think.  When you met
+your father on the hill tonight, you stood and spoke together on
+the same spot; and although one of you was going up and the other
+coming down, at a little distance no one could have told which was
+bound in the one direction and which in the other.  just so two
+people may be at the same spot in manners and behaviour, and yet
+one may be getting better and the other worse, which is just the
+greatest of all differences that could possibly exist between
+them.'
+
+'But ma'am,' said Curdie, 'where is the good of knowing that there
+is such a difference, if you can never know where it is?'
+
+'Now, Curdie, you must mind exactly what words I use, because
+although the right words cannot do exactly what I want them to do,
+the wrong words will certainly do what I do not want them to do. 
+I did not say you can never know.  When there is a necessity for
+your knowing, when you have to do important business with this or
+that man, there is always a way of knowing enough to keep you from
+any great blunder.  And as you will have important business to do
+by and by, and that with people of whom you yet know nothing, it
+will be necessary that you should have some better means than usual
+of learning the nature of them.
+'Now listen.  Since it is always what they do, whether in their
+minds or their bodies, that makes men go down to be less than men,
+that is, beasts, the change always comes first in their hands - and
+first of all in the inside hands, to which the outside ones are but
+as the gloves.  They do not know it of course; for a beast does not
+know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast
+the less he knows it.  Neither can their best friends, or their
+worst enemies indeed, see any difference in their hands, for they
+see only the living gloves of them.  But there are not a few who
+feel a vague something repulsive in the hand of a man who is
+growing a beast.
+
+'Now here is what the rose-fire has done for you: it has made your
+hands so knowing and wise, it has brought your real hands so near
+the outside of your flesh gloves, that you will henceforth be able
+to know at once the hand of a man who is growing into a beast; nay,
+more - you will at once feel the foot of the beast he is growing,
+just as if there were no glove made like a man's hand between you
+and it.
+
+'Hence of course it follows that you will be able often, and with
+further education in zoology, will be able always to tell, not only
+when a man is growing a beast, but what beast he is growing to, for
+you will know the foot - what it is and what beast's it is. 
+According, then, to your knowledge of that beast will be your
+knowledge of the man you have to do with.  Only there is one
+beautiful and awful thing about it, that if any one gifted with
+this perception once uses it for his own ends, it is taken from
+him, and then, not knowing that it is gone, he is in a far worse
+condition than before, for he trusts to what he has not got.'
+
+'How dreadful!' Said Curdie.  'I must mind what I am about.'
+
+'Yes, indeed, Curdie.'
+
+'But may not one sometimes make a mistake without being able to
+help it?'
+
+'Yes.  But so long as he is not after his own ends, he will never
+make a serious mistake.'
+
+'I suppose you want me, ma'am, to warn every one whose hand tells
+me that he is growing a beast - because, as you say, he does not
+know it himself.'
+
+The princess smiled.
+
+'Much good that would do, Curdie!  I don't say there are no cases
+in which it would be of use, but they are very rare and peculiar
+cases, and if such come you will know them.  To such a person there
+is in general no insult like the truth.  He cannot endure it, not
+because he is growing a beast, but because he is ceasing to be a
+man.  It is the dying man in him that it makes uncomfortable, and
+he trots, or creeps, or swims, or flutters out of its way - calls
+it a foolish feeling, a whim, an old wives' fable, a bit of
+priests' humbug, an effete superstition, and so on.'
+
+'And is there no hope for him?  Can nothing be done?  It's so awful
+to think of going down, down, down like that!'
+
+'Even when it's with his own will?'
+
+'That's what seems to me to make it worst of all,' said Curdie.
+
+'You are right,' answered the princess, nodding her head; 'but
+there is this amount of excuse to make for all such, remember -
+that they do not know what or how horrid their coming fate is. 
+Many a lady, so delicate and nice that she can bear nothing coarser
+than the finest linen to touch her body, if she had a mirror that
+could show her the animal she is growing to, as it lies waiting
+within the fair skin and the fine linen and the silk and the
+jewels, would receive a shock that might possibly wake her up.'
+
+'Why then, ma'am, shouldn't she have it?'
+
+The princess held her peace.
+
+'Come here, Lina,' she said after a long pause.
+
+From somewhere behind Curdie, crept forward the same hideous animal
+which had fawned at his feet at the door, and which, without his
+knowing it, had followed him every step up the dove tower.  She ran
+to the princess, and lay down flat at her feet, looking up at her
+with an expression so pitiful that in Curdie's heart it overcame
+all the ludicrousness of her horrible mass of incongruities.  She
+had a very short body, and very long legs made like an elephant's,
+so that in lying down she kneeled with both pairs.  Her tail, which
+dragged on the floor behind her, was twice as long and quite as
+thick as her body.  Her head was something between that of a polar
+bear and a snake.  Her eyes were dark green, with a yellow light in
+them.  Her under teeth came up like a fringe of icicles, only very
+white, outside of her upper lip.  Her throat looked as if the hair
+had been plucked off.  it showed a skin white and smooth.
+
+'Give Curdie a paw, Lina,' said the princess.
+
+The creature rose, and, lifting a long foreleg, held up a great
+doglike paw to Curdie.  He took it gently.  But what a shudder, as
+of terrified delight, ran through him, when, instead of the paw of
+a dog, such as it seemed to his eyes, he clasped in his great
+mining fist the soft, neat little hand of a child!  He took it in
+both of his, and held it as if he could not let it go.  The green
+eyes stared at him with their yellow light, and the mouth was
+turned up toward him with its constant half grin; but here was the
+child's hand!  If he could but pull the child out of the beast! 
+His eyes sought the princess.  She was watching him with evident
+satisfaction.
+
+'Ma'am, here is a child's hand!' said Curdie.
+
+'Your gift does more for you than it promised.  It is yet better to
+perceive a hidden good than a hidden evil.'
+
+'But,' began Curdie.
+
+'I am not going to answer any more questions this evening,'
+interrupted the princess.  'You have not half got to the bottom of
+the answers I have already given you.  That paw in your hand now
+might almost teach you the whole science of natural history - the
+heavenly sort, I mean.'
+
+'I will think,' said Curdie.  'But oh! please! one word more: may
+I tell my father and mother all about it?'
+
+'Certainly - though perhaps now it may be their turn to find it a
+little difficult to believe that things went just as you must tell
+them.'
+
+'They shall see that I believe it all this time,' said Curdie.
+
+'Tell them that tomorrow morning you must set out for the court -
+not like a great man, but just as poor as you are.  They had better
+not speak about it.  Tell them also that it will be a long time
+before they hear of you again, but they must not lose heart.  And
+tell your father to lay that stone I gave him at night in a safe
+place - not because of the greatness of its price, although it is
+such an emerald as no prince has in his crown, but because it will
+be a news-bearer between you and him.  As often as he gets at all
+anxious about you, he must take it and lay it in the fire, and
+leave it there when he goes to bed.  In the morning he must find it
+in the ashes, and if it be as green as ever, then all goes well
+with you; if it have lost colour, things go ill with you; but if it
+be very pale indeed, then you are in great danger, and he must come
+to me.'
+
+'Yes, ma'am,' said Curdie.  'Please, am I to go now?'
+
+'Yes,' answered the princess, and held out her hand to him.
+
+Curdie took it, trembling with joy.  It was a very beautiful hand
+- not small, very smooth, but not very soft - and just the same to
+his fire-taught touch that it was to his eyes.  He would have stood
+there all night holding it if she had not gently withdrawn it.
+
+'I will provide you a servant,' she said, 'for your journey and to
+wait upon you afterward.'
+
+'But where am I to go, ma'am, and what am I to do?  You have given
+me no message to carry, neither have you said what I am wanted for. 
+I go without a notion whether I am to walk this way or that, or
+what I am to do when I get I don't know where.'
+
+'Curdie!' said the princess, and there was a tone of reminder in
+his own name as she spoke it, 'did I not tell you to tell your
+father and mother that you were to set out for the court?  And you
+know that lies to the north.  You must learn to use far less direct
+directions than that.  You must not be like a dull servant that
+needs to be told again and again before he will understand.  You
+have orders enough to start with, and you will find, as you go on,
+and as you need to know, what you have to do.  But I warn you that
+perhaps it will not look the least like what you may have been
+fancying I should require of you.  I have one idea of you and your
+work, and you have another.  I do not blame you for that - you
+cannot help it yet; but you must be ready to let my idea, which
+sets you working, set your idea right.  Be true and honest and
+fearless, and all shall go well with you and your work, and all
+with whom your work lies, and so with your parents - and me too,
+Curdie,' she added after a little pause.
+
+The young miner bowed his head low, patted the strange head that
+lay at the princess's feet, and turned away.  As soon as he passed
+the spinning wheel, which looked, in the midst of the glorious
+room, just like any wheel you might find in a country cottage - old
+and worn and dingy and dusty - the splendour of the place vanished,
+and he saw but the big bare room he seemed at first to have
+entered, with the moon - the princess's moon no doubt - shining in
+at one of the windows upon the spinning wheel.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 9
+Hands
+
+
+Curdie went home, pondering much, and told everything to his father
+and mother.  As the old princess had said, it was now their turn to
+find what they heard hard to believe.  if they had not been able to
+trust Curdie himself, they would have refused to believe more than
+the half of what he reported, then they would have refused that
+half too, and at last would most likely for a time have disbelieved
+in the very existence of the princess, what evidence their own
+senses had given them notwithstanding.
+
+For he had nothing conclusive to show in proof of what he told
+them.  When he held out his hands to them, his mother said they
+looked as if he had been washing them with soft soap, only they did
+smell of something nicer than that, and she must allow it was more
+like roses than anything else she knew.  His father could not see
+any difference upon his hands, but then it was night, he said, and
+their poor little lamp was not enough for his old eyes.  As to the
+feel of them, each of his own hands, he said, was hard and horny
+enough for two, and it must be the fault of the dullness of his own
+thick skin that he felt no change on Curdie's palms.
+
+'Here, Curdie,' said his mother, 'try my hand, and see what beast's
+paw lies inside it.'
+'No, Mother,' answered Curdie, half beseeching, half indignant, 'I
+will not insult my new gift by making pretence to try it.  That
+would be mockery.  There is no hand within yours but the hand of a
+true woman, my mother.'
+
+'I should like you just to take hold of my hand though,' said his
+mother.  'You are my son, and may know all the bad there is in me.'
+
+Then at once Curdie took her hand in his.  And when he had it, he
+kept it, stroking it gently with his other hand.
+
+'Mother,' he said at length, 'your hand feels just like that of the
+princess.'
+
+'What!  My horny, cracked, rheumatic old hand, with its big joints,
+and its short nails all worn down to the quick with hard work -
+like the hand of the beautiful princess!  Why, my child, you will
+make me fancy your fingers have grown very dull indeed, instead of
+sharp and delicate, if you talk such nonsense.  Mine is such an
+ugly hand I should be ashamed to show it to any but one that loved
+me.  But love makes all safe - doesn't it, Curdie?'
+
+'Well, Mother, all I can say is that I don't feel a roughness, or
+a crack, or a big joint, or a short nail.  Your hand feels just and
+exactly, as near as I can recollect, and it's not more than two
+hours since I had it in mine - well, I will say, very like indeed
+to that of the old princess.'
+
+'Go away, you flatterer,' said his mother, with a smile that showed
+how she prized the love that lay beneath what she took for its
+hyperbole.  The praise even which one cannot accept is sweet from
+a true mouth.  'If that is all your new gift can do, it won't make
+a warlock of you,' she added.
+
+'Mother, it tells me nothing but the truth,' insisted Curdie,
+'however unlike the truth it may seem.  it wants no gift to tell
+what anybody's outside hands are like.  But by it I know your
+inside hands are like the princess's.'
+
+'And I am sure the boy speaks true,' said Peter.  'He only says
+about your hand what I have known ever so long about yourself,
+Joan.  Curdie, your mother's foot is as pretty a foot as any lady's
+in the land, and where her hand is not so pretty it comes of
+killing its beauty for you and me, my boy.  And I can tell you
+more, Curdie.  I don't know much about ladies and gentlemen, but I
+am sure your inside mother must be a lady, as her hand tells you,
+and I will try to say how I know it.  This is how: when I forget
+myself looking at her as she goes about her work - and that happens
+often as I grow older - I fancy for a moment or two that I am a
+gentleman; and when I wake up from my little dream, it is only to
+feel the more strongly that I must do everything as a gentleman
+should.  I will try to tell you what I mean, Curdie.  If a
+gentleman - I mean a real gentleman, not a pretended one, of which
+sort they say there are a many above ground - if a real gentleman
+were to lose all his money and come down to work in the mines to
+get bread for his family - do you think, Curdie, he would work like
+the lazy ones?  Would he try to do as little as he could for his
+wages?  I know the sort of the true gentleman pretty near as well
+as he does himself.  And my wife, that's your mother, Curdie, she's
+a true lady, you may take my word for it, for it's she that makes
+me want to be a true gentleman.  Wife, the boy is in the right
+about your hand.'
+
+'Now, Father, let me feel yours,' said Curdie, daring a little
+more.
+
+'No, no, my boy,' answered Peter.  'I don't want to hear anything
+about my hand or my head or my heart.  I am what I am, and I hope
+growing better, and that's enough.  No, you shan't feel my hand. 
+You must go to bed, for you must start with the sun.'
+
+It was not as if Curdie had been leaving them to go to prison, or
+to make a fortune, and although they were sorry enough to lose him,
+they were not in the least heartbroken or even troubled at his
+going.
+
+As the princess had said he was to go like the poor man he was,
+Curdie came down in the morning from his little loft dressed in his
+working clothes.  His mother, who was busy getting his breakfast
+for him, while his father sat reading to her out of an old book,
+would have had him put on his holiday garments, which, she said,
+would look poor enough among the fine ladies and gentlemen he was
+going to.  But Curdie said he did not know that he was going among
+ladies and gentlemen, and that as work was better than play, his
+workday clothes must on the whole be better than his playday
+Clothes; and as his father accepted the argument, his mother gave
+in.  When he had eaten his breakfast, she took a pouch made of
+goatskin, with the long hair on it, filled it with bread and
+cheese, and hung it over his shoulder.  Then his father gave him a
+stick he had cut for him in the wood, and he bade them good-bye
+rather hurriedly, for he was afraid of breaking down.  As he went
+out he caught up his mattock and took it with him.  It had on the
+one side a pointed curve of strong steel for loosening the earth
+and the ore, and on the other a steel hammer for breaking the
+stones and rocks.  just as he crossed the threshold the sun showed
+the first segment of his disc above the horizon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 10
+The Heath
+
+
+He had to go to the bottom of the hill to get into a country he
+could cross, for the mountains to the north were full of
+precipices, and it would have been losing time to go that way.  Not
+until he had reached the king's house was it any use to turn
+northwards.  Many a look did he raise, as he passed it, to the dove
+tower, and as long as it was in sight, but he saw nothing of the
+lady of the pigeons.
+
+On and on he fared, and came in a few hours to a country where
+there were no mountains more - only hills, with great stretches of
+desolate heath.  Here and there was a village, but that brought him
+little pleasure, for the people were rougher and worse mannered
+than those in the mountains, and as he passed through, the children
+came behind and mocked him.
+
+'There's a monkey running away from the mines!' they cried. 
+Sometimes their parents came out and encouraged them.
+
+'He doesn't want to find gold for the king any longer - the
+lazybones!' they would say.  'He'll be well taxed down here though,
+and he won't like that either.'
+
+But it was little to Curdie that men who did not know what he was
+about should not approve of his proceedings.  He gave them a merry
+answer now and then, and held diligently on his way.  When they got
+so rude as nearly to make him angry, he would treat them as he used
+to treat the goblins, and sing his own songs to keep out their
+foolish noises.  Once a child fell as he turned to run away after
+throwing a stone at him.  He picked him up, kissed him, and carried
+him to his mother.  The woman had run out in terror when she saw
+the strange miner about, as she thought, to take vengeance on her
+boy.  When he put him in her arms, she blessed him, and Curdie went
+on his way rejoicing.
+
+And so the day went on, and the evening came, and in the middle of
+a great desolate heath he began to feel tired, and sat down under
+an ancient hawthorn, through which every now and then a lone wind
+that seemed to come from nowhere and to go nowhither sighed and
+hissed.  It was very old and distorted.  There was not another tree
+for miles all around.  it seemed to have lived so long, and to have
+been so torn and tossed by the tempests on that moor, that it had
+at last gathered a wind of its own, which got up now and then,
+tumbled itself about, and lay down again.
+
+Curdie had been so eager to get on that he had eaten nothing since
+his breakfast.  But he had had plenty of water, for Many little
+streams had crossed his path.  He now opened the wallet his mother
+had given him, and began to eat his supper.  The sun was setting. 
+A few clouds had gathered about the west, but there was not a
+single cloud anywhere else to be seen.
+
+Now Curdie did not know that this was a part of the country very
+hard to get through.  Nobody lived there, though many had tried to
+build in it.  Some died very soon.  Some rushed out of it.  Those
+who stayed longest went raving mad, and died a terrible death. 
+Such as walked straight on, and did not spend a night there, got
+through well and were nothing the worse.  But those who slept even
+a single night in it were sure to meet with something they could
+never forget, and which often left a mark everybody could read. 
+And that old hawthorn Might have been enough for a warning - it
+looked so like a human being dried up and distorted with age and
+suffering, with cares instead of loves, and things instead of
+thoughts.  Both it and the heath around it, which stretched on all
+sides as far as he could see, were so withered that it was
+impossible to say whether they were alive or not.
+
+And while Curdie ate there came a change.  Clouds had gathered over
+his head, and seemed drifting about in every direction, as if not
+'shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind,' but hunted in all
+directions by wolfish flaws across the plains of the sky.  The sun
+was going down in a storm of lurid crimson, and out of the west
+came a wind that felt red and hot the one moment, and cold and pale
+the other.  And very strangely it sang in the dreary old hawthorn
+tree, and very cheerily it blew about Curdie, now making him creep
+close up to the tree for shelter from its shivery cold, now fan
+himself with his cap, it was so sultry and stifling.  It seemed to
+come from the deathbed of the sun, dying in fever and ague.
+
+And as he gazed at the sun, now on the verge of the horizon, very
+large and very red and very dull - for though the clouds had broken
+away a dusty fog was spread all over the disc - Curdie saw
+something strange appear against it, moving about like a fly over
+its burning face.  This looked as if it were coming out of the
+sun's furnace heart, and was a living creature of some kind surely;
+but its shape was very uncertain, because the dazzle of the light
+all around melted the outlines.
+
+It was growing larger, it must be approaching!  It grew so rapidly
+that by the time the sun was half down its head reached the top of
+the arch, and presently nothing but its legs were to be seen,
+crossing and recrossing the face of the vanishing disc.
+
+When the sun was down he could see nothing of it more, but in a
+moment he heard its feet galloping over the dry crackling heather,
+and seeming to come straight for him.  He stood up, lifted his
+pickaxes and threw the hammer end over his shoulder: he was going
+to have a fight for his life!  And now it appeared again, vague,
+yet very awful, in the dim twilight the sun had left behind.  But
+just before it reached him, down from its four long legs it dropped
+flat on the ground, and came crawling towards him, wagging a huge
+tail as it came.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 11
+Lina
+
+
+IT was Lina.  All at once Curdie recognized her - the frightful
+creature he had seen at the princess's.  He dropped his pickaxes
+and held out his hand.  She crept nearer and nearer, and laid her
+chin in his palm, and he patted her ugly head.  Then she crept away
+behind the tree, and lay down, panting hard.
+Curdie did not much like the idea of her being behind him. 
+Horrible as she was to look at, she seemed to his mind more
+horrible when he was not looking at her.  But he remembered the
+child's hand, and never thought of driving her away.  Now and then
+he gave a glance behind him, and there she lay flat, with her eyes
+closed and her terrible teeth gleaming between her two huge
+forepaws.
+
+After his supper and his long day's journey it was no wonder Curdie
+should now be sleepy.  Since the sun set the air had been warm and
+pleasant.  He lay down under the tree, closed his eyes, and thought
+to sleep.  He found himself mistaken, however.  But although he
+could not sleep, he was yet aware of resting delightfully.
+
+Presently he heard a sweet sound of singing somewhere, such as he
+had never heard before - a singing as of curious birds far off,
+which drew nearer and nearer.  At length he heard their wings, and,
+opening his eyes, saw a number of very large birds, as it seemed,
+alighting around him, still singing.  It was strange to hear song
+from the throats of such big birds.
+
+And still singing, with large and round but not the less birdlike
+voices, they began to weave a strange dance about him, moving their
+wings in time with their legs.  But the dance seemed somehow to be
+troubled and broken, and to return upon itself in an eddy, in place
+of sweeping smoothly on.
+
+And he soon learned, in the low short growls behind him, the cause
+of the imperfection: they wanted to dance all round the tree, but
+Lina would not permit them to come on her side.
+
+Now curdie liked the birds, and did not altogether like Lina.  But
+neither, nor both together, made a reason for driving away the
+princess's creature.  Doubtless she had been the goblins' creature,
+but the last time he saw her was in the king's house and the dove
+tower, and at the old princess's feet.  So he left her to do as she
+would, and the dance of the birds continued only a semicircle,
+troubled at the edges, and returning upon itself.
+
+But their song and their motions, nevertheless, and the waving of
+their wings, began at length to make him very sleepy.  All the time
+he had kept doubting whether they could really be birds, and the
+sleepier he got, the more he imagined them something else, but he
+suspected no harm.
+
+Suddenly, just as he was sinking beneath the waves of slumber, he
+awoke in fierce pain.  The birds were upon him - all over him - and
+had begun to tear him with beaks and claws.  He had but time,
+however, to feel that he could not move under their weight, when
+they set up a hideous screaming, and scattered like a cloud.  Lina
+was among them, snapping and striking with her paws, while her tail
+knocked them over and over.  But they flew up, gathered, and
+descended on her in a swarm, perching upon every part of her body,
+so that he could see only a huge misshapen mass, which seemed to go
+rolling away into the darkness.  He got up and tried to follow, but
+could see nothing, and after wandering about hither and thither for
+some time, found himself again beside the hawthorn.  He feared
+greatly that the birds had been too much for Lina, and had torn her
+to pieces.  In a little while, however, she came limping back, and
+lay down in her old place.  Curdie also lay down, but, from the
+pain of his wounds, there was no sleep for him.  When the light
+came he found his clothes a good deal torn and his skin as well,
+but gladly wondered why the wicked birds had not at once attacked
+his eyes.  Then he turned, looking for Lina.  She rose and crept to
+him.  But she was in far worse plight than he - plucked and gashed
+and torn with the beaks and claws of the birds, especially about
+the bare part of her neck, so that she was pitiful to see.  And
+those worst wounds she could not reach to lick.
+
+'Poor Lina!' said Curdie, 'you got all those helping me.'
+
+She wagged her tail, and made it clear she understood him.  Then it
+flashed upon Curdie's mind that perhaps this was the companion the
+princess had promised him.  For the princess did so many things
+differently from what anybody looked for!  Lina was no beauty
+certainly, but already, the first night, she had saved his life.
+
+'Come along, Lina,' he said, 'we want water.'
+
+She put her nose to the earth, and after snuffing for a moment,
+darted off in a straight line.  Curdie followed.  The ground was so
+uneven, that after losing sight of her many times, at last he
+seemed to have lost her altogether.  In a few minutes, however, he
+came upon her waiting for him.  Instantly she darted off again. 
+After he had lost and found her again many times, he found her the
+last time lying beside a great stone.  As soon as he came up she
+began scratching at it with her paws.  When he had raised it an
+inch or two, she shoved in first her nose and then her teeth, and
+lifted with all the might of her neck.
+
+When at length between them they got it up, there was a beautiful
+little well.  He filled his cap with the clearest and sweetest
+water, and drank.  Then he gave to Lina, and she drank plentifully. 
+Next he washed her wounds very carefully.  And as he did so, he
+noted how much the bareness of her neck added to the strange
+repulsiveness of her appearance.  Then he bethought him of the
+goatskin wallet his mother had given him, and taking it from his
+shoulders, tried whether it would do to make a collar of for the
+poor animal.  He found there was just enough, and the hair so
+similar in colour to Lina's, that no one could suspect it of having
+grown somewhere else.
+
+He took his knife, ripped up the seams of the wallet, and began
+trying the skin to her neck.  it was plain she understood perfectly
+what he wished, for she endeavoured to hold her neck conveniently,
+turning it this way and that while he contrived, with his rather
+scanty material, to make the collar fit.  As his mother had taken
+care to provide him with needles and thread, he soon had a nice
+gorget ready for her.  He laced it on with one of his boot laces,
+which its long hair covered.  Poor Lina looked much better in it. 
+Nor could any one have called it a piece of finery.  If ever green
+eyes with a yellow light in them looked grateful, hers did.
+
+As they had no longer any bag to carry them in, Curdie and Lina now
+ate what was left of the provisions.  Then they set out again upon
+their journey.  For seven days it lasted.  They met with various
+adventures, and in all of them Lina proved so helpful, and so ready
+to risk her life for the sake of her companion, that Curdie grew
+not merely very fond but very trustful of her; and her ugliness,
+which at first only moved his pity, now actually increased his
+affection for her.  One day, looking at her stretched on the grass
+before him, he said:
+
+'Oh, Lina!  If the princess would but burn you in her fire of
+roses!'
+
+She looked up at him, gave a mournful whine like a dog, and laid
+her head on his feet.  What or how much he could not tell, but
+clearly she had gathered something from his words.
+
+
+CHAPTER 12
+More Creatures
+
+
+One day from morning till night they had been passing through a
+forest.  As soon as the sun was down Curdie began to be aware that
+there were more in it than themselves.  First he saw only the swift
+rush of a figure across the trees at some distance.  Then he saw
+another and then another at shorter intervals.  Then he saw others
+both farther off and nearer.  At last, missing Lina and looking
+about after her, he saw an appearance as marvellous as herself
+steal up to her, and begin conversing with her after some beast
+fashion which evidently she understood.
+
+Presently what seemed a quarrel arose between them, and stranger
+noises followed, mingled with growling.  At length it came to a
+fight, which had not lasted long, however, before the creature of
+the wood threw itself upon its back, and held up its paws to Lina. 
+She instantly walked on, and the creature got up and followed her. 
+They had not gone far before another strange animal appeared,
+approaching Lina, when precisely the same thing was repeated, the
+vanquished animal rising and following with the former.  Again, and
+yet again, and again, a fresh animal came up, seemed to be reasoned
+and certainly was fought with and overcome by Lina, until at last,
+before they were out of the wood, she was followed by forty-nine of
+the most grotesquely ugly, the most extravagantly abnormal animals
+imagination can conceive.  To describe them were a hopeless task.
+
+I knew a boy who used to make animals out of heather roots. 
+Wherever he could find four legs, he was pretty sure to find a head
+and a tail.  His beasts were a most comic menagerie, and right
+fruitful of laughter.  But they were not so grotesque and
+extravagant as Lina and her followers.  One of them, for instance,
+was like a boa constrictor walking on four little stumpy legs near
+its tail.  About the same distance from its head were two little
+wings, which it was forever fluttering as if trying to fly with
+them.  Curdie thought it fancied it did fly with them, when it was
+merely plodding on busily with its four little stumps.  How it
+managed to keep up he could not think, till once when he missed it
+from the group: the same moment he caught sight of something at a
+distance plunging at an awful serpentine rate through the trees,
+and presently, from behind a huge ash, this same creature fell
+again into the group, quietly waddling along on its four stumps.
+
+Watching it after this, he saw that, when it was not able to keep
+up any longer, and they had all got a little space ahead, it shot
+into the wood away from the route, and made a great round,
+serpentine alone in huge billows of motion, devouring the ground,
+undulating awfully, galloping as if it were all legs together, and
+its four stumps nowhere.  In this mad fashion it shot ahead, and,
+a few minutes after, toddled in again among the rest, walking
+peacefully and somewhat painfully on its few fours.
+
+From the time it takes to describe one of them it will be readily
+seen that it would hardly do to attempt a description of each of
+the forty-nine.  They were not a goodly company, but well worth
+contemplating, nevertheless; and Curdie had been too long used to
+the goblins' creatures in the mines and on the mountain, to feel
+the least uncomfortable at being followed by such a herd.  On the
+contrary, the marvellous vagaries of shape they manifested amused
+him greatly, and shortened the journey much.
+
+Before they were all gathered, however, it had got so dark that he
+could see some of them only a part at a time, and every now and
+then, as the company wandered on, he would be startled by some
+extraordinary limb or feature, undreamed of by him before,
+thrusting itself out of the darkness into the range of his ken. 
+Probably there were some of his old acquaintances among them,
+although such had been the conditions of semi-darkness, in which
+alone he had ever seen any of them, that it was not like he would
+be able to identify any of them.
+
+On they marched solemnly, almost in silence, for either with feet
+or voice the creatures seldom made any noise.  By the time they
+reached the outside of the wood it was morning twilight.  Into the
+open trooped the strange torrent of deformity, each one following
+Lina.  Suddenly she stopped, turned towards them, and said
+something which they understood, although to Curdie's ear the
+sounds she made seemed to have no articulation.  Instantly they all
+turned, and vanished in the forest, and Lina alone came trotting
+lithely and clumsily after her master.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 13
+The Baker's Wife
+
+
+They were now passing through a lovely country of hill and dale and
+rushing stream.  The hills were abrupt, with broken chasms for
+watercourses, and deep little valleys full of trees.  But now and
+then they came to a larger valley, with a fine river, whose level
+banks and the adjacent meadows were dotted all over with red and
+white kine, while on the fields above, that sloped a little to the
+foot of the hills, grew oats and barley and wheat, and on the sides
+of the hills themselves vines hung and chestnuts rose.
+
+They came at last to a broad, beautiful river, up which they must
+go to arrive at the city of Gwyntystorm, where the king had his
+court.  As they went the valley narrowed, and then the river, but
+still it was wide enough for large boats.  After this, while the
+river kept its size, the banks narrowed, until there was only room
+for a road between the river and the great Cliffs that overhung it. 
+At last river and road took a sudden turn, and lo! a great rock in
+the river, which dividing flowed around it, and on the top of the
+rock the city, with lofty walls and towers and battlements, and
+above the city the palace of the king, built like a strong castle. 
+But the fortifications had long been neglected, for the whole
+country was now under one king, and all men said there was no more
+need for weapons or walls.  No man pretended to love his neighbour,
+but every one said he knew that peace and quiet behaviour was the
+best thing for himself, and that, he said, was quite as useful, and
+a great deal more reasonable.  The city was prosperous and rich,
+and if everybody was not comfortable, everybody else said he ought
+to be.
+
+When Curdie got up opposite the mighty rock, which sparkled all
+over with crystals, he found a narrow bridge, defended by gates and
+portcullis and towers with loopholes.  But the gates stood wide
+open, and were dropping from their great hinges; the portcullis was
+eaten away with rust, and clung to the grooves evidently immovable;
+while the loopholed towers had neither floor nor roof, and their
+tops were fast filling up their interiors.  Curdie thought it a
+pity, if only for their old story, that they should be thus
+neglected.  But everybody in the city regarded these signs of decay
+as the best proof of the prosperity of the place.  Commerce and
+self-interest, they said, had got the better of violence, and the
+troubles of the past were whelmed in the riches that flowed in at
+their open gates.
+
+Indeed, there was one sect of philosophers in it which taught that
+it would be better to forget all the past history of the city, were
+it not that its former imperfections taught its present inhabitants
+how superior they and their times were, and enabled them to glory
+over their ancestors.  There were even certain quacks in the city
+who advertised pills for enabling people to think well of
+themselves, and some few bought of them, but most laughed, and
+said, with evident truth, that they did not require them.  Indeed,
+the general theme of discourse when they met was, how much wiser
+they were than their fathers.
+
+Curdie crossed the river, and began to ascend the winding road that
+led up to the city.  They met a good many idlers, and all stared at
+them.  It was no wonder they should stare, but there was an
+unfriendliness in their looks which Curdie did not like.  No one,
+however, offered them any molestation: Lina did not invite
+liberties.  After a long ascent, they reached the principal gate of
+the city and entered.
+
+The street was very steep, ascending toward the palace, which rose
+in great strength above all the houses.  just as they entered, a
+baker, whose shop was a few doors inside the gate, came out in his
+white apron, and ran to the shop of his friend, the barber, on the
+opposite side of the way.  But as he ran he stumbled and fell
+heavily.  Curdie hastened to help him up, and found he had bruised
+his forehead badly.  He swore grievously at the stone for tripping
+him up, declaring it was the third time he had fallen over it
+within the last month; and saying what was the king about that he
+allowed such a stone to stick up forever on the main street of his
+royal residence of Gwyntystorm!  What was a king for if he would
+not take care of his people's heads!  And he stroked his forehead
+tenderly.
+'Was it your head or your feet that ought to bear the blame of your
+fall?' asked Curdie.
+
+'Why, you booby of a miner!  My feet, of course,' answered
+
+
+the baker.
+
+'Nay, then,' said Curdie, 'the king can't be to blame.'
+
+'Oh, I see!' said the baker.  'You're laying a trap for me.  Of
+course, if you come to that, it was my head that ought to have
+looked after my feet.  But it is the king's part to look after us
+all, and have his streets smooth.'
+
+'Well, I don't see, said Curdie, 'why the king should take care of
+the baker, when the baker's head won't take care of the baker's
+feet.'
+
+'Who are you to make game of the king's baker?' cried the man in a
+rage.
+
+But, instead of answering, Curdie went up to the bump on the street
+which had repeated itself on the baker's head, and turning the
+hammer end of his mattock, struck it such a blow that it flew wide
+in pieces.  Blow after blow he struck until he had levelled it with
+the street.
+
+But out flew the barber upon him in a rage.
+'What do you break my window for, you rascal, with your pickaxe?'
+
+'I am very sorry,' said Curdie.  'It must have been a bit of stone
+that flew from my mattock.  I couldn't help it, you know.'
+
+'Couldn't help it!  A fine story!  What do you go breaking the rock
+for - the very rock upon which the city stands?'
+
+'Look at your friend's forehead,' said Curdie.  'See what a lump he
+has got on it with falling over that same stone.'
+
+'What's that to my window?' cried the barber.  'His forehead can
+mend itself; my poor window can't.'
+
+'But he's the king's baker,' said Curdie, more and more surprised
+at the man's anger.
+
+'What's that to me?  This is a free city.  Every man here takes
+care of himself, and the king takes care of us all.  I'll have the
+price of my window out of you, or the exchequer shall pay for it.'
+
+Something caught Curdie's eye.  He stooped, picked up a piece of
+the stone he had just broken, and put it in his pocket.
+
+'I suppose you are going to break another of my windows with that
+stone!' said the barber.
+
+'Oh no,' said Curdie.  'I didn't mean to break your window, and I
+certainly won't break another.'
+
+'Give me that stone,' said the barber.
+
+Curdie gave it him, and the barber threw it over the city wall.
+
+'I thought you wanted the stone,' said Curdie.
+
+'No, you fool!' answered the barber.  'What should I want with a
+stone?'
+
+Curdie stooped and picked up another.
+
+'Give me that stone,' said the barber.
+
+'No,' answered Curdie.  'You have just told me YOU don't want a
+stone, and I do.'
+
+The barber took Curdie by the collar.
+
+'Come, now!  You pay me for that window.'
+
+'How much?' asked Curdie.
+
+The barber said, 'A crown.'  But the baker, annoyed at the
+heartlessness of the barber, in thinking more of his broken window
+than the bump on his friend's forehead, interfered.
+
+'No, no,' he said to Curdie; 'don't you pay any such sum.  A little
+pane like that cost only a quarter.'
+
+'Well, to be certain,' said Curdie, 'I'll give a half.'  For he
+doubted the baker as well as the barber.  'Perhaps one day, if he
+finds he has asked too much, he will bring me the difference.'
+
+'Ha! ha!' laughed the barber.  'A fool and his money are soon
+parted.'
+
+But as he took the coin from Curdie's hand he grasped it in
+affected reconciliation and real satisfaction.  In Curdie's, his
+was the cold smooth leathery palm of a monkey.  He looked up,
+almost expecting to see him pop the money in his cheek; but he had
+not yet got so far as that, though he was well on the road to it:
+then he would have no other pocket.
+
+'I'm glad that stone is gone, anyhow,' said the baker.  'It was the
+bane of my life.  I had no idea how easy it was to remove it.  Give
+me your pickaxes young miner, and I will show you how a baker can
+make the stones fly.'
+
+He caught the tool out of Curdie's hand, and flew at one of the
+foundation stones of the gateway.  But he jarred his arm terribly,
+scarcely chipped the stone, dropped the mattock with a cry of pain,
+and ran into his own shop.  Curdie picked up his implement, and,
+looking after the baker, saw bread in the window, and followed him
+in.  But the baker, ashamed of himself, and thinking he was coming
+to laugh at him, popped out of the back door, and when Curdie
+entered, the baker's wife came from the bakehouse to serve him. 
+Curdie requested to know the price of a certain good-sized loaf.
+
+Now the baker's wife had been watching what had passed since first
+her husband ran out of the shop, and she liked the look of Curdie. 
+Also she was more honest than her husband.  Casting a glance to the
+back door, she replied:
+
+'That is not the best bread.  I will sell you a loaf of what we
+bake for ourselves.'  And when she had spoken she laid a finger on
+her lips.  'Take care of yourself in this place, MY son,' she
+added.  'They do not love strangers.  I was once a stranger here,
+and I know what I say.'  Then fancying she heard her husband, 'That
+is a strange animal you have,' she said, in a louder voice.
+
+'Yes,' answered Curdie.  'She is no beauty, but she is very good,
+and we love each other.  Don't we, Lina?'
+
+Lina looked up and whined.  Curdie threw her the half of his loaf,
+which she ate, while her master and the baker's wife talked a
+little.  Then the baker's wife gave them some water, and Curdie
+having paid for his loaf, he and Lina went up the street together.
+
+
+CHAPTER 14
+The Dogs of Gwyntystorm
+
+
+The steep street led them straight up to a large market place with
+butchers' shops, about which were many dogs.  The moment they
+caught sight of Lina, one and all they came rushing down upon her,
+giving her no chance of explaining herself.  When Curdie saw the
+dogs coming he heaved up his mattock over his shoulder, and was
+ready, if they would have it so.  Seeing him thus prepared to
+defend his follower, a great ugly bulldog flew at him.  With the
+first blow Curdie struck him through the brain and the brute fell
+dead at his feet.  But he could not at once recover his weapon,
+which stuck in the skull of his foe, and a huge mastiff, seeing him
+thus hampered, flew at him next.
+
+Now Lina, who had shown herself so brave upon the road thither, had
+grown shy upon entering the city, and kept always at Curdie's heel. 
+But it was her turn now.  The moment she saw her master in danger
+she seemed to go mad with rage.  As the mastiff jumped at Curdie's
+throat, Lina flew at him, seized him with her tremendous jaws, gave
+one roaring grind, and he lay beside the bulldog with his neck
+broken.  They were the best dogs in the market, after the judgement
+of the butchers of Gwyntystorm.  Down came their masters, knives in
+hand.
+
+Curdie drew himself up fearlessly, mattock on shoulder, and awaited
+their coming, while at his heel his awful attendant showed not only
+her outside fringe of icicle teeth, but a double row of right
+serviceable fangs she wore inside her mouth, and her green eyes
+flashed yellow as gold.  The butchers, not liking the look of
+either of them or of the dogs at their feet, drew back, and began
+to remonstrate in the manner of outraged men.
+
+'Stranger,' said the first, 'that bulldog is mine.'
+
+'Take him, then,' said Curdie, indignant.
+
+'You've killed him!'
+
+'Yes - else he would have killed me.'
+
+'That's no business of mine.'
+
+'No?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'That makes it the more mine, then.'
+
+'This sort of thing won't do, you know,' said the other butcher.
+
+'That's true,' said Curdie.
+'That's my mastiff,' said the butcher.
+
+'And as he ought to be,' said Curdie.
+
+'Your brute shall be burned alive for it,' said the butcher.
+
+'Not yet,' answered Curdie.  'We have done no wrong.  We were
+walking quietly up your street when your dogs flew at us.  If you
+don't teach your dogs how to treat strangers, you must take the
+consequences.'
+
+'They treat them quite properly,' said the butcher.  'What right
+has any one to bring an abomination like that into our city?  The
+horror is enough to make an idiot of every child in the place.'
+
+'We are both subjects of the king, and my poor animal can't help
+her looks.  How would you like to be served like that because you
+were ugly?  She's not a bit fonder of her looks than you are - only
+what can she do to change them?'
+
+'I'll do to change them,' said the fellow.
+
+Thereupon the butchers brandished their long knives and advanced,
+keeping their eyes upon Lina.
+
+'Don't be afraid, Lina,' cried Curdie.  'I'll kill one - you kill
+the other.'
+
+Lina gave a howl that might have terrified an army, and crouched
+ready to spring.  The butchers turned and ran.
+
+By this time a great crowd had gathered behind the butchers, and in
+it a number of boys returning from school who began to stone the
+strangers.  It was a way they had with man or beast they did not
+expect to make anything by.  One of the stones struck Lina; she
+caught it in her teeth and crunched it so that it fell in gravel
+from her mouth.  Some of the foremost of the crowd saw this, and it
+terrified them.  They drew back; the rest took fright from their
+retreat; the panic spread; and at last the crowd scattered in all
+directions.  They ran, and cried out, and said the devil and his
+dam were come to Gwyntystorm.  So Curdie and Lina were left
+standing unmolested in the market place.  But the terror of them
+spread throughout the city, and everybody began to shut and lock
+his door so that by the time the setting sun shone down the street,
+there was not a shop left open, for fear of the devil and his
+horrible dam.  But all the upper windows within sight of them were
+crowded with heads watching them where they stood lonely in the
+deserted market place.
+
+Curdie looked carefully all round, but could not see one open door. 
+He caught sight of the sign of an inn, however, and laying down his
+mattock, and telling Lina to take care of it, walked up to the door
+of it and knocked.  But the people in the house, instead of opening
+the door, threw things at him from the windows.  They would not
+listen to a word he said, but sent him back to Lina with the blood
+running down his face.  When Lina saw that she leaped up in a fury
+and was rushing at the house, into which she would certainly have
+broken; but Curdie called her, and made her lie down beside him
+while he bethought him what next he should do.
+
+'Lina,' he said, 'the people keep their gates open, but their
+houses and their hearts shut.'
+
+As if she knew it was her presence that had brought this trouble
+upon him, she rose and went round and round him, purring like a
+tigress, and rubbing herself against his legs.
+
+Now there was one little thatched house that stood squeezed in
+between two tall gables, and the sides of the two great houses shot
+out projecting windows that nearly met across the roof of the
+little one, so that it lay in the street like a doll's house.  In
+this house lived a poor old woman, with a grandchild.  And because
+she never gossiped or quarrelled, or chaffered in the market, but
+went without what she could not afford, the people called her a
+witch, and would have done her many an ill turn if they had not
+been afraid of her.
+
+Now while Curdie was looking in another direction the door opened,
+and out came a little dark-haired, black-eyed, gypsy-looking child,
+and toddled across the market place toward the outcasts.  The
+moment they saw her coming, Lina lay down flat on the road, and
+with her two huge forepaws covered her mouth, while Curdie went to
+meet her, holding out his arms.  The little one came straight to
+him, and held up her mouth to be kissed.  Then she took him by the
+hand, and drew him toward the house, and Curdie yielded to the
+silent invitation.
+
+But when Lina rose to follow, the child shrank from her, frightened
+a little.  Curdie took her up, and holding her on one arm, patted
+Lina with the other hand.  Then the child wanted also to pat doggy,
+as she called her by a right bountiful stretch of courtesy, and
+having once patted her, nothing would serve but Curdie must let her
+have a ride on doggy.  So he set her on Lina's back, holding her
+hand, and she rode home in merry triumph, all unconscious of the
+hundreds of eyes staring at her foolhardiness from the windows
+about the market place, or the murmur of deep disapproval that rose
+from as many lips.
+
+At the door stood the grandmother to receive them.  She caught the
+child to her bosom with delight at her courage, welcomed Curdie,
+and showed no dread of Lina.  Many were the significant nods
+exchanged, and many a one said to another that the devil and the
+witch were old friends.  But the woman was only a wise woman, who,
+having seen how Curdie and Lina behaved to each other, judged from
+that what sort they were, and so made them welcome to her house. 
+She was not like her fellow townspeople, for that they were
+strangers recommended them to her.
+
+The moment her door was shut the other doors began to open, and
+soon there appeared little groups here and there about a threshold,
+while a few of the more courageous ventured out upon the square -
+all ready to make for their houses again, however, upon the least
+sign of movement in the little thatched one.
+
+The baker and the barber had joined one of these groups, and were
+busily wagging their tongues against Curdie and his horrible beast.
+
+'He can't be honest,' said the barber; 'for he paid me double the
+worth of the pane he broke in my window.'
+
+And then he told them how Curdie broke his window by breaking a
+stone in the street with his hammer.  There the baker struck in.
+
+'Now that was the stone,' said he, 'over which I had fallen three
+times within the last month: could it be by fair means he broke
+that to pieces at the first blow?  Just to make up my mind on that
+point I tried his own hammer against a stone in the gate; it nearly
+broke both my arms, and loosened half the teeth in my head!'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 15
+Derba and Barbara
+
+Meantime the wanderers were hospitably entertained by the old woman
+and her grandchild and they were all very comfortable and happy
+together.  Little Barbara sat upon Curdie's knee, and he told her
+stories about the mines and his adventures in them.  But he never
+mentioned the king or the princess, for all that story was hard to
+believe.  And he told her about his mother and father, and how good
+they were.  And Derba sat and listened.  At last little Barbara
+fell asleep in Curdie's arms, and her grandmother carried her to
+bed.
+
+It was a poor little house, and Derba gave up her own room to
+Curdie because he was honest and talked wisely.  Curdie saw how it
+was, and begged her to allow him to lie on the floor, but she would
+not hear of it.
+
+In the night he was waked by Lina pulling at him.  As soon as he
+spoke to her she ceased, and Curdie, listening, thought he heard
+someone trying to get in.  He rose, took his mattock, and went
+about the house, listening and watching; but although he heard
+noises now at one place now at another, he could not think what
+they meant for no one appeared.  Certainly, considering how she had
+frightened them all in the day, it was not likely any one would
+attack Lina at night.  By and by the noises ceased, and Curdie went
+back to his bed, and slept undisturbed.
+
+In the morning, however, Derba came to him in great agitation, and
+said they had fastened up the door, so that she could not get out. 
+Curdie rose immediately and went with her: they found that not only
+the door, but every window in the house was so secured on the
+outside that it was impossible to open one of them without using
+great force.  Poor Derba looked anxiously in Curdie's face.  He
+broke out laughing.
+
+'They are much mistaken,' he said, 'if they fancy they could keep
+Lina and a miner in any house in Gwyntystorm - even if they built
+up doors and windows.'
+
+With that he shouldered his mattock.  But Derba begged him not to
+make a hole in her house just yet.  She had plenty for breakfast,
+she said, and before it was time for dinner they would know what
+the people meant by it.
+
+And indeed they did.  For within an hour appeared one of the chief
+magistrates of the city, accompanied by a score of soldiers with
+drawn swords, and followed by a great multitude of people,
+requiring the miner and his brute to yield themselves, the one that
+he might be tried for the disturbance he had occasioned and the
+injury he had committed, the other that she might be roasted alive
+for her part in killing two valuable and harmless animals belonging
+to worthy citizens.  The summons was preceded and followed by
+flourish of trumpet, and was read with every formality by the city
+marshal himself.
+
+The moment he ended, Lina ran into the little passage, and stood
+opposite the door.
+
+'I surrender,' cried Curdie.
+
+'Then tie up your brute, and give her here.'
+
+'No, no,' cried Curdie through the door.  'I surrender; but I'm not
+going to do your hangman's work.  If you want MY dog, you must take
+her.'
+
+'Then we shall set the house on fire, and burn witch and all.'
+
+'It will go hard with us but we shall kill a few dozen of you
+first,' cried Curdie.  'We're not the least afraid of you.'  With
+that Curdie turned to Derba, and said:
+
+'Don't be frightened.  I have a strong feeling that all will be
+well.  Surely no trouble will come to you for being good to
+strangers.'
+
+'But the poor dog!' said Derba.
+
+Now Curdie and Lina understood each other more than a little by
+this time, and not only had he seen that she understood the
+proclamation, but when she looked up at him after it was read, it
+was with such a grin, and such a yellow flash, that he saw also she
+was determined to take care of herself.
+'The dog will probably give you reason to think a little more of
+her ere long,' he answered.  'But now,' he went on, 'I fear I must
+hurt your house a little.  I have great confidence, however, that
+I shall be able to make up to you for it one day.'
+
+'Never mind the house, if only you can get safe off,' she answered. 
+'I don't think they will hurt this precious lamb,' she added,
+clasping little Barbara to her bosom.  'For myself, it is all one;
+I am ready for anything.'
+
+'it is but a little hole for Lina I want to make,' said Curdie. 
+'She can creep through a much smaller one than you would think.'
+
+Again he took his mattock, and went to the back wall.
+
+'They won't burn the house,' he said to himself.  'There is too
+good a one on each side of it.'
+
+The tumult had kept increasing every moment, and the city marshal
+had been shouting, but Curdie had not listened to him.  When now
+they heard the blows of his mattock, there went up a great cry, and
+the people taunted the soldiers that they were afraid of a dog and
+his miner.  The soldiers therefore made a rush at the door, and cut
+its fastenings.
+
+The moment they opened it, out leaped Lina, with a roar so
+unnaturally horrible that the sword arms of the soldiers dropped by
+their sides, paralysed with the terror of that cry; the crowd fled
+in every direction, shrieking and yelling with mortal dismay; and
+without even knocking down with her tail, not to say biting a man
+of them with her pulverizing jaws, Lina vanished - no one knew
+whither, for not one of the crowd had had courage to look upon her.
+
+The moment she was gone, Curdie advanced and gave himself up.  The
+soldiers were so filled with fear, shame, and chagrin, that they
+were ready to kill him on the spot.  But he stood quietly facing
+them, with his mattock on his shoulder; and the magistrate wishing
+to examine him, and the people to see him made an example of, the
+soldiers had to content themselves with taking him.  Partly for
+derision, partly to hurt him, they laid his mattock against his
+back, and tied his arms to it.
+
+They led him up a very steep street, and up another still, all the
+crowd following.  The king's palace-castle rose towering above
+them; but they stopped before they reached it, at a low-browed door
+in a great, dull, heavy-looking building.
+
+The city marshal opened it with a key which hung at his girdle, and
+ordered Curdie to enter.  The place within was dark as night, and
+while he was feeling his way with his feet, the marshal gave him a
+rough push.  He fell, and rolled once or twice over, unable to help
+himself because his hands were tied behind him.
+
+It was the hour of the magistrate's second and more important
+breakfast, and until that was over he never found himself capable
+of attending to a case with concentration sufficient to the
+distinguishing of the side upon which his own advantage lay; and
+hence was this respite for Curdie, with time to collect his
+thoughts.  But indeed he had very few to collect, for all he had to
+do, so far as he could see, was to wait for what would come next. 
+Neither had he much power to collect them, for he was a good deal
+shaken.
+
+in a few minutes he discovered, to his great relief, that, from the
+projection of the pick end of his mattock beyond his body, the fall
+had loosened the ropes tied round it.  He got one hand disengaged,
+and then the other; and presently stood free, with his good mattock
+once more in right serviceable relation to his arms and legs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 16
+The Mattock
+
+
+While The magistrate reinvigorated his selfishness with a greedy
+breakfast, Curdie found doing nothing in the dark rather tiresome
+work.  it was useless attempting to think what he should do next,
+seeing the circumstances in which he was presently to find himself
+were altogether unknown to him.  So he began to think about his
+father and mother in their little cottage home, high in the clear
+air of the open Mountainside, and the thought, instead of making
+his dungeon gloomier by the contrast, made a light in his soul that
+destroyed the power of darkness and captivity.
+
+But he was at length startled from his waking dream by a swell in
+the noise outside.  All the time there had been a few of the more
+idle of the inhabitants about the door, but they had been rather
+quiet.  Now, however, the sounds of feet and voices began to grow,
+and grew so rapidly that it was plain a multitude was gathering. 
+For the people of Gwyntystorm always gave themselves an hour of
+pleasure after their second breakfast, and what greater pleasure
+could they have than to see a stranger abused by the officers of
+justice?
+
+The noise grew till it was like the roaring of the sea, and that
+roaring went on a long time, for the magistrate, being a great man,
+liked to know that he was waited for: it added to the enjoyment of
+his breakfast, and, indeed, enabled him to eat a little more after
+he had thought his powers exhausted.
+
+But at length, in the waves of the human noises rose a bigger wave,
+and by the running and shouting and outcry, Curdie learned that the
+magistrate was approaching.
+
+Presently came the sound of the great rusty key in the lock, which
+yielded with groaning reluctance; the door was thrown back, the
+light rushed in, and with it came the voice of the city marshal,
+calling upon Curdie, by many legal epithets opprobrious, to come
+forth and be tried for his life, inasmuch as he had raised a tumult
+in His Majesty's city of Gwyntystorm, troubled the hearts of the
+king's baker and barber, and slain the faithful dogs of His
+Majesty's well-beloved butchers.
+
+He was still reading, and Curdie was still seated in the brown
+twilight of the vault, not listening, but pondering with himself
+how this king the city marshal talked of could be the same with the
+Majesty he had seen ride away on his grand white horse with the
+Princess Irene on a cushion before him, when a scream of agonized
+terror arose on the farthest skirt of the crowd, and, swifter than
+flood or flame, the horror spread shrieking.  In a moment the air
+was filled with hideous howling, cries of unspeakable dismay, and
+the multitudinous noise of running feet.  The next moment, in at
+the door of the vault bounded Lina, her two green eyes flaming
+yellow as sunflowers, and seeming to light up the dungeon.  With
+one spring she threw herself at Curdie's feet, and laid her head
+upon them panting.  Then came a rush of two or three soldiers
+darkening the doorway, but it was only to lay hold of the key, pull
+the door to, and lock it; so that once more Curdie and Lina were
+prisoners together.
+
+For a few moments Lina lay panting hard: it is breathless work
+leaping and roaring both at once, and that in a way to scatter
+thousands of people.  Then she jumped up, and began snuffing about
+all over the place; and Curdie saw what he had never seen before -
+two faint spots of light cast from her eyes upon the ground, one on
+each side of her snuffing nose.  He got out his tinder box - a
+miner is never without one - and lighted a precious bit of candle
+he carried in a division of it just for a moment, for he must not
+waste it.
+
+The light revealed a vault without any window or other opening than
+the door.  It was very old and much neglected.  The mortar had
+vanished from between the stones, and it was half filled with a
+heap of all sorts of rubbish, beaten down in the middle, but looser
+at the sides; it sloped from the door to the foot of the opposite
+wall: evidently for a long time the vault had been left open, and
+every sort of refuse thrown into it.  A single minute served for
+the survey, so little was there to note.
+
+Meantime, down in the angle between the back wall and the base of
+the heap Lina was scratching furiously with all the eighteen great
+strong claws of her mighty feet.
+
+'Ah, ha!' said Curdie to himself, catching sight of her, 'if only
+they will leave us long enough to ourselves!'
+
+With that he ran to the door, to see if there was any fastening on
+the inside.  There was none: in all its long history it never had
+had one.  But a few blows of the right sort, now from the one, now
+from the other end of his mattock, were as good as any bolt, for
+they so ruined the lock that no key could ever turn in it again. 
+Those who heard them fancied he was trying to get out, and laughed
+spitefully.  As soon as he had done, he extinguished his candle,
+and went down to Lina.
+
+She had reached the hard rock which formed the floor of the
+dungeon, and was now clearing away the earth a little wider. 
+Presently she looked up in his face and whined, as much as to say,
+'My paws are not hard enough to get any farther.'
+
+'Then get out of my way, Lina,' said Curdie, and mind you keep your
+eyes shining, for fear I should hit you.'
+
+So saying, he heaved his mattock, and assailed with the hammer end
+of it the spot she had cleared.
+
+The rock was very hard, but when it did break it broke in
+good-sized pieces.  Now with hammer, now with pick, he worked till
+he was weary, then rested, and then set to again.  He could not
+tell how the day went, as he had no light but the lamping of Lina's
+eyes.  The darkness hampered him greatly, for he would not let Lina
+come close enough to give him all the light she could, lest he
+should strike her.  So he had, every now and then, to feel with his
+hands to know how he was getting on, and to discover in what
+direction to strike: the exact spot was a mere imagination.
+
+He was getting very tired and hungry, and beginning to lose heart
+a little, when out of the ground, as if he had struck a spring of
+it, burst a dull, gleamy, lead-coloured light, and the next moment
+he heard a hollow splash and echo.  A piece of rock had fallen out
+of the floor, and dropped into water beneath.  Already Lina, who
+had been lying a few yards off all the time he worked, was on her
+feet and peering through the hole.  Curdie got down on his hands
+and knees, and looked.  They were over what seemed a natural cave
+in the rock, to which apparently the river had access, for, at a
+great distance below, a faint light was gleaming upon water.  If
+they could but reach it, they might get out; but even if it was
+deep enough, the height was very dangerous.  The first thing,
+whatever might follow, was to make the hole larger.  It was
+comparatively easy to break away the sides of it, and in the course
+of another hour he had it large enough to get through.
+
+And now he must reconnoitre.  He took the rope they had tied him
+with - for Curdie's hindrances were always his furtherance - and
+fastened one end of it by a slipknot round the handle of his
+pickaxes then dropped the other end through, and laid the pickaxe
+so that, when he was through himself, and hanging on the edge, he
+could place it across the hole to support him on the rope.  This
+done, he took the rope in his hands, and, beginning to descend,
+found himself in a narrow cleft widening into a cave.  His rope was
+not very long, and would not do much to lessen the force of his
+fall - he thought to himself - if he should have to drop into the
+water; but he was not more than a couple of yards below the dungeon
+when he spied an opening on the opposite side of the cleft: it
+might be but a shadow hole, or it might lead them out.  He dropped
+himself a little below its level, gave the rope a swing by pushing
+his feet against the side of the cleft, and so penduled himself
+into it.  Then he laid a stone on the end of the rope that it
+should not forsake him, called to Lina, whose yellow eyes were
+gleaming over the mattock grating above, to watch there till he
+returned, and went cautiously in.  It proved a passage, level for
+some distance, then sloping gently up.  He advanced carefully,
+feeling his way as he went.  At length he was stopped by a door -
+a small door, studded with iron.  But the wood was in places so
+much decayed that some of the bolts had dropped out, and he felt
+sure of being able to open it.  He returned, therefore, to fetch
+Lina and his mattock.  Arrived at the cleft, his strong miner arms
+bore him swiftly up along the rope and through the hole into the
+dungeon.  There he undid the rope from his mattock, and making Lina
+take the end of it in her teeth, and get through the hole, he
+lowered her - it was all he could do, she was so heavy.  When she
+came opposite the passage, with a slight push of her tail she shot
+herself into it, and let go the rope, which Curdie drew up.
+
+Then he lighted his candle and searching in the rubbish found a bit
+of iron to take the place of his pickaxe across the hole.  Then he
+searched again in the rubbish, and found half an old shutter.  This
+he propped up leaning a little over the hole, with a bit of stick,
+and heaped against the back of it a quantity of the loosened earth. 
+Next he tied his mattock to the end of the rope, dropped it, and
+let it hang.  Last, he got through the hole himself, and pulled
+away the propping stick, so that the shutter fell over the hole
+with a quantity of earth on the top of it.  A few motions of hand
+over hand, and he swung himself and his mattock into the passage
+beside Lina.
+
+There he secured the end of the rope, and they went on together to
+the door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 17
+The Wine Cellar
+
+
+He lighted his candle and examined it.  Decayed and broken as it
+was, it was strongly secured in its place by hinges on the one
+side, and either lock or bolt, he could not tell which, on the
+other.  A brief use of his pocket-knife was enough to make room for
+his hand and arm to get through, and then he found a great iron
+bolt - but so rusty that he could not move it.
+
+Lina whimpered.  He took his knife again, made the hole bigger, and
+stood back.  In she shot her small head and long neck, seized the
+bolt with her teeth, and dragged it, grating and complaining, back. 
+A push then opened the door.  it was at the foot of a short flight
+of steps.  They ascended, and at the top Curdie found himself in a
+space which, from the echo to his stamp, appeared of some size,
+though of what sort he could not at first tell, for his hands,
+feeling about, came upon nothing.  Presently, however, they fell on
+a great thing: it was a wine cask.
+
+He was just setting out to explore the place thoroughly, when he
+heard steps coming down a stair.  He stood still, not knowing
+whether the door would open an inch from his nose or twenty yards
+behind his back.  It did neither.  He heard the key turn in the
+lock, and a stream of light shot in, ruining the darkness, about
+fifteen yards away on his right.
+
+A man carrying a candle in one hand and a large silver flagon in
+the other, entered, and came toward him.  The light revealed a row
+of huge wine casks, that stretched away into the darkness of the
+other end of the long vault.  Curdie retreated into the recess of
+the stair, and peeping round the corner of it, watched him,
+thinking what he could do to prevent him from locking them in.  He
+came on and on, until curdie feared he would pass the recess and
+see them.  He was just preparing to rush out, and master him before
+he should give alarm, not in the least knowing what he should do
+next, when, to his relief, the man stopped at the third cask from
+where he stood.  He set down his light on the top of it, removed
+what seemed a large vent-peg, and poured into the cask a quantity
+of something from the flagon.  Then he turned to the next cask,
+drew some wine, rinsed the flagon, threw the wine away, drew and
+rinsed and threw away again, then drew and drank, draining to the
+bottom.  Last of all, he filled the flagon from the cask he had
+first visited, replaced then the vent-peg, took up his candle, and
+turned toward the door.
+
+'There is something wrong here!' thought Curdie.
+
+'Speak to him, Lina,' he whispered.
+
+The sudden howl she gave made Curdie himself start and tremble for
+a moment.  As to the man, he answered Lina's with another horrible
+howl, forced from him by the convulsive shudder of every muscle of
+his body, then reeled gasping to and fro, and dropped his candle. 
+But just as Curdie expected to see him fall dead he recovered
+himself, and flew to the door, through which he darted, leaving it
+open behind him.  The moment he ran, Curdie stepped out, picked up
+the candle still alight, sped after him to the door, drew out the
+key, and then returned to the stair and waited.  in a few minutes
+he heard the sound of many feet and voices.  Instantly he turned
+the tap of the cask from which the man had been drinking, set the
+candle beside it on the floor, went down the steps and out of the
+little door, followed by Lina, and closed it behind them.
+
+Through the hole in it he could see a little, and hear all.  He
+could see how the light of many candles filled the place, and could
+hear how some two dozen feet ran hither and thither through the
+echoing cellar; he could hear the clash of iron, probably spits and
+pokers, now and then; and at last heard how, finding nothing
+remarkable except the best wine running to waste, they all turned
+on the butler and accused him of having fooled them with a drunken
+dream.  He did his best to defend himself, appealing to the
+evidence of their own senses that he was as sober as they were. 
+They replied that a fright was no less a fright that the cause was
+imaginary, and a dream no less a dream that the fright had waked
+him from it.
+
+When he discovered, and triumphantly adduced as corroboration, that
+the key was gone from the door, they said it merely showed how
+drunk he had been - either that or how frightened, for he had
+certainly dropped it.  In vain he protested that he had never taken
+it out of the lock - that he never did when he went in, and
+certainly had not this time stopped to do so when he came out; they
+asked him why he had to go to the cellar at such a time of the day,
+and said it was because he had already drunk all the wine that was
+left from dinner.  He said if he had dropped the key, the key was
+to be found, and they must help him to find it.  They told him they
+wouldn't move a peg for him.  He declared, with much language, he
+would have them all turned out of the king's service.  They said
+they would swear he was drunk.
+
+And so positive were they about it, that at last the butler himself
+began to think whether it was possible they could be in the right. 
+For he knew that sometimes when he had been drunk he fancied things
+had taken place which he found afterward could not have happened. 
+Certain of his fellow servants, however, had all the time a doubt
+whether the cellar goblin had not appeared to him, or at least
+roared at him, to protect the wine.  in any case nobody wanted to
+find the key for him; nothing could please them better than that
+the door of the wine cellar should never more be locked.  By
+degrees the hubbub died away, and they departed, not even pulling
+to the door, for there was neither handle nor latch to it.
+
+As soon as they were gone, Curdie returned, knowing now that they
+were in the wine cellar of the palace, as indeed, he had suspected. 
+Finding a pool of wine in a hollow of the floor, Lina lapped it up
+eagerly: she had had no breakfast, and was now very thirsty as well
+as hungry.  Her master was in a similar plight, for he had but just
+begun to eat when the magistrate arrived with the soldiers.  If
+only they were all in bed, he thought, that he might find his way
+to the larder!  For he said to himself that, as he was sent there
+by the young princess's great-great-grandmother to serve her or her
+father in some way, surely he must have a right to his food in the
+Palace, without which he could do nothing.  He would go at once and
+reconnoitre.
+
+So he crept up the stair that led from the cellar.  At the top was
+a door, opening on a long passage dimly lighted by a lamp.  He told
+Lina to lie down upon the stair while he went on.  At the end of
+the passage he found a door ajar, and, peering through, saw right
+into a great stone hall, where a huge fire was blazing, and through
+which men in the king's livery were constantly coming and going. 
+Some also in the same livery were lounging about the fire.  He
+noted that their colours were the same as those he himself, as
+king's miner, wore; but from what he had seen and heard of the
+habits of the place, he could not hope they would treat him the
+better for that.
+
+The one interesting thing at the moment, however, was the plentiful
+supper with which the table was spread.  It was something at least
+to stand in sight of food, and he was unwilling to turn his back on
+the prospect so long as a share in it was not absolutely hopeless. 
+Peeping thus, he soon made UP his mind that if at any moment the
+hall should be empty, he would at that moment rush in and attempt
+to carry off a dish.  That he might lose no time by indecision, he
+selected a large pie upon which to pounce instantaneously.  But
+after he had watched for some minutes, it did not seem at all
+likely the chance would arrive before suppertime, and he was just
+about to turn away and rejoin Lina, when he saw that there was not
+a person in the place.  Curdie never made up his mind and then
+hesitated.  He darted in, seized the pie, and bore it swiftly and
+noiselessly to the cellar stair.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 18
+The King's Kitchen
+
+
+Back to the cellar Curdie and Lina sped with their booty, where,
+seated on the steps, Curdie lighted his bit of candle for a moment. 
+A very little bit it was now, but they did not waste much of it in
+examination of the pie; that they effected by a more summary
+process.  Curdie thought it the nicest food he had ever tasted, and
+between them they soon ate it up.  Then Curdie would have thrown
+the dish along with the bones into the water, that there might be
+no traces of them; but he thought of his mother, and hid it
+instead; and the very next minute they wanted it to draw some wine
+into.  He was careful it should be from the cask of which he had
+seen the butler drink.
+
+Then they sat down again upon the steps, and waited until the house
+should be quiet.  For he was there to do something, and if it did
+not come to him in the cellar, he must go to meet it in other
+places.  Therefore, lest he should fall asleep, he set the end of
+the helve of his mattock on the ground, and seated himself on the
+cross part, leaning against the wall, so that as long as he kept
+awake he should rest, but the moment he began to fall asleep he
+must fall awake instead.  He quite expected some of the servants
+would visit the cellar again that night, but whether it was that
+they were afraid of each other, or believed more of the butler's
+story than they had chosen to allow, not one of them appeared.
+
+When at length he thought he might venture, he shouldered his
+mattock and crept up the stair.  The lamp was out in the passage,
+but he could not miss his way to the servants' hall.  Trusting to
+Lina's quickness in concealing herself, he took her with him.
+
+When they reached the hall they found it quiet and nearly dark. 
+The last of the great fire was glowing red, but giving little
+light.  Curdie stood and warmed himself for a few moments: miner as
+he was, he had found the cellar cold to sit in doing nothing; and
+standing thus he thought of looking if there were any bits of
+candle about.  There were many candlesticks on the supper table,
+but to his disappointment and indignation their candles seemed to
+have been all left to burn out, and some of them, indeed, he found
+still hot in the neck.
+
+Presently, one after another, he came upon seven men fast asleep,
+most of them upon tables, one in a chair, and one on the floor. 
+They seemed, from their shape and colour, to have eaten and drunk
+so much that they might be burned alive without wakening.  He
+grasped the hand of each in succession,and found two ox hoofs,
+three pig hoofs, one concerning which he could not be sure whether
+it was the hoof of a donkey or a pony, and one dog's paw.  'A nice
+set of people to be about a king!' thought Curdie to himself, and
+turned again to his candle hunt.  He did at last find two or three
+little pieces, and stowed them away in his pockets.  They now left
+the hall by another door, and entered a short passage, which led
+them to the huge kitchen, vaulted and black with smoke.  There,
+too, the fire was still burning, so that he was able to see a
+little of the state of things in this quarter also.
+
+The place was dirty and disorderly.  In a recess, on a heap of
+brushwood, lay a kitchen-maid, with a table cover around her, and
+a skillet in her hand: evidently she too had been drinking.  In
+another corner lay a page, and Curdie noted how like his dress was
+to his own.  in the cinders before the hearth were huddled three
+dogs and five cats, all fast asleep, while the rats were running
+about the floor.  Curdie's heart ached to think of the lovely
+child-princess living over such a sty.  The mine was a paradise to
+a palace with such servants in it.
+
+Leaving the kitchen, he got into the region of the sculleries. 
+There horrible smells were wandering about, like evil spirits that
+come forth with the darkness.  He lighted a candle - but only to
+see ugly sights.  Everywhere was filth and disorder.  Mangy
+turnspit dogs were lying about, and grey rats were gnawing at
+refuse in the sinks.  It was like a hideous dream.  He felt as if
+he should never get out of it, and longed for one glimpse of his
+mother's poor little kitchen, so clean and bright and airy. 
+Turning from it at last in miserable disgust, he almost ran back
+through the kitchen, re-entered the hall, and crossed it to another
+door.
+
+It opened upon a wider passage leading to an arch in a stately
+corridor, all its length lighted by lamps in niches.  At the end of
+it was a large and beautiful hall, with great pillars.  There sat
+three men in the royal livery, fast asleep, each in a great
+armchair, with his feet on a huge footstool.  They looked like
+fools dreaming themselves kings; and Lina looked as if she longed
+to throttle them.  At one side of the hall was the grand staircase,
+and they went up.
+Everything that now met Curdie's eyes was rich - not glorious like
+the splendours of the mountain cavern, but rich and soft - except
+where, now and then, some rough old rib of the ancient fortress
+came through, hard and discoloured.  Now some dark bare arch of
+stone, now some rugged and blackened pillar, now some huge beam,
+brown with the smoke and dust of centuries, looked like a thistle
+in the midst of daisies, or a rock in a smooth lawn.
+
+They wandered about a good while, again and again finding
+themselves where they had been before.  Gradually, however, Curdie
+was gaining some idea of the place.  By and by Lina began to look
+frightened, and as they went on Curdie saw that she looked more and
+more frightened.  Now, by this time he had come to understand that
+what made her look frightened was always the fear of frightening,
+and he therefore concluded they must be drawing nigh to somebody.
+
+At last, in a gorgeously painted gallery, he saw a curtain of
+crimson, and on the curtain a royal crown wrought in silks and
+stones.  He felt sure this must be the king's chamber, and it was
+here he was wanted; or, if it was not the place he was bound for,
+something would meet him and turn him aside; for he had come to
+think that so long as a man wants to do right he may go where he
+can: when he can go no farther, then it is not the way.  'Only,'
+said his father, in assenting to the theory, 'he must really want
+to do right, and not merely fancy he does.  He must want it with
+his heart and will, and not with his rag of a tongue.'
+So he gently lifted the corner of the curtain, and there behind it
+was a half-open door.  He entered, and the moment he was in, Lina
+stretched herself along the threshold between the curtain and the
+door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 19
+The King's Chamber
+
+
+He found himself in a large room, dimly lighted by a silver lamp
+that hung from the ceiling.  Far at the other end was a great bed,
+surrounded with dark heavy curtains.  He went softly toward it, his
+heart beating fast.  It was a dreadful thing to be alone in the
+king's chamber at the dead of night.  To gain courage he had to
+remind himself of the beautiful princess who had sent him.
+
+But when he was about halfway to the bed, a figure appeared from
+the farther side of it, and came towards him, with a hand raised
+warningly.  He stood still.  The light was dim, and he could
+distinguish little more than the outline of a young girl.  But
+though the form he saw was much taller than the princess he
+remembered, he never doubted it was she.  For one thing, he knew
+that most girls would have been frightened to see him there in the
+dead of the night, but like a true princess, and the princess he
+used to know, she walked straight on to meet him.  As she came she
+lowered the hand she had lifted, and laid the forefinger of it upon
+her lips.  Nearer and nearer, quite near, close up to him she came,
+then stopped, and stood a moment looking at him.
+
+'You are Curdie,' she said.
+
+'And you are the Princess Irene,' he returned.
+
+'Then we know each other still,' she said, with a sad smile of
+pleasure.  'You will help me.'
+
+'That I will,' answered Curdie.  He did not say, 'If I can';
+
+for he knew that what he was sent to do, that he could do.  'May I
+kiss your hand, little Princess?'
+
+She was only between nine and ten, though indeed she looked several
+years older, and her eyes almost those of a grown woman, for she
+had had terrible trouble of late.
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+'I am not the little princess any more.  I have grown up since I
+saw you last, Mr Miner.'
+
+The smile which accompanied the words had in it a strange mixture
+of playfulness and sadness.
+'So I see, Miss Princess,' returned Curdie; 'and therefore, being
+more of a princess, you are the more my princess.  Here I am, sent
+by your great-great-grandmother, to be your servant.  May I ask why
+you are up so late, Princess?'
+
+'Because my father wakes so frightened, and I don't know what he
+would do if he didn't find me by his bedside.  There! he's waking
+now.'
+
+She darted off to the side of the bed she had come from.
+
+Curdie stood where he was.
+
+A voice altogether unlike what he remembered of the mighty, noble
+king on his white horse came from the bed, thin, feeble, hollow,
+and husky, and in tone like that of a petulant child:
+
+'I will not, I will not.  I am a king, and I will be a king.  I
+hate you and despise you, and you shall not torture me!'
+
+'Never mind them, Father dear,' said the princess.  'I am here, and
+they shan't touch you.  They dare not, you know, so long as you
+defy them.'
+
+'They want my crown, darling; and I can't give them my crown, can
+I?  For what is a king without his crown?'
+'They shall never have your crown, my king,' said Irene.  'Here it
+is - all safe.  I am watching it for you.'
+
+Curdie drew near the bed on the other side.  There lay the grand
+old king - he looked grand still, and twenty years older.  His body
+was pillowed high; his beard descended long and white over the
+crimson coverlid; and his crown, its diamonds and emeralds gleaming
+in the twilight of the curtains, lay in front of him, his long thin
+old hands folded round it, and the ends of his beard straying among
+the lovely stones.  His face was like that of a man who had died
+fighting nobly; but one thing made it dreadful: his eyes, while
+they moved about as if searching in this direction and in that,
+looked more dead than his face.  He saw neither his daughter nor
+his crown: it was the voice of the one and the touch of the other
+that comforted him.  He kept murmuring what seemed words, but was
+unintelligible to Curdie, although, to judge from the look of
+Irene's face, she learned and concluded from it.
+
+By degrees his voice sank away and the murmuring ceased, although
+still his lips moved.  Thus lay the old king on his bed, slumbering
+with his crown between his hands; on one side of him stood a lovely
+little maiden, with blue eyes, and brown hair going a little back
+from her temples, as if blown by a wind that no one felt but
+herself; and on the other a stalwart young miner, with his mattock
+over his shoulder.  Stranger sight still was Lina lying along the
+threshold - only nobody saw her just then.
+
+A moment more and the king's lips ceased to move.  His breathing
+had grown regular and quiet.  The princess gave a sigh of relief,
+and came round to Curdie.
+
+'We can talk a little now,' she said, leading him toward the middle
+of the room.  'My father will sleep now till the doctor wakes him
+to give him his medicine.  It is not really medicine, though, but
+wine.  Nothing but that, the doctor says, could have kept him so
+long alive.  He always comes in the middle of the night to give it
+him with his own hands.  But it makes me cry to see him wake up
+when so nicely asleep.'
+
+'What sort of man is your doctor?' asked Curdie.
+
+'Oh, such a dear, good, kind gentleman!' replied the princess.  'He
+speaks so softly, and is so sorry for his dear king!  He will be
+here presently, and you shall see for yourself.  You will like him
+very much.'
+
+'Has your king-father been long ill?' asked Curdie.
+
+'A whole year now,' she replied.  'Did you not know?  That's how
+your mother never got the red petticoat my father promised her. 
+The lord chancellor told me that not only Gwyntystorm but the whole
+land was mourning over the illness of the good man.'
+
+Now Curdie himself had not heard a word of His Majesty's illness,
+and had no ground for believing that a single soul in any place he
+had visited on his journey had heard of it.  Moreover, although
+mention had been made of His Majesty again and again in his hearing
+since he came to Gwyntystorm, never once had he heard an allusion
+to the state of his health.  And now it dawned upon him also that
+he had never heard the least expression of love to him.  But just
+for the time he thought it better to say nothing on either point.
+
+'Does the king wander like this every night?' he asked.
+
+'Every night,' answered Irene, shaking her head mournfully.  'That
+is why I never go to bed at night.  He is better during the day -
+a little, and then I sleep - in the dressing room there, to be with
+him in a moment if he should call me.  It is so sad he should have
+only me and not my mamma!  A princess is nothing to a queen!'
+
+'I wish he would like me,' said Curdie, 'for then I might watch by
+him at night, and let you go to bed, Princess.'
+
+'Don't you know then?' returned Irene, in wonder.  'How was it you
+came?  Ah!  You said my grandmother sent you.  But I thought you
+knew that he wanted you.'
+
+And again she opened wide her blue stars.
+
+'Not I,' said Curdie, also bewildered, but very glad.
+
+'He used to be constantly saying - he was not so ill then as he is
+now - that he wished he had you about him.'
+
+'And I never to know it!' said Curdie, with displeasure.
+
+'The master of the horse told papa's own secretary that he had
+written to the miner-general to find you and send you up; but the
+miner-general wrote back to the master of the horse, and he told
+the secretary, and the secretary told my father, that they had
+searched every mine in the kingdom and could hear nothing of you. 
+My father gave a great sigh, and said he feared the goblins had got
+you, after all, and your father and mother were dead of grief.  And
+he has never mentioned you since, except when wandering.  I cried
+very much.  But one of my grandmother's pigeons with its white wing
+flashed a message to me through the window one day, and then I knew
+that my Curdie wasn't eaten by the goblins, for my grandmother
+wouldn't have taken care of him one time to let him be eaten the
+next.  Where were you, Curdie, that they couldn't find you?'
+
+'We will talk about that another time, when we are not expecting
+the doctor,' said Curdie.
+
+As he spoke, his eyes fell upon something shining on the table
+under the lamp.  His heart gave a great throb, and he went nearer. 
+Yes, there could be no doubt - it was the same flagon that the
+butler had filled in the wine cellar.
+
+'It looks worse and worse!'he said to himself, and went back to
+Irene, where she stood half dreaming.
+
+'When will the doctor be here?' he asked once more - this time
+hurriedly.
+
+The question was answered - not by the princess, but by something
+which that instant tumbled heavily into the room.  Curdie flew
+toward it in vague terror about Lina.
+
+On the floor lay a little round man, puffing and blowing, and
+uttering incoherent language.  Curdie thought of his mattock, and
+ran and laid it aside.
+
+'Oh, dear Dr Kelman!' cried the princess, running up and taking
+hold of his arm; 'I am so sorry!'  She pulled and pulled, but might
+almost as well have tried to set up a cannon ball.  'I hope you
+have not hurt yourself?'
+
+'Not at all, not at all,' said the doctor, trying to smile and to
+rise both at once, but finding it impossible to do either.
+
+'if he slept on the floor he would be late for breakfast,' said
+Curdie to himself, and held out his hand to help him.
+
+But when he took hold of it, Curdie very nearly let him fall again,
+for what he held was not even a foot: it was the belly of a
+creeping thing.  He managed, however, to hold both his peace and
+his grasp, and pulled the doctor roughly on his legs - such as they
+were.
+
+'Your Royal Highness has rather a thick mat at the door,' said the
+doctor, patting his palms together.  'I hope my awkwardness may not
+have startled His Majesty.'
+
+While he talked Curdie went to the door: Lina was not there.
+
+The doctor approached the bed.
+
+'And how has my beloved king slept tonight?' he asked.
+
+'No better,' answered Irene, with a mournful shake of her head.
+
+'Ah, that is very well!' returned the doctor, his fall seeming to
+have muddled either his words or his meaning.  'When we give him
+his wine, he will be better still.'
+
+Curdie darted at the flagon, and lifted it high, as if he had
+expected to find it full, but had found it empty.
+
+'That stupid butler!  I heard them say he was drunk!' he cried in
+a loud whisper, and was gliding from the room.
+
+'Come here with that flagon, you!  Page!' cried the doctor.
+Curdie came a few steps toward him with the flagon dangling from
+his hand, heedless of the gushes that fell noiseless on the thick
+carpet.
+
+'Are you aware, young man,' said the doctor, 'that it is not every
+wine can do His Majesty the benefit I intend he should derive from
+my prescription?'
+
+'Quite aware, sir, answered Curdie.  'The wine for His Majesty's
+use is in the third cask from the corner.'
+
+'Fly, then,' said the doctor, looking satisfied.
+
+Curdie stopped outside the curtain and blew an audible breath - no
+more; up came Lina noiseless as a shadow.  He showed her the
+flagon.
+
+'The cellar, Lina: go,' he said.
+
+She galloped away on her soft feet, and Curdie had indeed to fly to
+keep up with her.  Not once did she make even a dubious turn.  From
+the king's gorgeous chamber to the cold cellar they shot.  Curdie
+dashed the wine down the back stair, rinsed the flagon out as he
+had seen the butler do, filled it from the cask of which he had
+seen the butler drink, and hastened with it up again to the king's
+room.
+
+The little doctor took it, poured out a full glass, smelt, but did
+not taste it, and set it down.  Then he leaned over the bed,
+shouted in the king's ear, blew upon his eyes, and pinched his arm:
+Curdie thought he saw him run something bright into it.  At last
+the king half woke.  The doctor seized the glass, raised his head,
+poured the wine down his throat, and let his head fall back on the
+pillow again.  Tenderly wiping his beard, and bidding the princess
+good night in paternal tones, he then took his leave.  Curdie would
+gladly have driven his pick into his head, but that was not in his
+commission, and he let him go.  The little round man looked very
+carefully to his feet as he crossed the threshold.
+
+'That attentive fellow of a page has removed the mat,' he said to
+himself, as he walked along the corridor.  'I must remember him.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 20
+Counterplotting
+
+
+Curdie was already sufficiently enlightened as to how things were
+going, to see that he must have the princess of one mind with him,
+and they must work together.  It was clear that among those about
+the king there was a plot against him: for one thing, they had
+agreed in a lie concerning himself; and it was plain also that the
+doctor was working out a design against the health and reason of
+His Majesty, rendering the question of his life a matter of little
+moment.  It was in itself sufficient to justify the worst fears,
+that the people outside the palace were ignorant of His Majesty's
+condition: he believed those inside it also - the butler excepted
+- were ignorant of it as well.  Doubtless His Majesty's councillors
+desired to alienate the hearts of his subjects from their
+sovereign.  Curdie's idea was that they intended to kill the king,
+marry the princess to one of themselves, and found a new dynasty;
+but whatever their purpose, there was treason in the palace of the
+worst sort: they were making and keeping the king incapable, in
+order to effect that purpose- The first thing to be seen to,
+therefore, was that His Majesty should neither eat morsel nor drink
+drop of anything prepared for him in the palace.  Could this have
+been managed without the princess, Curdie would have preferred
+leaving her in ignorance of the horrors from which he sought to
+deliver her.  He feared also the danger of her knowledge betraying
+itself to the evil eyes about her; but it must be risked and she
+had always been a wise child.
+
+Another thing was clear to him - that with such traitors no terms
+of honour were either binding or possible, and that, short of
+lying, he might use any means to foil them.  And he could not doubt
+that the old princess had sent him expressly to frustrate their
+plans.
+
+While he stood thinking thus with himself, the princess was
+earnestly watching the king, with looks of childish love and
+womanly tenderness that went to Curdie's heart.  Now and then with
+a great fan of peacock feathers she would fan him very softly; now
+and then, seeing a cloud begin to gather upon the sky of his
+sleeping face, she would climb upon the bed, and bending to his ear
+whisper into it, then draw back and watch again - generally to see
+the cloud disperse.  in his deepest slumber, the soul of the king
+lay open to the voice of his child, and that voice had power either
+to change the aspect of his visions, or, which was better still, to
+breathe hope into his heart, and courage to endure them.
+
+Curdie came near, and softly called her.
+
+'I can't leave Papa just yet,' she returned, in a low voice.
+
+'I will wait,' said Curdie; 'but I want very much to say
+something.'
+
+In a few minutes she came to him where he stood under the lamp.
+
+'Well, Curdie, what is it?' she said.
+
+'Princess,' he replied, 'I want to tell you that I have found why
+your grandmother sent me.'
+
+'Come this way, then, she answered, 'where I can see the face of my
+king.'
+
+Curdie placed a chair for her in the spot she chose, where she
+would be near enough to mark any slightest change on her father's
+countenance, yet where their low-voiced talk would not disturb him. 
+There he sat down beside her and told her all the story - how her
+grandmother had sent her good pigeon for him, and how she had
+instructed him, and sent him there without telling him what he had
+to do.  Then he told her what he had discovered of the state of
+things generally in Gwyntystorm, and especially what he had heard
+and seen in the palace that night.
+
+'Things are in a bad state enough,' he said in conclusion - 'lying
+and selfishness and inhospitality and dishonesty everywhere; and to
+crown all, they speak with disrespect of the good king, and not a
+man knows he is ill.'
+
+'You frighten me dreadfully,' said Irene, trembling.
+
+'You must be brave for your king's sake,' said Curdie.
+
+'Indeed I will,' she replied, and turned a long loving look upon
+the beautiful face of her father.  'But what is to be done?  And
+how am I to believe such horrible things of Dr Kelman?'
+
+'my dear Princess,' replied Curdie, 'you know nothing of him but
+his face and his tongue, and they are both false.  Either you must
+beware of him, or you must doubt your grandmother and me; for I
+tell you, by the gift she gave me of testing hands, that this man
+is a snake.  That round body he shows is but the case of a serpent. 
+Perhaps the creature lies there, as in its nest, coiled round and
+round inside.'
+
+'Horrible!' said Irene.
+
+'Horrible indeed; but we must not try to get rid of horrible things
+by refusing to look at them, and saying they are not there.  Is not
+your beautiful father sleeping better since he had the wine?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Does he always sleep better after having it?'
+
+She reflected an instant.
+
+'No; always worse - till tonight,' she answered.
+
+'Then remember that was the wine I got him - not what the butler
+drew.  Nothing that passes through any hand in the house except
+yours or mine must henceforth, till he is well, reach His Majesty's
+lips.'
+
+'But how, dear Curdie?' said the princess, almost crying.
+
+'That we must contrive,' answered Curdie.  'I know how to take care
+of the wine; but for his food - now we must think.'
+'He takes hardly any,' said the princess, with a pathetic shake of
+her little head which Curdie had almost learned to look for.
+
+'The more need,' he replied, 'there should be no poison in it.' 
+Irene shuddered.  'As soon as he has honest food he will begin to
+grow better.  And you must be just as careful with yourself,
+Princess,' Curdie went on, 'for you don't know when they may begin
+to poison you, too.'
+
+'There's no fear of me; don't talk about me,' said Irene.  'The
+good food!  How are we to get it, Curdie?  That is the whole
+question.'
+
+'I am thinking hard,' answered Curdie.  'The good food?  Let me see
+- let me see!  Such servants as I saw below are sure to have the
+best of everything for themselves: I will go an see what I can find
+on their table.'
+
+'The chancellor sleeps in the house, and he and the master of the
+king's horse always have their supper together in a room off the
+great hall, to the right as you go down the stairs,' said Irene. 
+'I would go with you, but I dare not leave my father.  Alas!  He
+scarcely ever takes more than a mouthful.  I can't think how he
+lives!  And the very thing he would like, and often asks for - a
+bit of bread - I can hardly ever get for him: Dr Kelman has
+forbidden it, and says it is nothing less than poison to him.'
+
+'Bread at least he shall have,' said Curdie; 'and that, with the
+honest wine, will do as well as anything, I do believe.  I will go
+at once and look for some.  But I want you to see Lina first, and
+know her, lest, coming upon her by accident at any time, you should
+be frightened.'
+
+'I should like much to see her,' said the princess.
+
+Warning her not to be startled by her ugliness, he went to the door
+and called her.
+
+She entered, creeping with downcast head, and dragging her tail
+over the floor behind her.  Curdie watched the princess as the
+frightful creature came nearer and nearer.  One shudder went from
+head to foot, and next instant she stepped to meet her.  Lina
+dropped flat on the floor, and covered her face with her two big
+paws.  It went to the heart of the princess: in a moment she was on
+her knees beside her, stroking her ugly head, and patting her all
+over.
+
+'Good dog!  Dear ugly dog!' she said.
+
+Lina whimpered.
+
+'I believe,' said Curdie, 'from what your grandmother told me, that
+Lina is a woman, and that she was naughty, but is now growing
+good.'
+Lina had lifted her head while Irene was caressing her; now she
+dropped it again between her paws; but the princess took it in her
+hands, and kissed the forehead betwixt the gold-green eyes.
+
+'Shall I take her with me or leave her?' asked Curdie.
+
+'Leave her, poor dear,' said Irene, and Curdie, knowing the way
+now, went without her.
+
+He took his way first to the room the princess had spoken of, and
+there also were the remains of supper; but neither there nor in the
+kitchen could he find a scrap of plain wholesome-looking bread.  So
+he returned and told her that as soon as it was light he would go
+into the city for some, and asked her for a handkerchief to tie it
+in.  If he could not bring it himself, he would send it by Lina,
+who could keep out of sight better than he, and as soon as all was
+quiet at night he would come to her again.  He also asked her to
+tell the king that he was in the house.  His hope lay in the fact
+that bakers everywhere go to work early.  But it was yet much too
+early.  So he persuaded the princess to lie down, promising to call
+her if the king should stir.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 21
+The Loaf
+
+
+His Majesty slept very quietly.  The dawn had grown almost day, and
+still Curdie lingered, unwilling to disturb the princess.
+
+At last, however, he called her, and she was in the room in a
+moment.  She had slept, she said, and felt quite fresh.  Delighted
+to find her father still asleep, and so peacefully, she pushed her
+chair close to the bed, and sat down with her hands in her lap.
+
+Curdie got his mattock from where he had hidden it behind a great
+mirror, and went to the cellar, followed by Lina.  They took some
+breakfast with them as they passed through the hall, and as soon as
+they had eaten it went out the back way.
+
+At the mouth of the passage Curdie seized the rope, drew himself
+up, pushed away the shutter, and entered the dungeon.  Then he
+swung the end of the rope to Lina, and she caught it in her teeth. 
+When her master said, 'Now, Lina!' she gave a great spring, and he
+ran away with the end of the rope as fast as ever he could.  And
+such a spring had she made, that by the time he had to bear her
+weight she was within a few feet of the hole.  The instant she got
+a paw through, she was all through.
+
+Apparently their enemies were waiting till hunger should have cowed
+them, for there was no sign of any attempt having been made to open
+the door.  A blow or two of Curdie's mattock drove the shattered
+lock clean from it, and telling Lina to wait there till he came
+back, and let no one in, he walked out into the silent street, and
+drew the door to behind them.  He could hardly believe it was not
+yet a whole day since he had been thrown in there with his hands
+tied at his back.
+
+Down the town he went, walking in the middle of the street, that,
+if any one saw him, he might see he was not afraid, and hesitate to
+rouse an attack on him.  As to the dogs, ever since the death of
+their two companions, a shadow that looked like a mattock was
+enough to make them scamper.  As soon as he reached the archway of
+the city gate he turned to reconnoitre the baker's shop, and
+perceiving no sign of movement, waited there watching for the
+first.
+
+After about an hour, the door opened, and the baker's man appeared
+with a pail in his hand.  He went to a pump that stood in the
+street, and having filled his pail returned with it into the shop. 
+Curdie stole after him, found the door on the latch, opened it very
+gently, peeped in, saw nobody, and entered.  Remembering perfectly
+from what shelf the baker's wife had taken the loaf she said was
+the best, and seeing just one upon it, he seized it, laid the price
+of it on the counter, and sped softly out, and up the street.  Once
+more in the dungeon beside Lina, his first thought was to fasten up
+the door again, which would have been easy, so many iron fragments
+of all sorts and sizes lay about; but he bethought himself that if
+he left it as it was, and they came to find him, they would
+conclude at once that they had made their escape by it, and would
+look no farther so as to discover the hole.  He therefore merely
+pushed the door close and left it.  Then once more carefully
+arranging the earth behind the shutter, so that it should again
+fall with it, he returned to the cellar.
+
+And now he had to convey the loaf to the princess.  If he could
+venture to take it himself, well; if not, he would send Lina.  He
+crept to the door of the servants' hall, and found the sleepers
+beginning to stir.  One said it was time to go to bed; another,
+that he would go to the cellar instead, and have a mug of wine to
+waken him up; while a third challenged a fourth to give him his
+revenge at some game or other.
+
+'Oh, hang your losses!' answered his companion; 'you'll soon pick
+up twice as much about the house, if you but keep your eyes open.'
+
+Perceiving there would be risk in attempting to pass through, and
+reflecting that the porters in the great hall would probably be
+awake also, Curdie went back to the cellar, took Irene's
+handkerchief with the loaf in it, tied it round Lina's neck, and
+told her to take it to the princess.
+
+Using every shadow and every shelter, Lina slid through the
+servants like a shapeless terror through a guilty mind, and so, by
+corridor and great hall, up the stair to the king's chamber.
+
+Irene trembled a little when she saw her glide soundless in across
+the silent dusk of the morning, that filtered through the heavy
+drapery of the windows, but she recovered herself at once when she
+saw the bundle about her neck, for it both assured her of Curdie's
+safety, and gave her hope of her father's.  She untied it with joy,
+and Lina stole away, silent as she had come.  Her joy was the
+greater that the king had waked up a little before, and expressed
+a desire for food - not that he felt exactly hungry, he said, and
+yet he wanted something.  If only he might have a piece of nice
+fresh bread!  Irene had no knife, but with eager hands she broke a
+great piece from the loaf, and poured out a full glass of wine. 
+The king ate and drank, enjoyed the bread and the wine much, and
+instantly fell asleep again.
+
+It was hours before the lazy people brought their breakfast.  When
+it came, Irene crumbled a little about, threw some into the
+fireplace, and managed to make the tray look just as usual.
+
+in the meantime, down below in the cellar, Curdie was lying in the
+hollow between the upper sides of two of the great casks, the
+warmest place he could find.  Lina was watching.  She lay at his
+feet, across the two casks, and did her best so to arrange her huge
+tail that it should be a warm coverlid for her master.
+
+By and by Dr Kelman called to see his patient; and now that Irene's
+eyes were opened, she saw clearly enough that he was both annoyed
+and puzzled at finding His Majesty rather better.  He pretended
+however to congratulate him, saying he believed he was quite fit to
+see the lord chamberlain: he wanted his signature to something
+important; only he must not strain his mind to understand it,
+whatever it might be: if His Majesty did, he would not be
+answerable for the consequences.  The king said he would see the
+lord chamberlain, and the doctor went.
+
+Then Irene gave him more bread and wine, and the king ate and
+drank, and smiled a feeble smile, the first real one she had seen
+for many a day.  He said he felt much better, and would soon be
+able to take matters into his own hands again.  He had a strange
+miserable feeling, he said, that things were going terribly wrong,
+although he could not tell how.  Then the princess told him that
+Curdie had come, and that at night, when all was quiet for nobody
+in the palace must know, he would pay His Majesty a visit.  Her
+great-great-grandmother had sent him, she said.  The king looked
+strangely upon her, but the strange look passed into a smile
+clearer than the first, and irene's heart throbbed with delight.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 22
+The Lord Chamberlain
+
+
+At noon the lord chamberlain appeared.  With a long, low bow, and
+paper in hand, he stepped softly into the room.  Greeting His
+Majesty with every appearance of the profoundest respect, and
+congratulating him on the evident progress he had made, he declared
+himself sorry to trouble him, but there were certain papers, he
+said, which required his signature - and therewith drew nearer to
+the king, who lay looking at him doubtfully.  He was a lean, long,
+yellow man, with a small head, bald over the top, and tufted at the
+back and about the ears.  He had a very thin, prominent, hooked
+nose, and a quantity of loose skin under his chin and about the
+throat, which came craning up out of his neckcloth.  His eyes were
+very small, sharp, and glittering, and looked black as jet.  He had
+hardly enough of a mouth to make a smile with.  His left hand held
+the paper, and the long, skinny fingers of his right a pen just
+dipped in ink.
+
+But the king, who for weeks had scarcely known what he did, was
+today so much himself as to be aware that he was not quite himself;
+and the moment he saw the paper, he resolved that he would not sign
+without understanding and approving of it.  He requested the lord
+chamberlain therefore to read it.  His Lordship commenced at once
+but the difficulties he seemed to encounter, and the fits of
+stammering that seized him, roused the king's suspicion tenfold. 
+He called the princess.
+
+'I trouble His Lordship too much,' he said to her: 'you can read
+print well, my child - let me hear how you can read writing.  Take
+that paper from His Lordship's hand, and read it to me from
+beginning to end, while my lord drinks a glass of my favourite
+wine, and watches for your blunders.'
+
+'Pardon me, Your Majesty,' said the lord chamberlain, with as much
+of a smile as he was able to extemporize, 'but it were a thousand
+pities to put the attainments of Her Royal Highness to a test
+altogether too severe.  Your Majesty can scarcely with justice
+expect the very organs of her speech to prove capable of compassing
+words so long, and to her so unintelligible.'
+
+'I think much of my little princess and her capabilities,' returned
+the king, more and more aroused.  'Pray, my lord, permit her to
+try.'
+
+'Consider, Your Majesty: the thing would be altogether without
+precedent.  it would be to make sport of statecraft,' said the lord
+chamberlain.
+
+'Perhaps you are right, my lord,' answered the king, with more
+meaning than he intended should be manifest, while to his growing
+joy he felt new life and power throbbing in heart and brain.  'So
+this morning we shall read no further.  I am indeed ill able for
+business of such weight.'
+
+'Will Your Majesty please sign your royal name here?' said the lord
+chamberlain, preferring the request as a matter of course, and
+approaching with the feather end of the pen pointed to a spot where
+there was a great red seal.
+
+'Not today, my lord,' replied the king.
+
+'It is of the greatest importance, Your Majesty,' softly insisted
+the other.
+
+'I descried no such importance in it,' said the king.
+
+'Your Majesty heard but a part.'
+
+'And I can hear no more today.'
+
+'I trust Your Majesty has ground enough, in a case of necessity
+like the present, to sign upon the representation of his loyal
+subject and chamberlain?  Or shall I call the lord chancellor?' he
+added, rising.
+
+'There is no need.  I have the very highest opinion of your
+judgement, my lord,' answered the king; 'that is, with respect to
+means: we might differ as to ends.'
+
+The lord chamberlain made yet further attempts at persuasion; but
+they grew feebler and feebler, and he was at last compelled to
+retire without having gained his object.  And well might his
+annoyance be keen!  For that paper was the king's will, drawn up by
+the attorney-general; nor until they had the king's signature to it
+was there much use in venturing farther.  But his worst sense of
+discomfiture arose from finding the king with so much capacity
+left, for the doctor had pledged himself so to weaken his brain
+that he should be as a child in their hands, incapable of refusing
+anything requested of him: His Lordship began to doubt the doctor's
+fidelity to the conspiracy.
+
+The princess was in high delight.  She had not for weeks heard so
+many words, not to say words of such strength and reason, from her
+father's lips: day by day he had been growIng weaker and more
+lethargic.  He was so much exhausted, however, after this effort,
+that he asked for another piece of bread and more wine, and fell
+fast asleep the moment he had taken them.
+
+The lord chamberlain sent in a rage for Dr Kelman.  He came, and
+while professing himself unable to understand the symptoms
+described by His Lordship, yet pledged himself again that on the
+morrow the king should do whatever was required of him.
+
+The day went on.  When His Majesty was awake, the princess read to
+him - one storybook after another; and whatever she read, the king
+listened as if he had never heard anything so good before, making
+out in it the wisest meanings.  Every now and then he asked for a
+piece of bread and a little wine, and every time he ate and drank
+he slept, and every time he woke he seemed better than the last
+time.  The princess bearing her part, the loaf was eaten up and the
+flagon emptied before night.  The butler took the flagon away, and
+brought it back filled to the brim, but both were thirsty and
+hungry when Curdie came again.
+Meantime he and Lina, watching and waking alternately, had plenty
+of sleep.  In the afternoon, peeping from the recess, they saw
+several of the servants enter hurriedly, one after the other, draw
+wine, drink it, and steal out; but their business was to take care
+of the king, not of his cellar, and they let them drink.  Also,
+when the butler came to fill the flagon, they restrained
+themselves, for the villain's fate was not yet ready for him.  He
+looked terribly frightened, and had brought with him a large candle
+and a small terrier - which latter indeed threatened to be
+troublesome, for he went roving and sniffing about until he came to
+the recess where they were.  But as soon as he showed himself, Lina
+opened her jaws so wide, and glared at him so horribly, that,
+without even uttering a whimper, he tucked his tail between his
+legs and ran to his master.  He was drawing the wicked wine at the
+moment, and did not see him, else he would doubtless have run too.
+
+When suppertime approached, Curdie took his place at the door into
+the servants' hall; but after a long hour's vain watch, he began to
+fear he should get nothing: there was so much idling about, as well
+as coming and going.  it was hard to bear - chiefly from the
+attractions of a splendid loaf, just fresh out of the oven, which
+he longed to secure for the king and princess.  At length his
+chance did arrive: he pounced upon the loaf and carried it away,
+and soon after got hold of a pie.
+
+This time, however, both loaf and pie were missed.  The cook was
+called.  He declared he had provided both.  One of themselves, he
+said, must have carried them away for some friend outside the
+palace.  Then a housemaid, who had not long been one of them, said
+she had seen someone like a page running in the direction of the
+cellar with something in his hands.  Instantly all turned upon the
+pages, accusing them, one after another.  All denied, but nobody
+believed one of them: Where there is no truth there can be no
+faith.
+
+To the cellar they all set out to look for the missing pie and
+loaf.  Lina heard them coming, as well she might, for they were
+talking and quarrelling loud, and gave her master warning.  They
+snatched up everything, and got all signs of their presence out at
+the back door before the servants entered.  When they found
+nothing, they all turned on the chambermaid, and accused her, not
+only of lying against the pages, but of having taken the things
+herself.  Their language and behaviour so disgusted Curdie, who
+could hear a great part of what passed, and he saw the danger of
+discovery now so much increased, that he began to devise how best
+at once to rid the palace of the whole pack of them.  That,
+however, would be small gain so long as the treacherous officers of
+state continued in it.  They must be first dealt with.  A thought
+came to him, and the longer he looked at it the better he liked it.
+
+As soon as the servants were gone, quarrelling and accusing all the
+way, they returned and finished their supper.  Then Curdie, who had
+long been satisfied that Lina understood almost every word he said,
+communicated his plan to her, and knew by the wagging of her tail
+and the flashing of her eyes that she comprehended it.  Until they
+had the king safe through the worst part of the night, however,
+nothing could be done.
+
+They had now merely to go on waiting where they were till the
+household should be asleep.  This waiting and waiting was much the
+hardest thing Curdie had to do in the whole affair.  He took his
+mattock and, going again into the long passage, lighted a candle
+end and proceeded to examine the rock on all sides.  But this was
+not merely to pass the time: he had a reason for it.  When he broke
+the stone in the street, over which the baker fell, its appearance
+led him to pocket a fragment for further examination; and since
+then he had satisfied himself that it was the kind of stone in
+which gold is found, and that the yellow particles in it were pure
+metal.  If such stone existed here in any plenty, he could soon
+make the king rich and independent of his ill-conditioned subjects. 
+He was therefore now bent on an examination of the rock; nor had he
+been at it long before he was persuaded that there were large
+quantities of gold in the half-crystalline white stone, with its
+veins of opaque white and of green, of which the rock, so far as he
+had been able to inspect it, seemed almost entirely to consist. 
+Every piece he broke was spotted with particles and little lumps of
+a lovely greenish yellow - and that was gold.  Hitherto he had
+worked only in silver, but he had read, and heard talk, and knew,
+therefore, about gold.  As soon as he had got the king free of
+rogues and villains, he would have all the best and most honest
+miners, with his father at the head of them, to work this rock for
+the king.
+It was a great delight to him to use his mattock once more.  The
+time went quickly, and when he left the passage to go to the king's
+chamber, he had already a good heap of fragments behind the broken
+door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 23
+Dr Kelman
+
+
+As soon as he had reason to hope the way was clear, Curdie ventured
+softly into the hall, with Lina behind him.  There was no one
+asleep on the bench or floor, but by the fading fire sat a girl
+weeping.  It was the same who had seen him carrying off the food,
+and had been so hardly used for saying so.  She opened her eyes
+when he appeared, but did not seem frightened at him.
+
+'I know why you weep,' said Curdie, 'and I am sorry for you.'
+
+'It is hard not to be believed just because one speaks the truth,'
+said the girl, 'but that seems reason enough with some people.  My
+mother taught me to speak the truth, and took such pains with me
+that I should find it hard to tell a lie, though I could invent
+many a story these servants would believe at once; for the truth is
+a strange thing here, and they don't know it when they see it. 
+Show it them, and they all stare as if it were a wicked lie, and
+that with the lie yet warm that has just left their own mouths! 
+You are a stranger,' she said, and burst out weeping afresh, 'but
+the stranger you are to such a place and such people the better!'
+
+'I am the person,' said Curdie, whom you saw carrying the things
+from the supper table.'  He showed her the loaf.  'If you can
+trust, as well as speak the truth, I will trust you.  Can you trust
+me?'
+
+She looked at him steadily for a moment.
+
+'I can,' she answered.
+
+'One thing more,' said Curdie: 'have you courage as well as truth?'
+
+'I think so.'
+
+'Look my dog in the face and don't cry out.  Come here, Lina.'
+
+Lina obeyed.  The girl looked at her, and laid her hand on Lina's
+head.
+
+'Now I know you are a true woman,' said curdie.  'I am come to set
+things right in this house.  Not one of the servants knows I am
+here.  Will you tell them tomorrow morning that, if they do not
+alter their ways, and give over drinking, and lying, and stealing,
+and unkindness, they shall every one of them be driven from the
+palace?'
+
+'They will not believe me.'
+
+'Most likely; but will you give them the chance?'
+
+'I will.'
+
+'Then I will be your friend.  Wait here till I come again.'
+
+She looked him once more in the face, and sat down.
+
+When he reached the royal chamber, he found His Majesty awake, and
+very anxiously expecting him.  He received him with the utmost
+kindness, and at once, as it were, put himself in his hands by
+telling him all he knew concerning the state he was in.  His voice
+was feeble, but his eye was clear, although now and then his words
+and thoughts seemed to wander.  Curdie could not be certain that
+the cause of their not being intelligible to him did not lie in
+himself.  The king told him that for some years, ever since his
+queen's death, he had been losing heart over the wickedness of his
+people.  He had tried hard to make them good, but they got worse
+and worse.  Evil teachers, unknown to him, had crept into the
+schools; there was a general decay of truth and right principle at
+least in the city; and as that set the example to the nation, it
+must spread.
+
+The main cause of his illness was the despondency with which the
+degeneration of his people affected him.  He could not sleep, and
+had terrible dreams; while, to his unspeakable shame and distress,
+he doubted almost everybody.  He had striven against his suspicion,
+but in vain, and his heart was sore, for his courtiers and
+councillors were really kind; only he could not think why none of
+their ladies came near his princess.  The whole country was
+discontented, he heard, and there were signs of gathering storm
+outside as well as inside his borders.  The master of the horse
+gave him sad news of the insubordination of the army; and his great
+white horse was dead, they told him; and his sword had lost its
+temper: it bent double the last time he tried it! - only perhaps
+that was in a dream; and they could not find his shield; and one of
+his spurs had lost the rowel.
+
+Thus the poor king went wandering in a maze of sorrows, some of
+which were purely imaginary, while others were truer than he
+understood.  He told how thieves came at night and tried to take
+his crown, so that he never dared let it out of his hands even when
+he slept; and how, every night, an evil demon in the shape of his
+physician came and poured poison down his throat.  He knew it to be
+poison, he said, somehow, although it tasted like wine.
+
+Here he stopped, faint with the unusual exertion of talking.
+
+Curdie seized the flagon, and ran to the wine cellar.
+
+In the servants' hall the girl still sat by the fire, waiting for
+him.  As he returned he told her to follow him, and left her at the
+chamber door until he should rejoin her.  When the king had had a
+little wine, he informed him that he had already discovered certain
+of His Majesty's enemies, and one of the worst of them was the
+doctor, for it was no other demon than the doctor himself who had
+been coming every night, and giving him a slow poison.
+
+'So!' said the king.  'Then I have not been suspicious enough, for
+I thought it was but a dream!  Is it possible Kelman can be such a
+wretch?  Who then am I to trust?'
+
+'Not one in the house, except the princess and myself,' said
+Curdie.
+
+'I will not go to sleep,' said the king.
+
+'That would be as bad as taking the poison,' said Curdie.  'No, no,
+sire; you must show your confidence by leaving all the watching to
+me, and doing all the sleeping Your Majesty can.'
+
+The king smiled a contented smile, turned on his side, and was
+presently fast asleep.  Then Curdie persuaded the princess also to
+go to sleep, and telling Lina to watch, went to the housemaid.  He
+asked her if she could inform him which of the council slept in the
+palace, and show him their rooms.  She knew every one of them, she
+said, and took him the round of all their doors, telling him which
+slept in each room.  He then dismissed her, and returning to the
+king's chamber, seated himself behind a curtain at the head of the
+bed, on the side farthest from the king.  He told Lina to get under
+the bed, and make no noise.
+
+About one o'clock the doctor came stealing in.  He looked round for
+the princess, and seeing no one, smiled with satisfaction as he
+approached the wine where it stood under the lamp.  Having partly
+filled a glass, he took from his pocket a small phial, and filled
+up the glass from it.  The light fell upon his face from above, and
+Curdie saw the snake in it plainly visible.  He had never beheld
+such an evil countenance: the man hated the king, and delighted in
+doing him wrong.
+
+With the glass in his hand, he drew near the bed, set it down, and
+began his usual rude rousing of His Majesty.  Not at once
+succeeding, he took a lancet from his pocket, and was parting its
+cover with an involuntary hiss of hate between his closed teeth,
+when Curdie stooped and whispered to Lina.
+
+'Take him by the leg, Lina.'  She darted noiselessly upon him. 
+With a face of horrible consternation, he gave his leg one tug to
+free it; the next instant Curdie heard the one scrunch with which
+she crushed the bone like a stick of celery.  He tumbled on the
+floor with a yell.
+
+'Drag him out, Lina,' said Curdie.
+Lina took him by the collar, and dragged him out.  Her master
+followed her to direct her, and they left the doctor lying across
+the lord chamberlain's door, where he gave another horrible yell,
+and fainted.
+
+The king had waked at his first cry, and by the time Curdie
+re-entered he had got at his sword where it hung from the centre of
+the tester, had drawn it, and was trying to get out of bed.  But
+when Curdie told him all was well, he lay down again as quietly as
+a child comforted by his mother from a troubled dream.  Curdie went
+to the door to watch.
+
+The doctor's yells had aroused many, but not one had yet ventured
+to appear.  Bells were rung violently, but none were answered; and
+in a minute or two Curdie had what he was watching for.  The door
+of the lord chamberlain's room opened, and, pale with hideous
+terror, His Lordship peeped out.  Seeing no one, he advanced to
+step into the corridor, and tumbled over the doctor.  Curdie ran
+up, and held out his hand.  He received in it the claw of a bird of
+prey - vulture or
+
+eagle, he could not tell which.
+
+His Lordship, as soon as he was on his legs, taking him for one of
+the pages abused him heartily for not coming sooner, and threatened
+him with dismissal from the king's service for cowardice and
+neglect.  He began indeed what bade fair to be a sermon on the
+duties of a page, but catching sight of the man who lay at his
+door, and seeing it was the doctor, he fell upon Curdie afresh for
+standing there doing nothing, and ordered him to fetch immediate
+assistance.  Curdie left him, but slipped into the King's chamber,
+closed and locked the door, and left the rascals to look after each
+other.  Ere long he heard hurrying footsteps, and for a few minutes
+there was a great muffled tumult of scuffling feet, low voices and
+deep groanings; then all was still again.
+
+Irene slept through the whole - so confidently did she rest,
+knowing Curdie was in her father's room watching over him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 24
+The Prophecy
+
+
+Curdie sat and watched every motion of the sleeping king.  All the
+night, to his ear, the palace lay as quiet as a nursery of
+healthful children.  At sunrise he called the princess.
+
+'How has His Majesty slept?' were her first words as she entered
+the room.
+
+'Quite quietly,' answered Curdie; 'that is, since the doctor was
+got rid of.'
+'How did you manage that?' inquired Irene; and Curdie had to tell
+all about it.
+
+'How terrible!' she said.  'Did it not startle the king
+dreadfully?'
+
+'it did rather.  I found him getting out of bed, sword in hand.'
+
+'The brave old man!' cried the princess.
+
+'Not so old!' said Curdie, 'as you will soon see.  He went off
+again in a minute or so; but for a little while he was restless,
+and once when he lifted his hand it came down on the spikes of his
+crown, and he half waked.'
+
+'But where is the crown?' cried Irene, in sudden terror.
+
+'I stroked his hands,' answered Curdie, 'and took the crown from
+them; and ever since he has slept quietly, and again and again
+smiled in his sleep.'
+
+'I have never seen him do that,' said the princess.  'But what have
+you done with the crown, Curdie?'
+'Look,' said Curdie, moving away from the bedside.
+
+Irene followed him - and there, in the middle of the floor, she saw
+a strange sight.  Lina lay at full length, fast asleep, her tail
+stretched out straight behind her and her forelegs before her:
+between the two paws meeting in front of it, her nose just touching
+it behind, glowed and flashed the crown, like a nest of the humming
+birds of heaven.
+
+Irene gazed, and looked up with a smile.
+
+'But what if the thief were to come, and she not to wake?' she
+said.  'Shall I try her?'  And as she spoke she stooped toward the
+crown.
+
+'No, no, no!' cried Curdie, terrified.  'She would frighten you out
+of your wits.  I would do it to show you, but she would wake your
+father.  You have no conception with what a roar she would spring
+at my throat.  But you shall see how lightly she wakes the moment
+I speak to her.  Lina!'
+
+She was on her feet the same instant, with her great tail sticking
+out straight behind her, just as it had been lying.
+
+'Good dog!' said the princess, and patted her head.  Lina wagged
+her tail solemnly, like the boom of an anchored sloop.  Irene took
+the crown, and laid it where the king would see it when he woke.
+
+'Now, Princess,' said Curdie, 'I must leave you for a few minutes. 
+You must bolt the door, please, and not open it to any one.'
+
+Away to the cellar he went with Lina, taking care, as they passed
+through the servants' hall, to get her a good breakfast.  In about
+one minute she had eaten what he gave her, and looked up in his
+face: it was not more she wanted, but work.  So out of the cellar
+they went through the passage, and Curdie into the dungeon, where
+he pulled up Lina, opened the door, let her out, and shut it again
+behind her.  As he reached the door of the king's chamber, Lina was
+flying out of the gate of Gwyntystorm as fast as her mighty legs
+could carry her.
+
+'What's come to the wench?' growled the menservants one to another,
+when the chambermaid appeared among them the next morning.  There
+was something in her face which they could not understand, and did
+not like.
+
+'Are we all dirt?' they said.  'What are you thinking about?  Have
+you seen yourself in the glass this morning, miss?'
+
+She made no answer.
+
+'Do you want to be treated as you deserve, or will you speak, you
+hussy?' said the first woman-cook.  'I would fain know what right
+you have to put on a face like that!'
+'You won't believe me,' said the girl.
+
+'Of course not.  What is it?'
+
+'I must tell you, whether you believe me or not,' she said.
+
+'of course you must.'
+
+'It is this, then: if you do not repent of your bad ways, you are
+all going to be punished - all turned out of the palace together.'
+
+'A mighty punishment!' said the butler.  'A good riddance, say I,
+of the trouble of keeping minxes like you in order!  And why, pray,
+should we be turned out?  What have I to repent of now, your
+holiness?'
+
+'That you know best yourself,' said the girl.
+
+'A pretty piece of insolence!  How should I know, forsooth, what a
+menial like you has got against me!  There are people in this house
+- oh! I'm not blind to their ways! - but every one for himself, say
+I!  Pray, Miss judgement, who gave you such an impertinent message
+to His Majesty's household?'
+
+'One who is come to set things right in the king's house.'
+
+'Right, indeed!' cried the butler; but that moment the thought came
+back to him of the roar he had heard in the cellar, and he turned
+pale and was silent.
+
+The steward took it up next.
+'And pray, pretty prophetess,' he said, attempting to chuck her
+under the chin, 'what have I got to repent of?'
+
+'That you know best yourself,' said the girl.  'You have but to
+look into your books or your heart.'
+
+'Can you tell me, then, what I have to repent of?' said the groom
+of the chambers.  'That you know best yourself,' said the girl once
+more.  'The person who told me to tell you said the servants of
+this house had to repent of thieving, and lying, and unkindness,
+and drinking; and they will be made to repent of them one way, if
+they don't do it of themselves another.'
+
+Then arose a great hubbub; for by this time all the servants in the
+house were gathered about her, and all talked together, in towering
+indignation.
+
+'Thieving, indeed!' cried one.  'A pretty word in a house where
+everything is left lying about in a shameless way, tempting poor
+innocent girls!  A house where nobody cares for anything, or has
+the least respect to the value of property!'
+
+'I suppose you envy me this brooch of mine,' said another.  'There
+was just a half sheet of note paper about it, not a scrap more, in
+a drawer that's always open in the writing table in the study! 
+What sort of a place is that for a jewel?  Can you call it stealing
+to take a thing from such a place as that?  Nobody cared a straw
+about it.  it might as well have been in the dust hole!  If it had
+been locked up - then, to be sure!'
+
+'Drinking!' said the chief porter, with a husky laugh.  'And who
+wouldn't drink when he had a chance?  Or who would repent it,
+except that the drink was gone?  Tell me that, Miss Innocence.'
+
+'Lying!' said a great, coarse footman.  'I suppose you mean when I
+told you yesterday you were a pretty girl when you didn't pout?
+Lying, indeed!  Tell us something worth repenting of!  Lying is the
+way of Gwyntystorm.  You should have heard Jabez lying to the cook
+last night!  He wanted a sweetbread for his pup, and pretended it
+was for the princess!  Ha! ha! ha!'
+
+'Unkindness!  I wonder who's unkind!  Going and listening to any
+stranger against her fellow servants, and then bringing back his
+wicked words to trouble them!' said the oldest and worst of the
+housemaids.  'One of ourselves, too!  Come, you hypocrite!  This is
+all an invention of yours and your young man's, to take your
+revenge of us because we found you out in a lie last night.  Tell
+true now: wasn't it the same that stole the loaf and the pie that
+sent you with the impudent message?'
+
+As she said this, she stepped up to the housemaid and gave her,
+instead of time to answer, a box on the ear that almost threw her
+down; and whoever could get at her began to push and bustle and
+pinch and punch her.
+'You invite your fate,' she said quietly.
+
+They fell furiously upon her, drove her from the hall with kicks
+and blows, hustled her along the passage, and threw her down the
+stair to the wine cellar, then locked the door at the top of it,
+and went back to their breakfast.
+
+In the meantime the king and the princess had had their bread and
+wine, and the princess, with Curdie's help, had made the room as
+tidy as she could - they were terribly neglected by the servants. 
+And now Curdie set himself to interest and amuse the king, and
+prevent him from thinking too much, in order that he might the
+sooner think the better.  Presently, at His Majesty's request, he
+began from the beginning, and told everything he could recall of
+his life, about his father and mother and their cottage on the
+mountain, of the inside of the mountain and the work there, about
+the goblins and his adventures with them.
+
+When he came to finding the princess and her nurse overtaken by the
+twilight on the mountain, Irene took up her share of the tale, and
+told all about herself to that point, and then Curdie took it up
+again; and so they went on, each fitting in the part that the other
+did not know, thus keeping the hoop of the story running straight;
+and the king listened with wondering and delighted ears, astonished
+to find what he could so ill comprehend, yet fitting so well
+together from the lips of two narrators.
+
+At last, with the mission given him by the wonderful princess and
+his consequent adventures, Curdie brought up the whole tale to the
+present moment.  Then a silence fell, and Irene and Curdie thought
+the king was asleep.  But he was far from it; he was thinking about
+many things.  After a long pause he said:
+
+'Now at last, MY children, I am compelled to believe many things I
+could not and do not yet understand - things I used to hear, and
+sometimes see, as often as I visited my mother's home.  Once, for
+instance, I heard my mother say to her father - speaking of me -
+"He is a good, honest boy, but he will be an old man before he
+understands"; and my grandfather answered, "Keep up your heart,
+child: my mother will look after him."  I thought often of their
+words, and the many strange things besides I both heard and saw in
+that house; but by degrees, because I could not understand them, I
+gave up thinking of them.  And indeed I had almost forgotten them,
+when you, my child, talking that day about the Queen Irene and her
+pigeons, and what you had seen in her garret, brought them all back
+to my mind in a vague mass.  But now they keep coming back to me,
+one by one, every one for itself; and I shall just hold my peace,
+and lie here quite still, and think about them all till I get well
+again.'
+
+What he meant they could not quite understand, but they saw plainly
+that already he was better.
+
+'Put away my crown,' he said.  'I am tired of seeing it, and have
+no more any fear of its safety.'  They put it away together,
+withdrew from the bedside, and left him in peace.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 25
+The Avengers
+
+
+There was nothing now to be dreaded from Dr Kelman, but it made
+Curdie anxious, as the evening drew near, to think that not a soul
+belonging to the court had been to visit the king, or ask how he
+did, that day.  He feared, in some shape or other, a more
+determined assault.  He had provided himself a place in the room,
+to which he might retreat upon approach, and whence he could watch;
+but not once had he had to betake himself to it.
+
+Towards night the king fell asleep.  Curdie thought more and more
+uneasily of the moment when he must again leave them for a little
+while.  Deeper and deeper fell the shadows.  No one came to light
+the lamp.  The princess drew her chair close to Curdie: she would
+rather it were not so dark, she said.  She was afraid of something
+- she could not tell what; nor could she give any reason for her
+fear but that all was so dreadfully still.
+
+When it had been dark about an hour, Curdie thought Lina might have
+returned; and reflected that the sooner he went the less danger was
+there of any assault while he was away.  There was more risk of his
+own presence being discovered, no doubt, but things were now
+drawing to a crisis, and it must be run.  So, telling the princess
+to lock all the doors of the bedchamber, and let no one in, he took
+his mattock, and with here a run, and there a halt under cover,
+gained the door at the head of the cellar stair in safety.  To his
+surprise he found it locked, and the key was gone.  There was no
+time for deliberation.  He felt where the lock was, and dealt it a
+tremendous blow with his mattock.  It needed but a second to dash
+the door open.  Someone laid a hand on his arm.
+
+'Who is it?' said Curdie.
+
+'I told you they wouldn't believe me, sir,' said the housemaid.  'I
+have been here all day.'
+
+He took her hand, and said, 'You are a good, brave girl.  Now come
+with me, lest your enemies imprison you again.'
+
+He took her to the cellar, locked the door, lighted a bit of
+candle, gave her a little wine, told her to wait there till he
+came, and went out the back way.
+
+Swiftly he swung himself up into the dungeon.  Lina had done her
+part.  The place was swarming with creatures - animal forms wilder
+and more grotesque than ever ramped in nightmare dream.  Close by
+the hole, waiting his coming, her green eyes piercing the gulf
+below, Lina had but just laid herself down when he appeared.  All
+about the vault and up the slope of the rubbish heap lay and stood
+and squatted the forty-nine whose friendship Lina had conquered in
+the wood.  They all came crowding about Curdie.
+
+He must get them into the cellar as quickly as ever he could.  But
+when he looked at the size of some of them, he feared it would be
+a long business to enlarge the hole sufficiently to let them
+through.  At it he rushed, hitting vigorously at the edge with his
+mattock.  At the very first blow came a splash from the water
+beneath, but ere he could heave a third, a creature like a tapir,
+only that the grasping point of its proboscis was hard as the steel
+of Curdie's hammer, pushed him gently aside, making room for
+another creature, with a head like a great club, which it began
+banging upon the floor with terrible force and noise.  After about
+a minute of this battery, the tapir came up again, shoved Clubhead
+aside, and putting its own head into the hole began gnawing at the
+sides of it with the finger of its nose, in such a fashion that the
+fragments fell in a continuous gravelly shower into the water.  In
+a few minutes the opening was large enough for the biggest creature
+among them to get through it.
+Next came the difficulty of letting them down: some were quite
+light, but the half of them were too heavy for the rope, not to say
+for his arms.  The creatures themselves seemed to be puzzling where
+or how they were to go.  One after another of them came up, looked
+down through the hole, and drew back.  Curdie thought if he let
+Lina down, perhaps that would suggest something; possibly they did
+not see the opening on the other side.  He did so, and Lina stood
+lighting up the entrance of the passage with her gleaming eyes.
+
+One by one the creatures looked down again, and one by one they
+drew back, each standing aside to glance at the next, as if to say,
+Now you have a look.  At last it came to the turn of the serpent
+with the long body, the four short legs behind, and the little
+wings before.  No sooner had he poked his head through than he
+poked it farther through - and farther, and farther yet, until
+there was little more than his legs left in the dungeon.  By that
+time he had got his head and neck well into the passage beside
+Lina.  Then his legs gave a great waddle and spring, and he tumbled
+himself, far as there was betwixt them, heels over head into the
+passage.
+
+'That is all very well for you, Mr Legserpent!' thought Curdie to
+himself; 'but what is to be done with the rest?'  He had hardly
+time to think it, however, before the creature's head appeared
+again through the floor.  He caught hold of the bar of iron to
+which Curdie's rope was tied, and settling it securely across the
+narrowest part of the irregular opening, held fast to it with his
+teeth.  It was plain to Curdie, from the universal hardness among
+them, that they must all, at one time or another, have been
+creatures of the mines.
+
+He saw at once what this one was after.  The beast had planted his
+feet firmly upon the floor of the passage, and stretched his long
+body up and across the chasm to serve as a bridge for the rest. 
+Curdie mounted instantly upon his neck, threw his arms round him as
+far as they would go, and slid down in ease and safety, the bridge
+just bending a little as his weight glided over it.  But he thought
+some of the creatures would try the legserpent's teeth.
+
+one by one the oddities followed, and slid down in safety.  When
+they seemed to be all landed, he counted them: there were but
+forty-eight.  Up the rope again he went, and found one which had
+been afraid to trust himself to the bridge, and no wonder! for he
+had neither legs nor head nor arms nor tail: he was just a round
+thing, about a foot in diameter, with a nose and mouth and eyes on
+one side of the ball.  He had made his journey by rolling as
+swiftly as the fleetest of them could run.  The back of the
+legserpent not being flat, he could not quite trust himself to roll
+straight and not drop into the gulf.  Curdie took him in his arms,
+and the moment he looked down through the hole, the bridge made
+itself again, and he slid into the passage in safety, with Ballbody
+in his bosom.
+
+He ran first to the cellar to warn the girl not to be frightened at
+the avengers of wickedness.  Then he called to Lina to bring in her
+friends.
+
+One after another they came trooping in, till the cellar seemed
+full of them.  The housemaid regarded them without fear.
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'there is one of the pages I don't take to be a
+bad fellow.'
+
+'Then keep him near you,' said Curdie.  'And now can you show me a
+way to the king's chamber not through the servants' hall?'
+
+'There is a way through the chamber of the colonel of the guard,'
+she answered, 'but he is ill, and in bed.'
+
+'Take me that way,' said Curdie.
+
+By many ups and downs and windings and turnings she brought him to
+a dimly lighted room, where lay an elderly man asleep.  His arm was
+outside the coverlid, and Curdie gave his hand a hurried grasp as
+he went by.  His heart beat for joy, for he had found a good,
+honest, human hand.
+
+'I suppose that is why he is ill,' he said to himself.
+
+It was now close upon suppertime, and when the girl stopped at the
+door of the king's chamber, he told her to go and give the servants
+one warning more.
+
+'Say the messenger sent you,' he said.  'I will be with you very
+soon.'
+
+The king was still asleep.  Curdie talked to the princess for a few
+minutes, told her not to be frightened whatever noises she heard,
+only to keep her door locked till he came, and left her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 26
+The Vengeance
+
+
+By the time the girl reached the servants' hall they were seated at
+supper.  A loud, confused exclamation arose when she entered.  No
+one made room for her; all stared with unfriendly eyes.  A page,
+who entered the next minute by another door, came to her side.
+
+'Where do you come from, hussy?' shouted the butler, and knocked
+his fist on the table with a loud clang.
+
+He had gone to fetch wine, had found the stair door broken open and
+the cellar door locked, and had turned and fled.  Among his
+fellows, however, he had now regained what courage could be called
+his.
+'From the cellar,' she replied.  'The messenger broke open the
+door, and sent me to you again.'
+
+'The messenger!  Pooh!  What messenger?'
+
+'The same who sent me before to tell you to repent.'
+
+'What!  Will you go fooling it still?  Haven't you had enough of
+it?' cried the butler in a rage, and starting to his feet, drew
+near threateningly.
+
+'I must do as I am told,' said the girl.
+
+'Then why don't you do as I tell you, and hold your tongue?' said
+the butler.  'Who wants your preachments?  If anybody here has
+anything to repent Of, isn't that enough - and more than enough for
+him - but you must come bothering about, and stirring up, till not
+a drop of quiet will settle inside him?  You come along with me,
+young woman; we'll see if we can't find a lock somewhere in the
+house that'll hold you in!'
+
+'Hands off, Mr Butler!' said the page, and stepped between.
+
+'Oh, ho!' cried the butler, and pointed his fat finger at him. 
+'That's you, is it, my fine fellow?  So it's you that's up to her
+tricks, is it?'
+
+The youth did not answer, only stood with flashing eyes fixed on
+him, until, growing angrier and angrier, but not daring a step
+nearer, he burst out with a rude but quavering authority:
+
+'Leave the house, both of you!  Be off, or I'll have Mr Steward to
+talk to you.  Threaten your masters, indeed!  Out of the house with
+you, and show us the way you tell us of!'
+
+Two or three of the footmen got up and ranged themselves behind the
+butler.
+
+'Don't say I threaten you, Mr Butler,' expostulated the girl from
+behind the page.  'The messenger said I was to tell you again, and
+give you one chance more.'
+
+'Did the messenger mention me in particular?' asked the butler,
+looking the page unsteadily in the face.
+
+'No, sir,' answered the girl.
+
+'I thought not!  I should like to hear him!'
+
+'Then hear him now,' said Curdie, who that moment entered at the
+opposite corner of the hall.  'I speak of the butler in particular
+when I say that I know more evil of him than of any of the rest. 
+He will not let either his own conscience or my messenger speak to
+him: I therefore now speak myself.  I proclaim him a villain, and
+a traitor to His Majesty the king.  But what better is any one of
+you who cares only for himself, eats, drinks, takes good money, and
+gives vile service in return, stealing and wasting the king's
+property, and making of the palace, which ought to be an example of
+order and sobriety, a disgrace to the country?'
+
+For a moment all stood astonished into silence by this bold speech
+from a stranger.  True, they saw by his mattock over his shoulder
+that he was nothing but a miner boy, yet for a moment the truth
+told notwithstanding.  Then a great roaring laugh burst from the
+biggest of the footmen as he came shouldering his way through the
+crowd toward Curdie.
+
+'Yes, I'm right,' he cried; 'I thought as much!  This messenger,
+forsooth, is nothing but a gallows bird - a fellow the city marshal
+was going to hang, but unfortunately put it off till he should be
+starved enough to save rope and be throttled with a pack thread. 
+He broke prison, and here he is preaching!'  As he spoke, he
+stretched out his great hand to lay hold of him.  Curdie caught it
+in his left hand, and heaved his mattock with the other.  Finding,
+however, nothing worse than an ox hoof, he restrained himself,
+stepped back a pace or two, shifted his mattock to his left hand,
+and struck him a little smart blow on the shoulder.  His arm
+dropped by his side, he gave a roar, and drew back.
+
+His fellows came crowding upon Curdie.  Some called to the dogs;
+others swore; the women screamed; the footmen and pages got round
+him in a half circle, which he kept from closing by swinging his
+mattock, and here and there threatening a blow.
+
+'Whoever confesses to having done anything wrong in this house,
+however small, however great, and means to do better, let him come
+to this corner of the room,' he cried.
+None moved but the page, who went toward him skirting the wall. 
+When they caught sight of him, the crowd broke into a hiss of
+derision.
+
+'There!  See!  Look at the sinner!  He confesses!  Actually
+confesses!  Come, what is it you stole?  The barefaced hypocrite!
+There's your sort to set up for reproving other people!  Where's
+the other now?'
+
+But the maid had left the room, and they let the page pass, for he
+looked dangerous to stop.  Curdie had just put him betwixt him and
+the wall, behind the door, when in rushed the butler with the huge
+kitchen poker, the point of which he had blown red-hot in the fire,
+followed by the cook with his longest spit.  Through the crowd,
+which scattered right and left before them, they came down upon
+Curdie.  Uttering a shrill whistle, he caught the poker a blow with
+his mattock, knocking the point to the ground, while the page
+behind him started forward, and seizing the point of the spit, held
+on to it with both hands, the cook kicking him furiously.
+
+Ere the butler could raise the poker again, or the cook recover the
+spit, with a roar to terrify the dead, Lina dashed into the room,
+her eyes flaming like candles.  She went straight at the butler. 
+He was down in a moment, and she on the top of him, wagging her
+tail over him like a lioness.
+
+'Don't kill him, Lina,' said Curdie.
+
+'Oh, Mr Miner!' cried the butler.
+
+'Put your foot on his mouth, Lina,' said Curdie.  'The truth Fear
+tells is not much better than her lies.'
+
+The rest of the creatures now came stalking, rolling, leaping,
+gliding, hobbling into the room, and each as he came took the next
+place along the wall, until, solemn and grotesque, all stood
+ranged, awaiting orders.
+
+And now some of the culprits were stealing to the doors nearest
+them.  Curdie whispered to the two creatures next him.  Off went
+Ballbody, rolling and bounding through the crowd like a spent
+cannon shot, and when the foremost reached the door to the
+corridor, there he lay at the foot of it grinning; to the other
+door scuttled a scorpion, as big as a huge crab.  The rest stood so
+still that some began to think they were only boys dressed up to
+look awful; they persuaded themselves they were only another part
+of the housemaid's and page's vengeful contrivance, and their evil
+spirits began to rise again.  Meantime Curdie had, with a second
+sharp blow from the hammer of his mattock, disabled the cook, so
+that he yielded the spit with a groan.  He now turned to the
+avengers.
+
+'Go at them,' he said.
+
+The whole nine-and-forty obeyed at once, each for himself, and
+after his own fashion.  A scene of confusion and terror followed. 
+The crowd scattered like a dance of flies.  The creatures had been
+instructed not to hurt much, but to hunt incessantly, until
+everyone had rushed from the house.  The women shrieked, and ran
+hither and thither through the hall, pursued each by her own
+horror, and snapped at by every other in passing.  if one threw
+herself down in hysterical despair, she was instantly poked or
+clawed or nibbled up again.
+
+Though they were quite as frightened at first, the men did not run
+so fast; and by and by some of them finding they were only glared
+at, and followed, and pushed, began to summon up courage once more,
+and with courage came impudence.  The tapir had the big footman in
+charge: the fellow stood stock-still, and let the beast come up to
+him, then put out his finger and playfully patted his nose.  The
+tapir gave the nose a little twist, and the finger lay on the
+floor.
+
+Then indeed did the footman run.
+Gradually the avengers grew more severe, and the terrors of the
+imagination were fast yielding to those of sensuous experience,
+when a page, perceiving one of the doors no longer guarded, sprang
+at it, and ran out.  Another and another followed.  Not a beast
+went after, until, one by one, they were every one gone from the
+hall, and the whole crew in the kitchen.
+
+There they were beginning to congratulate themselves that all was
+over, when in came the creatures trooping after them, and the
+second act of their terror and pain began.  They were flung about
+in all directions; their clothes were torn from them; they were
+pinched and scratched any- and everywhere; Ballbody kept rolling up
+them and over them, confining his attentions to no one in
+particular; the scorpion kept grabbing at their legs with his huge
+pincers; a three-foot centipede kept screwing up their bodies,
+nipping as he went; varied as numerous were their woes.  Nor was it
+long before the last of them had fled from the kitchen to the
+sculleries.
+
+But thither also they were followed, and there again they were
+hunted about.  They were bespattered with the dirt of their own
+neglect; they were soused in the stinking water that had boiled
+greens; they were smeared with rancid dripping; their faces were
+rubbed in maggots: I dare not tell all that was done to them.  At
+last they got the door into a back yard open, and rushed out.  Then
+first they knew that the wind was howling and the rain falling in
+sheets.  But there was no rest for them even there.  Thither also
+were they followed by the inexorable avengers, and the only door
+here was a door out of the palace: out every soul of them was
+driven, and left, some standing, some lying, some crawling, to the
+farther buffeting of the waterspouts and whirlwinds ranging every
+street of the city.  The door was flung to behind them, and they
+heard it locked and bolted and barred against them.
+
+
+CHAPTER 27
+More Vengeance
+
+
+As soon as they were gone, Curdie brought the creatures back to the
+servants' hall, and told them to eat up everything on the table. 
+it was a sight to see them all standing round it - except such as
+had to get upon it - eating and drinking, each after its fashion,
+without a smile, or a word, or a glance of fellowship in the act. 
+A very few moments served to make everything eatable vanish, and
+then Curdie requested them to clean house, and the page who stood
+by to assist them.
+
+Every one set about it except Ballbody: he could do nothing at
+cleaning, for the more he rolled, the more he spread the dirt. 
+Curdie was curious to know what he had been, and how he had come to
+be such as he was: but he could only conjecture that he was a
+gluttonous alderman whom nature had treated homeopathically.
+And now there was such a cleaning and clearing out of neglected
+places, such a burying and burning of refuse, such a rinsing of
+jugs, such a swilling of sinks, and such a flushing of drains as
+would have delighted the eyes of all true housekeepers and lovers
+of cleanliness generally.
+
+Curdie meantime was with the king, telling him all he had done. 
+They had heard a little noise, but not much, for he had told the
+avengers to repress outcry as much as possible; and they had seen
+to it that the more anyone cried out the more he had to cry out
+upon, while the patient ones they scarcely hurt at all.
+
+Having promised His Majesty and Her Royal Highness a good
+breakfast, Curdie now went to finish the business.  The courtiers
+must be dealt with.  A few who were the worst, and the leaders of
+the rest, must be made examples of; the others should be driven to
+the street.
+
+He found the chiefs of the conspiracy holding a final consultation
+in the smaller room off the hall.  These were the lord chamberlain,
+the attorney-general, the master of the horse, and the king's
+private secretary: the lord chancellor and the rest, as foolish as
+faithless, were but the tools of these.
+
+The housemaid had shown him a little closet, opening from a passage
+behind, where he could overhear all that passed in that room; and
+now Curdie heard enough to understand that they had determined, in
+the dead of that night, rather in the deepest dark before the
+morning, to bring a certain company of soldiers into the palace,
+make away with the king, secure the princess, announce the sudden
+death of His Majesty, read as his the will they had drawn up, and
+proceed to govern the country at their ease, and with results: they
+would at once levy severer taxes, and pick a quarrel with the most
+powerful of their neighbours.  Everything settled, they agreed to
+retire, and have a few hours' quiet sleep first - all but the
+secretary, who was to sit up and call them at the proper moment. 
+Curdie allowed them half an hour to get to bed, and then set about
+completing his purgation of the palace.
+
+First he called Lina, and opened the door of the room where the
+secretary sat.  She crept in, and laid herself down against it. 
+When the secretary, rising to stretch his legs, caught sight of her
+eyes, he stood frozen with terror.  She made neither motion nor
+sound.  Gathering courage, and taking the thing for a spectral
+illusion, he made a step forward.  She showed her other teeth, with
+a growl neither more than audible nor less than horrible.  The
+secretary sank fainting into a chair.  He was not a brave man, and
+besides, his conscience had gone over to the enemy, and was sitting
+against the door by Lina.
+
+To the lord chamberlain's door next, Curdie conducted the
+legserpent, and let him in.
+
+Now His Lordship had had a bedstead made for himself, sweetly
+fashioned of rods of silver gilt: upon it the legserpent found him
+asleep, and under it he crept.  But out he came on the other side,
+and crept over it next, and again under it, and so over it, under
+it, over it, five or six times, every time leaving a coil of
+himself behind him, until he had softly folded all his length about
+the lord chamberlain and his bed.  This done, he set up his head,
+looking down with curved neck right over His Lordship's, and began
+to hiss in his face.
+
+He woke in terror unspeakable, and would have started up but the
+moment he moved, the legserpent drew his coils closer, and closer
+still, and drew and drew until the quaking traitor heard the joints
+of his bedstead grinding and gnarring.  Presently he persuaded
+himself that it was only a horrid nightmare, and began to struggle
+with all his strength to throw it off.  Thereupon the legserpent
+gave his hooked nose such a bite that his teeth met through it -
+but it was hardly thicker than the bowl of a spoon; and then the
+vulture knew that he was in the grasp of his enemy the snake, and
+yielded.
+
+As soon as he was quiet the legserpent began to untwist and
+retwist, to uncoil and recoil himself, swinging and swaying,
+knotting and relaxing himself with strangest curves and
+convolutions, always, however, leaving at least one coil around his
+victim.  At last he undid himself entirely, and crept from the bed. 
+Then first the lord chamberlain discovered that his tormentor had
+bent and twisted the bedstead, legs and canopy and all, so about
+him that he was shut in a silver cage out of which it was
+impossible for him to find a way.  Once more, thinking his enemy
+was gone, he began to shout for help.  But the instant he opened
+his mouth his keeper darted at him and bit him, and after three or
+four such essays, he lay still.
+
+The master of the horse Curdie gave in charge to the tapir.  When
+the soldier saw him enter - for he was not yet asleep - he sprang
+from his bed, and flew at him with his sword.  But the creature's
+hide was invulnerable to his blows, and he pecked at his legs with
+his proboscis until he jumped into bed again, groaning, and covered
+himself up; after which the tapir contented himself with now and
+then paying a visit to his toes.
+
+As for the attorney-general, Curdie led to his door a huge spider,
+about two feet long in the body, which, having made an excellent
+supper, was full of webbing.  The attorney-general had not gone to
+bed, but sat in a chair asleep before a great mirror.  He had been
+trying the effect of a diamond star which he had that morning taken
+from the jewel room.  When he woke he fancied himself paralysed;
+every limb, every finger even, was motionless: coils and coils of
+broad spider ribbon bandaged his members to his body, and all to
+the chair.  In the glass he saw himself wound about with slavery
+infinite.  On a footstool a yard off sat the spider glaring at him.
+
+Clubhead had mounted guard over the butler, where he lay tied hand
+and foot under the third cask.  From that cask he had seen the wine
+run into a great bath, and therein he expected to be drowned.  The
+doctor, with his crushed leg, needed no one to guard him.
+
+And now Curdie proceeded to the expulsion of the rest.  Great men
+or underlings, he treated them all alike.  From room to room over
+the house he went, and sleeping or waking took the man by the hand. 
+Such was the state to which a year of wicked rule had reduced the
+moral condition of the court, that in it all he found but three
+with human hands.  The possessors of these he allowed to dress
+themselves and depart in peace.  When they perceived his mission,
+and how he was backed, they yielded.
+
+Then commenced a general hunt, to clear the house of the vermin. 
+Out of their beds in their night clothing, out of their rooms,
+gorgeous chambers or garret nooks, the creatures hunted them.  Not
+one was allowed to escape.  Tumult and noise there was little, for
+fear was too deadly for outcry.  Ferreting them out everywhere,
+following them upstairs and downstairs, yielding no instant of
+repose except upon the way out, the avengers persecuted the
+miscreants, until the last of them was shivering outside the palace
+gates, with hardly sense enough left to know where to turn.
+
+When they set out to look for shelter, they found every inn full of
+the servants expelled before them, and not one would yield his
+place to a superior suddenly levelled with himself.  Most houses
+refused to admit them on the ground of the wickedness that must
+have drawn on them such a punishment; and not a few would have been
+left in the streets all night, had not Derba, roused by the vain
+entreaties at the doors on each side of her cottage, opened hers,
+and given up everything to them.  The lord chancellor was only too
+glad to share a mattress with a stableboy, and steal his bare feet
+under his jacket.
+
+In the morning Curdie appeared, and the outcasts were in terror,
+thinking he had come after them again.  But he took no notice of
+them: his object was to request Derba to go to the palace: the king
+required her services.  She need take no trouble about her cottage,
+he said; the palace was henceforward her home: she was the king's
+chatelaine over men and maidens of his household.  And this very
+morning she must cook His Majesty a nice breakfast.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 28
+The Preacher
+
+
+Various reports went undulating through the city as to the nature
+of what had taken place in the palace.  The people gathered, and
+stared at the house, eyeing it as if it had sprung up in the night. 
+But it looked sedate enough, remaining closed and silent, like a
+house that was dead.  They saw no one come out or go in.  Smoke
+arose from a chimney or two; there was hardly another sign of life. 
+It was not for some little time generally understood that the
+highest officers of the crown as well as the lowest menials of the
+palace had been dismissed in disgrace: for who was to recognize a
+lord chancellor in his nightshirt?  And what lord chancellor would,
+so attired in the street, proclaim his rank and office aloud?
+Before it was day most of the courtiers crept down to the river,
+hired boats, and betook themselves to their homes or their friends
+in the country.  It was assumed in the city that the domestics had
+been discharged upon a sudden discovery of general and unpardonable
+peculation; for, almost everybody being guilty of it himself, petty
+dishonesty was the crime most easily credited and least easily
+passed over in Gwyntystorm.
+
+Now that same day was Religion day, and not a few of the clergy,
+always glad to seize on any passing event to give interest to the
+dull and monotonic grind of their intellectual machines, made this
+remarkable one the ground of discourse to their congregations. 
+More especially than the rest, the first priest of the great temple
+where was the royal pew, judged himself, from his relation to the
+palace, called upon to 'improve the occasion', for they talked ever
+about improvement at Gwyntystorm, all the time they were going down
+hill with a rush.
+
+The book which had, of late years, come to be considered the most
+sacred, was called The Book of Nations, and consisted of proverbs,
+and history traced through custom: from it the first priest chose
+his text; and his text was, 'Honesty Is the Best Policy.'  He was
+considered a very eloquent man, but I can offer only a few of the
+larger bones of his sermon.
+
+The main proof of the verity of their religion, he said, was that
+things always went well with those who profess it; and its first
+fundamental principle, grounded in inborn invariable instinct, was,
+that every One should take care of that One.  This was the first
+duty of Man.  If every one would but obey this law, number one,
+then would every one be perfectly cared for - one being always
+equal to one.  But the faculty of care was in excess of need, and
+all that overflowed, and would otherwise run to waste, ought to be
+gently turned in the direction of one's neighbour, seeing that this
+also wrought for the fulfilling of the law, inasmuch as the
+reaction of excess so directed was upon the director of the same,
+to the comfort, that is, and well-being of the original self.  To
+be just and friendly was to build the warmest and safest of all
+nests, and to be kind and loving was to line it with the softest of
+all furs and feathers, for the one precious, comfort-loving self
+there to lie, revelling in downiest bliss.  One of the laws
+therefore most binding upon men because of its relation to the
+first and greatest of all duties, was embodied in the Proverb he
+had just read; and what stronger proof of its wisdom and truth
+could they desire than the sudden and complete vengeance which had
+fallen upon those worse than ordinary sinners who had offended
+against the king's majesty by forgetting that 'Honesty Is the Best
+Policy'?
+
+At this point of the discourse the head of the legserpent rose from
+the floor of the temple, towering above the pulpit, above the
+priest, then curving downward, with open mouth slowly descended
+upon him.  Horror froze the sermon-pump.  He stared upward aghast. 
+The great teeth of the animal closed upon a mouthful of the sacred
+vestments, and slowly he lifted the preacher from the pulpit, like
+a handful of linen from a washtub, and, on his four solemn stumps,
+bore him out of the temple, dangling aloft from his jaws.  At the
+back of it he dropped him into the dust hole among the remnants of
+a library whose age had destroyed its value in the eyes of the
+chapter.  They found him burrowing in it, a lunatic henceforth -
+whose madness presented the peculiar feature, that in its paroxysms
+he jabbered sense.
+
+Bone-freezing horror pervaded Gwyntystorm.  If their best and
+wisest were treated with such contempt, what might not the rest of
+them look for?  Alas for their city!  Their grandly respectable
+city!  Their loftily reasonable city!  Where it was all to end, who
+could tell!
+
+But something must be done.  Hastily assembling, the priests chose
+a new first priest, and in full conclave unanimously declared and
+accepted that the king in his retirement had, through the practice
+of the blackest magic, turned the palace into a nest of demons in
+the midst of them.  A grand exorcism was therefore indispensable.
+
+In the meantime the fact came out that the greater part of the
+courtiers had been dismissed as well as the servants, and this fact
+swelled the hope of the Party of Decency, as they called
+themselves.  Upon it they proceeded to act, and strengthened
+themselves on all sides.
+
+The action of the king's bodyguard remained for a time uncertain. 
+But when at length its officers were satisfied that both the master
+of the horse and their colonel were missing, they placed themselves
+under the orders of the first priest.
+Every one dated the culmination of the evil from the visit of the
+miner and his mongrel; and the butchers vowed, if they could but
+get hold of them again, they would roast both of them alive.  At
+once they formed themselves into a regiment, and put their dogs in
+training for attack.
+
+incessant was the talk, innumerable were the suggestions, and great
+was the deliberation.  The general consent, however, was that as
+soon as the priests should have expelled the demons, they would
+depose the king, and attired in all his regal insignia, shut him in
+a cage for public show; then choose governors, with the lord
+chancellor at their head, whose first duty should be to remit every
+possible tax; and the magistrates, by the mouth of the city
+marshal, required all able-bodied citizens, in order to do their
+part toward the carrying out of these and a multitude of other
+reforms, to be ready to take arms at the first summons.
+
+Things needful were prepared as speedily as possible, and a mighty
+ceremony, in the temple, in the market place, and in front of the
+palace, was performed for the expulsion of the demons.  This over,
+the leaders retired to arrange an attack upon the palace.
+
+But that night events occurred which, proving the failure of their
+first, induced the abandonment of their second, intent.  Certain of
+the prowling order of the community, whose numbers had of late been
+steadily on the increase, reported frightful things.  Demons of
+indescribable ugliness had been espied careering through the
+midnight streets and courts.  A citizen - some said in the very act
+of housebreaking, but no one cared to look into trifles at such a
+crisis - had been seized from behind, he could not see by what, and
+soused in the river.  A well-known receiver of stolen goods had had
+his shop broken open, and when he came down in the morning had
+found everything in ruin on the pavement.  The wooden image of
+justice over the door of the city marshal had had the arm that held
+the sword bitten off.  The gluttonous magistrate had been pulled
+from his bed in the dark, by beings of which he could see nothing
+but the flaming eyes, and treated to a bath of the turtle soup that
+had been left simmering by the side of the kitchen fire.  Having
+poured it over him, they put him again into his bed, where he soon
+learned how a mummy must feel in its cerements.
+
+Worst of all, in the market place was fixed up a paper, with the
+king's own signature, to the effect that whoever henceforth should
+show inhospitality to strangers, and should be convicted of the
+same, should be instantly expelled the city; while a second, in the
+butchers' quarter, ordained that any dog which henceforth should
+attack a stranger should be immediately destroyed.  It was plain,
+said the butchers, that the clergy were of no use; they could not
+exorcise demons!  That afternoon, catching sight of a poor old
+fellow in rags and tatters, quietly walking up the street, they
+hounded their dogs upon him, and had it not been that the door of
+Derba's cottage was standing open, and was near enough for him to
+dart in and shut it ere they reached him, he would have been torn
+in pieces.
+And thus things went on for some days.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 29
+Barbara
+
+
+In the meantime, with Derba to minister to his wants, with Curdie
+to protect him, and Irene to nurse him, the king was getting
+rapidly stronger.  Good food was what he most wanted and of that,
+at least of certain kinds of it, there was plentiful store in the
+palace.  Everywhere since the cleansing of the lower regions of it,
+the air was clean and sweet, and under the honest hands of the one
+housemaid the king's chamber became a pleasure to his eyes.  With
+such changes it was no wonder if his heart grew lighter as well as
+his brain clearer.
+But still evil dreams came and troubled him, the lingering result
+of the wicked medicines the doctor had given him.  Every night,
+sometimes twice or thrice, he would wake up in terror, and it would
+be minutes ere he could come to himself.  The consequence was that
+he was always worse in the morning, and had loss to make up during
+the day.  While he slept, Irene or Curdie, one or the other, must
+still be always by his side.
+
+One night, when it was Curdie's turn with the king, he heard a cry
+somewhere in the house, and as there was no other child, concluded,
+notwithstanding the distance of her grandmother's room, that it
+must be Barbara.  Fearing something might be wrong, and noting the
+king's sleep more quiet than usual, he ran to see.  He found the
+child in the middle of the floor, weeping bitterly, and Derba
+slumbering peacefully in bed.  The instant she saw him the
+night-lost thing ceased her crying, smiled, and stretched out her
+arms to him.  Unwilling to wake the old woman, who had been working
+hard all day, he took the child, and carried her with him.  She
+clung to him so, pressing her tear-wet radiant face against his,
+that her little arms threatened to choke him.
+
+When he re-entered the chamber, he found the king sitting up in
+bed, fighting the phantoms of some hideous dream.  Generally upon
+such occasions, although he saw his watcher, he could not
+dissociate him from the dream, and went raving on.  But the moment
+his eyes fell upon little Barbara, whom he had never seen before,
+his soul came into them with a rush, and a smile like the dawn of
+an eternal day overspread his countenance; the dream was nowhere,
+and the child was in his heart.  He stretched out his arms to her,
+the child stretched out hers to him, and in five minutes they were
+both asleep, each in the other's embrace.
+
+From that night Barbara had a crib in the king's chamber, and as
+often as he woke, Irene or Curdie, whichever was watching, took the
+sleeping child and laid her in his arms, upon which, invariably and
+instantly, the dream would vanish.  A great part of the day too she
+would be playing on or about the king's bed; and it was a delight
+to the heart of the princess to see her amusing herself with the
+crown, now sitting upon it, now rolling it hither and thither about
+the room like a hoop.  Her grandmother entering once while she was
+pretending to make porridge in it, held up her hands in
+horror-struck amazement; but the king would not allow her to
+interfere, for the king was now Barbara's playmate, and his crown
+their plaything.
+
+The colonel of the guard also was growing better.  Curdie went
+often to see him.  They were soon friends, for the best people
+understand each other the easiest, and the grim old warrior loved
+the miner boy as if he were at once his son and his angel.  He was
+very anxious about his regiment.  He said the officers were mostly
+honest men, he believed, but how they might be doing without him,
+or what they might resolve, in ignorance of the real state of
+affairs, and exposed to every misrepresentation, who could tell?
+Curdie proposed that he should send for the major, offering to be
+the messenger.  The colonel agreed, and Curdie went - not without
+his mattock, because of the dogs.
+
+But the officers had been told by the master of the horse that
+their colonel was dead, and although they were amazed he should be
+buried without the attendance of his regiment, they never doubted
+the information.  The handwriting itself of their colonel was
+insufficient, counteracted by the fresh reports daily current, to
+destroy the lie.  The major regarded the letter as a trap for the
+next officer in command, and sent his orderly to arrest the
+messenger.  But Curdie had had the wisdom not to wait for an
+answer.
+
+The king's enemies said that he had first poisoned the good colonel
+of the guard, and then murdered the master of the horse, and other
+faithful councillors; and that his oldest and most attached
+domestics had but escaped from the palace with their lives - not
+all of them, for the butler was missing.  Mad or wicked, he was not
+only unfit to rule any longer, but worse than unfit to have in his
+power and under his influence the young princess, only hope of
+Gwyntystorm and the kingdom.
+
+The moment the lord chancellor reached his house in the country and
+had got himself clothed, he began to devise how yet to destroy his
+master; and the very next morning set out for the neighbouring
+kingdom of Borsagrass to invite invasion, and offer a compact with
+its monarch.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 30
+Peter
+
+
+At the cottage in the mountain everything for a time went on just
+as before.  It was indeed dull without Curdie, but as often as they
+looked at the emerald it was gloriously green, and with nothing to
+fear or regret, and everything to hope, they required little
+comforting.  One morning, however, at last, Peter, who had been
+consulting the gem, rather now from habit than anxiety, as a farmer
+his barometer in undoubtful weather, turned suddenly to his wife,
+the stone in his hand, and held it up with a look of ghastly
+dismay.
+
+'Why, that's never the emerald!' said Joan.
+
+'It is,' answered Peter; 'but it were small blame to any one that
+took it for a bit of bottle glass!'
+
+For, all save one spot right in the centre, of intensest and most
+brilliant green, it looked as if the colour had been burnt out of
+it.
+
+'Run, run, Peter!' cried his wife.  'Run and tell the old princess. 
+it may not be too late.  The boy must be lying at death's door.'
+
+Without a word Peter caught up his mattock, darted from the
+cottage, and was at the bottom of the hill in less time than he
+usually took to get halfway.
+
+The door of the king's house stood open; he rushed in and up the
+stair.  But after wandering about in vain for an hour, opening door
+after door, and finding no way farther up, the heart of the old man
+had well-nigh failed him.  Empty rooms, empty rooms! - desertion
+and desolation everywhere.
+
+At last he did come upon the door to the tower stair.  Up he
+darted.  Arrived at the top, he found three doors, and, one after
+the other, knocked at them all.  But there was neither voice nor
+hearing.  Urged by his faith and his dread, slowly, hesitatingly,
+he opened one.  It revealed a bare garret room, nothing in it but
+one chair and one spinning wheel.  He closed it, and opened the
+next - to start back in terror, for he saw nothing but a great
+gulf, a moonless night, full of stars, and, for all the stars,
+dark, dark! - a fathomless abyss.  He opened the third door, and a
+rush like the tide of a living sea invaded his ears.  Multitudinous
+wings flapped and flashed in the sun, and, like the ascending
+column from a volcano, white birds innumerable shot into the air,
+darkening the day with the shadow of their cloud, and then, with a
+sharp sweep, as if bent sideways by a sudden wind, flew northward,
+swiftly away, and vanished.  The place felt like a tomb.  There
+seemed no breath of life left in it.
+
+Despair laid hold upon him; he rushed down thundering with heavy
+feet.  Out upon him darted the housekeeper like an ogress-spider,
+and after her came her men; but Peter rushed past them, heedless
+and careless - for had not the princess mocked him? - and sped
+along the road to Gwyntystorm.  What help lay in a miner's mattock,
+a man's arm, a father's heart, he would bear to his boy.
+
+Joan sat up all night waiting his return, hoping and hoping.  The
+mountain was very still, and the sky was clear; but all night long
+the miner sped northward, and the heart of his wife was troubled.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 31
+The Sacrifice
+
+
+Things in the palace were in a strange condition: the king playing
+with a child and dreaming wise dreams, waited upon by a little
+princess with the heart of a queen, and a youth from the mines, who
+went nowhere, not even into the king's chamber, without his mattock
+on his shoulder and a horrible animal at his heels; in a room
+nearby the colonel of his guard, also in bed, without a soldier to
+obey him; in six other rooms, far apart, six miscreants, each
+watched by a beast-jailer; ministers to them all, an old woman and
+a page; and in the wine cellar, forty-three animals, creatures more
+grotesque than ever brain of man invented.  None dared approach its
+gates, and seldom one issued from them.
+
+All the dwellers in the city were united in enmity to the palace. 
+It swarmed with evil spirits, they said, whereas the evil spirits
+were in the city, unsuspected.  One consequence of their presence
+was that, when the rumour came that a great army was on the march
+against Gwyntystorm, instead of rushing to their defences, to make
+new gates, free portcullises and drawbridges, and bar the river,
+each band flew first to their treasures, burying them in their
+cellars and gardens, and hiding them behind stones in their
+chimneys; and, next to rebellion, signing an invitation to His
+Majesty of Borsagrass to enter at their open gates, destroy their
+king, and annex their country to his own.
+
+The straits of isolation were soon found in the palace: its
+invalids were requiring stronger food, and what was to be done? 
+For if the butchers sent meat to the palace, was it not likely
+enough to be poisoned?  Curdie said to Derba he would think of some
+plan before morning.
+
+But that same night, as soon as it was dark, Lina came to her
+master, and let him understand she wanted to go out.  He unlocked
+a little private postern for her, left it so that she could push it
+open when she returned, and told the crocodile to stretch himself
+across it inside.  Before midnight she came back with a young deer.
+
+Early the next morning the legserpent crept out of the wine cellar,
+through the broken door behind, shot into the river, and soon
+appeared in the kitchen with a splendid sturgeon.  Every night Lina
+went out hunting, and every morning Legserpent went out fishing,
+and both invalids and household had plenty to eat.  As to news, the
+page, in plain clothes, would now and then venture out into the
+market place, and gather some.
+
+One night he came back with the report that the army of the king of
+Borsagrass had crossed the border.  Two days after, he brought the
+news that the enemy was now but twenty miles from Gwyntystorm.
+
+The colonel of the guard rose, and began furbishing his armour -
+but gave it over to the page, and staggered across to the barracks,
+which were in the next street.  The sentry took him for a ghost or
+worse, ran into the guardroom, bolted the door, and stopped his
+ears.  The poor colonel, who was yet hardly able to stand, crawled
+back despairing.
+
+For Curdie, he had already, as soon as the first rumour reached
+him, resolved, if no other instructions came, and the king
+continued unable to give orders, to call Lina and the creatures,
+and march to meet the enemy.  If he died, he died for the right,
+and there was a right end of it.  He had no preparations to make,
+except a good sleep.
+
+He asked the king to let the housemaid take his place by His
+Majesty that night, and went and lay down on the floor of the
+corridor, no farther off than a whisper would reach from the door
+of the chamber.  There, -with an old mantle of the king's thrown
+over him, he was soon fast asleep.
+
+Somewhere about the middle of the night, he woke suddenly, started
+to his feet, and rubbed his eyes.  He could not tell what had waked
+him.  But could he be awake, or was he not dreaming?  The curtain
+of the king's door, a dull red ever before, was glowing a gorgeous,
+a radiant purple; and the crown wrought upon it in silks and gems
+was flashing as if it burned!  What could it mean?  Was the king's
+chamber on fire?  He darted to the door and lifted the curtain. 
+Glorious terrible sight!
+
+A long and broad marble table, that stood at one end of the room,
+had been drawn into the middle of it, and thereon burned a great
+fire, of a sort that Curdie knew - a fire of glowing, flaming
+roses, red and white.  In the midst of the roses lay the king,
+moaning, but motionless.  Every rose that fell from the table to
+the floor, someone, whom Curdie could not plainly see for the
+brightness, lifted and laid burning upon the king's face, until at
+length his face too was covered with the live roses, and he lay all
+within the fire, moaning still, with now and then a shuddering sob.
+
+And the shape that Curdie saw and could not see, wept over the king
+as he lay in the fire, and often she hid her face in handfuls of
+her shadowy hair, and from her hair the water of her weeping
+dropped like sunset rain in the light of the roses.  At last she
+lifted a great armful of her hair, and shook it over the fire, and
+the drops fell from it in showers, and they did not hiss in the
+flames, but there arose instead as it were the sound of running
+brooks.
+
+And the glow of the red fire died away, and the glow of the white
+fire grew grey, and the light was gone, and on the table all was
+black - except the face of the king, which shone from under the
+burnt roses like a diamond in the ashes of a furnace.
+
+Then Curdie, no longer dazzled, saw and knew the old princess.  The
+room was lighted with the splendour of her face, of her blue eyes,
+of her sapphire crown.  Her golden hair went streaming out from her
+through the air till it went off in mist and light.  She was large
+and strong as a Titaness.  She stooped over the table-altar, put
+her mighty arms under the living sacrifice, lifted the king, as if
+he were but a little child, to her bosom, walked with him up the
+floor, and laid him in his bed.  Then darkness fell.
+
+The miner boy turned silent away, and laid himself down again in
+the corridor.  An absolute joy filled his heart, his bosom, his
+head, his whole body.  All was safe; all was well.  With the helve
+of his mattock tight in his grasp, he sank into a dreamless sleep.
+
+
+CHAPTER 32
+The King's Army
+
+
+He woke like a giant refreshed with wine.
+
+When he went into the king's chamber, the housemaid sat where he
+had left her, and everything in the room was as it had been the
+night before, save that a heavenly odour of roses filled the air of
+it.  He went up to the bed.  The king opened his eyes, and the soul
+of perfect health shone out of them.  Nor was Curdie amazed in his
+delight.
+
+'Is it not time to rise, Curdie?' said the king.
+
+'It is, Your Majesty.  Today we must be doing,' answered Curdie.
+
+'What must we be doing today, Curdie?'
+
+'Fighting, sire.'
+
+'Then fetch me my armour - that of plated steel, in the chest
+there.  You will find the underclothing with it.'
+
+As he spoke, he reached out his hand for his sword, which hung in
+the bed before him, drew it, and examined the blade.
+
+'A little rusty!' he said, 'but the edge is there.  We shall polish
+it ourselves today - not on the wheel.  Curdie, my son, I wake from
+a troubled dream.  A glorious torture has ended it, and I live.  I
+know now well how things are, but you shall explain them to me as
+I get on my armour.  No, I need no bath.  I am clean.  Call the
+colonel of the guard.'
+
+In complete steel the old man stepped into the chamber.  He knew it
+not, but the old princess had passed through his room in the night.
+
+'Why, Sir Bronzebeard!' said the king, 'you are dressed before me!
+You need no valet, old man, when there is battle in the wind!'
+
+'Battle, sire!' returned the colonel.  'Where then are our
+soldiers?'
+
+'Why, there and here,' answered the king, pointing to the colonel
+first, and then to himself.  'Where else, man?  The enemy will be
+upon us ere sunset, if we be not upon him ere noon.  What other
+thing was in your brave brain when you donned your armour, friend?'
+
+'Your Majesty's orders, sire,' answered Sir Bronzebeard.
+
+The king smiled and turned to Curdie.
+
+'And what was in yours, Curdie, for your first word was of battle?'
+
+'See, Your Majesty,' answered Curdie; 'I have polished my mattock. 
+If Your Majesty had not taken the command, I would have met the
+enemy at the head of my beasts, and died in comfort, or done
+better.'
+
+'Brave boy!' said the king.  'He who takes his life in his hand is
+the only soldier.  You shall head your beasts today.  Sir
+Bronzebeard, will you die with me if need be?'
+
+'Seven times, my king,' said the colonel.
+
+'Then shall we win this battle!' said the king.  'Curdie, go and
+bind securely the six, that we lose not their guards.  Can you find
+me a horse, think you, Sir Bronzebeard?  Alas! they told me my
+white charger was dead.'
+
+'I will go and fright the varletry with my presence, and secure, I
+trust, a horse for Your Majesty, and one for myself.'
+
+'And look you, brother!' said the king; 'bring one for my miner boy
+too, and a sober old charger for the princess, for she too must go
+to the battle, and conquer with us.'
+
+'Pardon me, sire,' said Curdie; 'a miner can fight best on foot. 
+I might smite my horse dead under me with a missed blow.  And
+besides that, I must be near to my beasts.'
+
+'As you will,' said the king.  'Three horses then, Sir
+Bronzebeard.'
+
+The colonel departed, doubting sorely in his heart how to accoutre
+and lead from the barrack stables three horses, in the teeth of his
+revolted regiment.
+
+In the hall he met the housemaid.
+
+'Can you lead a horse?' he asked.
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Are you willing to die for the king?'
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Can you do as you are bid?'
+
+'I can keep on trying, sir.'
+
+'Come then.  Were I not a man I would be a woman such as you.'
+
+When they entered the barrack yard, the soldiers scattered like
+autumn leaves before a blast of winter.  They went into the stable
+unchallenged - and lo! in a stall, before the colonel's eyes, stood
+the king's white charger, with the royal saddle and bridle hung
+high beside him!
+
+'Traitorous thieves!' muttered the old man in his beard, and went
+along the stalls, looking for his own black charger.  Having found
+him, he returned to saddle first the king's.  But the maid had
+already the saddle upon him, and so girt that the colonel could
+thrust no finger tip between girth and skin.  He left her to finish
+what she had so well begun, and went and made ready his own.  He
+then chose for the princess a great red horse, twenty years old,
+which he knew to possess every equine virtue.  This and his own he
+led to the palace, and the maid led the king's.
+
+The king and Curdie stood in the court, the king in full armour of
+silvered steel, with a circlet of rubies and diamonds round his
+helmet.  He almost leaped for joy when he saw his great white
+charger come in, gentle as a child to the hand of the housemaid. 
+But when the horse saw his master in his armour, he reared and
+bounded in jubilation, yet did not break from the hand that held
+him.  Then out came the princess attired and ready, with a hunting
+knife her father had given her by her side.  They brought her
+mother's saddle, splendent with gems and gold, set it on the great
+red horse, and lifted her to it.  But the saddle was so big, and
+the horse so tall, that the child found no comfort in them.
+
+'Please, King Papa,' she said, 'can I not have my white pony?'
+
+'I did not think of him, little one,' said the king.  'Where is
+he?'
+
+'In the stable,' answered the maid.  'I found him half starved, the
+only horse within the gates, the day after the servants were driven
+out.  He has been well fed since.'
+
+'Go and fetch him,' said the king.
+
+As the maid appeared with the pony, from a side door came Lina and
+the forty-nine, following Curdie.
+
+'I will go with Curdie and the Uglies,' cried the princess; and as
+soon as she was mounted she got into the middle of the pack.
+
+So out they set, the strangest force that ever went against an
+enemy.  The king in silver armour sat stately on his white steed,
+with the stones flashing on his helmet; beside him the grim old
+colonel, armed in steel, rode his black charger; behind the king,
+a little to the right, Curdie walked afoot, his mattock shining in
+the sun; Lina followed at his heel; behind her came the wonderful
+company of Uglies; in the midst of them rode the gracious little
+Irene, dressed in blue, and mounted on the prettiest of white
+ponies; behind the colonel, a little to the left, walked the page,
+armed in a breastplate, headpiece, and trooper's sword he had found
+in the palace, all much too big for him, and carrying a huge brass
+trumpet which he did his best to blow; and the king smiled and
+seemed pleased with his music, although it was but the grunt of a
+brazen unrest.  Alongside the beasts walked Derba carrying Barbara
+- their refuge the mountains, should the cause of the king be lost;
+as soon as they were over the river they turned aside to ascend the
+Cliff, and there awaited the forging of the day's history.  Then
+first Curdie saw that the housemaid, whom they had all forgotten,
+was following, mounted on the great red horse, and seated in the
+royal saddle.
+
+Many were the eyes unfriendly of women that had stared at them from
+door and window as they passed through the city; and low laughter
+and mockery and evil words from the lips of children had rippled
+about their ears; but the men were all gone to welcome the enemy,
+the butchers the first, the king's guard the last.  And now on the
+heels of the king's army rushed out the women and children also, to
+gather flowers and branches, wherewith to welcome their conquerors.
+
+About a mile down the river, Curdie, happening to look behind him,
+saw the maid, whom he had supposed gone with Derba, still following
+on the great red horse.  The same moment the king, a few paces in
+front of him, caught sight of the enemy's tents, pitched where, the
+cliffs receding, the bank of the river widened to a little plain.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 33
+The Battle
+
+
+He commanded the page to blow his trumpet; and, in the strength of
+the moment, the youth uttered a right warlike defiance.
+
+But the butchers and the guard, who had gone over armed to the
+enemy, thinking that the king had come to make his peace also, and
+that it might thereafter go hard with them, rushed at once to make
+short work with him, and both secure and commend themselves.  The
+butchers came on first - for the guards had slackened their saddle
+girths - brandishing their knives, and talking to their dogs. 
+Curdie and the page, with Lina and her pack, bounded to meet them. 
+Curdie struck down the foremost with his mattock.  The page,
+finding his sword too much for him, threw it away and seized the
+butcher's knife, which as he rose he plunged into the foremost dog. 
+Lina rushed raging and gnashing among them.  She would not look at
+a dog so long as there was a butcher on his legs, and she never
+stopped to kill a butcher, only with one grind of her jaws crushed
+a leg of him.  When they were all down, then indeed she flashed
+among the dogs.
+
+Meantime the king and the colonel had spurred toward the advancing
+guard.  The king clove the major through skull and collar bone, and
+the colonel stabbed the captain in the throat.  Then a fierce
+combat commenced - two against many.  But the butchers and their
+dogs quickly disposed of, up came Curdie and his beasts.  The
+horses of the guard, struck with terror, turned in spite of the
+spur, and fled in confusion.
+Thereupon the forces of Borsagrass, which could see little of the
+affair, but correctly imagined a small determined body in front of
+them, hastened to the attack.  No sooner did their first advancing
+wave appear through the foam of the retreating one, than the king
+and the colonel and the page, Curdie and the beasts, went charging
+upon them.  Their attack, especially the rush of the Uglies, threw
+the first line into great confusion, but the second came up
+quickly; the beasts could not be everywhere, there were thousands
+to one against them, and the king and his three companions were in
+the greatest possible danger.
+
+A dense cloud came over the sun, and sank rapidly toward the earth. 
+The cloud moved all together, and yet the thousands of white flakes
+of which it was made up moved each for itself in ceaseless and
+rapid motion: those flakes were the wings of pigeons.  Down swooped
+the birds upon the invaders; right in the face of man and horse
+they flew with swift-beating wings, blinding eyes and confounding
+brain.  Horses reared and plunged and wheeled.  All was at once in
+confusion.  The men made frantic efforts to seize their tormentors,
+but not one could they touch; and they outdoubled them in numbers. 
+Between every wild clutch came a peck of beak and a buffet of
+pinion in the face.  Generally the bird would, with sharp-clapping
+wings, dart its whole body, with the swiftness of an arrow, against
+its singled mark, yet so as to glance aloft the same instant, and
+descend skimming; much as the thin stone, shot with horizontal cast
+of arm, having touched and torn the surface of the lake, ascends to
+skim, touch, and tear again.  So mingled the feathered multitude in
+the grim game of war.  It was a storm in which the wind was birds,
+and the sea men.  And ever as each bird arrived at the rear of the
+enemy, it turned, ascended, and sped to the front to charge again.
+
+The moment the battle began, the princess's pony took fright, and
+turned and fled.  But the maid wheeled her horse across the road
+and stopped him; and they waited together the result of the battle.
+
+And as they waited, it seemed to the princess right strange that
+the pigeons, every one as it came to the rear, and fetched a
+compass to gather force for the reattack, should make the head of
+her attendant on the red horse the goal around which it turned; so
+that about them was an unintermittent flapping and flashing of
+wings, and a curving, sweeping torrent of the side-poised wheeling
+bodies of birds.  Strange also it seemed that the maid should be
+constantly waving her arm toward the battle.  And the time of the
+motion of her arm so fitted with the rushes of birds, that it
+looked as if the birds obeyed her gesture, and she was casting
+living javelins by the thousand against the enemy.  The moment a
+pigeon had rounded her head, it went off straight as bolt from bow,
+and with trebled velocity.
+
+But of these strange things, others besides the princess had taken
+note.  From a rising ground whence they watched the battle in
+growing dismay, the leaders of the enemy saw the maid and her
+motions, and, concluding her an enchantress, whose were the airy
+legions humiliating them, set spurs to their horses, made a
+circuit, outflanked the king, and came down upon her.  But suddenly
+by her side stood a stalwart old man in the garb of a miner, who,
+as the general rode at her, sword in hand, heaved his swift
+mattock, and brought it down with such force on the forehead of his
+charger, that he fell to the ground like a log.  His rider shot
+over his head and lay stunned.  Had not the great red horse reared
+and wheeled, he would have fallen beneath that of the general.
+
+With lifted sabre, one of his attendant officers rode at the miner. 
+But a mass of pigeons darted in the faces of him and his horse, and
+the next moment he lay beside his commander.
+
+The rest of them turned and fled, pursued by the birds.
+
+'Ah, friend Peter!' said the maid; 'thou hast come as I told thee!
+Welcome and thanks!'
+
+By this time the battle was over.  The rout was general.  The enemy
+stormed back upon their own camp, with the beasts roaring in the
+midst of them, and the king and his army, now reinforced by one,
+pursuing.  But presently the king drew rein.
+
+'Call off your hounds, Curdie, and let the pigeons do the rest,' he
+shouted, and turned to see what had become of the princess.
+
+In full panic fled the invaders, sweeping down their tents,
+stumbling over their baggage, trampling on their dead and wounded,
+ceaselessly pursued and buffeted by the white-winged army of
+heaven.  Homeward they rushed the road they had come, straight for
+the borders, many dropping from pure fatigue, and lying where they
+fell.  And still the pigeons were in their necks as they ran.  At
+length to the eyes of the king and his army nothing was visible
+save a dust cloud below, and a bird cloud above.  Before night the
+bird cloud came back, flying high over Gwyntystorm.  Sinking
+swiftly, it disappeared among the ancient roofs of the palace.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 34
+Judgement
+
+
+The king and his army returned, bringing with them one prisoner
+only, the lord chancellor.  Curdie had dragged him from under a
+fallen tent, not by the hand of a man, but by the foot of a mule.
+
+When they entered the city, it was still as the grave.  The
+citizens had fled home.  'We must submit,' they cried, 'or the king
+and his demons will destroy us.'  The king rode through the streets
+in silence, ill-pleased with his people.  But he stopped his horse
+in the midst of the market place, and called, in a voice loud and
+clear as the cry of a silver trumpet, 'Go and find your own.  Bury
+your dead, and bring home your wounded.'  Then he turned him
+gloomily to the palace.
+just as they reached the gates, Peter, who, as they went, had been
+telling his tale to Curdie, ended it with the words:
+
+'And so there I was, in the nick of time to save the two
+princesses!'
+
+'The two princesses, Father!  The one on the great red horse was
+the housemaid,' said Curdie, and ran to open the gates for the
+king.
+
+They found Derba returned before them, and already busy preparing
+them food.  The king put up his charger with his own hands, rubbed
+him down, and fed him.
+
+When they had washed, and eaten and drunk, he called the colonel,
+and told Curdie and the page to bring out the traitors and the
+beasts, and attend him to the market place.
+
+By this time the people were crowding back into the city, bearing
+their dead and wounded.  And there was lamentation in Gwyntystorm,
+for no one could comfort himself, and no one had any to comfort
+him.  The nation was victorious, but the people were conquered.
+
+The king stood in the centre of the market place, upon the steps of
+the ancient cross.  He had laid aside his helmet and put on his
+crown, but he stood all armed beside, with his sword in his hand. 
+He called the people to him, and, for all the terror of the beasts,
+they dared not disobey him.  Those, even, who were carrying their
+wounded laid them down, and drew near trembling.
+
+Then the king said to Curdie and the page:
+
+'Set the evil men before me.'
+
+He looked upon them for a moment in mingled anger and pity, then
+turned to the people and said:
+
+'Behold your trust!  Ye slaves, behold your leaders!  I would have
+freed you, but ye would not be free.  Now shall ye be ruled with a
+rod of iron, that ye may learn what freedom is, and love it and
+seek it.  These wretches I will send where they shall mislead you
+no longer.'
+
+He made a sign to Curdie, who immediately brought up the
+legserpent.  To the body of the animal they bound the lord
+chamberlain, speechless with horror.  The butler began to shriek
+and pray, but they bound him on the back of Clubhead.  One after
+another, upon the largest of the creatures they bound the whole
+seven, each through the unveiling terror looking the villain he
+was.  Then said the king:
+
+'I thank you, my good beasts; and I hope to visit you ere long. 
+Take these evil men with you, and go to your place.'
+
+Like a whirlwind they were in the crowd, scattering it like dust. 
+Like hounds they rushed from the city, their burdens howling and
+raving.
+
+What became of them I have never heard.
+
+Then the king turned once more to the people and said, 'Go to your
+houses'; nor vouchsafed them another word.  They crept home like
+chidden hounds.
+
+The king returned to the palace.  He made the colonel a duke, and
+the page a knight, and Peter he appointed general of all his mines. 
+But to Curdie he said:
+
+'You are my own boy, Curdie.  My child cannot choose but love you,
+and when you are grown up - if you both will - you shall marry each
+other, and be king and queen when I am gone.  Till then be the
+king's Curdie.'
+
+Irene held out her arms to Curdie.  He raised her in his, and she
+kissed him.
+
+'And my Curdie too!' she said.
+
+Thereafter the people called him Prince Conrad; but the king always
+called him either just Curdie, or my miner boy.
+
+They sat down to supper, and Derba and the knight and the housemaid
+waited, and Barbara sat at the king's left hand.  The housemaid
+poured out the wine; and as she poured for Curdie red wine that
+foamed in the cup, as if glad to see the light whence it had been
+banished so long, she looked him in the eyes.  And Curdie started,
+and sprang from his seat, and dropped on his knees, and burst into
+tears.  And the maid said with a smile, such as none but one could
+smile:
+
+'Did I not tell you, Curdie, that it might be you would not know me
+when next you saw me?'
+Then she went from the room, and in a moment returned in royal
+purple, with a crown of diamonds and rubies, from under which her
+hair went flowing to the floor, all about her ruby- slippered feet. 
+Her face was radiant with joy, the joy overshadowed by a faint mist
+as of unfulfilment.  The king rose and kneeled on one knee before
+her.  All kneeled in like homage.  Then the king would have yielded
+her his royal chair.  But she made them all sit down, and with her
+own hands placed at the table seats for Derba and the page.  Then
+in ruby crown and royal purple she served them all.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 35
+The End
+
+The king sent Curdie out into his dominions to search for men and
+women that had human hands.  And many such he found, honest and
+true, and brought them to his master.  So a new and upright court
+was formed, and strength returned to the nation.
+
+But the exchequer was almost empty, for the evil men had squandered
+everything, and the king hated taxes unwillingly paid.  Then came
+Curdie and said to the king that the city stood upon gold.  And the
+king sent for men wise in the ways of the earth, and they built
+smelting furnaces, and Peter brought miners, and they mined the
+gold, and smelted it, and the king coined it into money, and
+therewith established things well in the land.
+
+The same day on which he found his boy, Peter set out to go home. 
+When he told the good news to Joan, his wife, she rose from her
+chair and said, 'Let us go.'  And they left the cottage, and
+repaired to Gwyntystorm.  And on a mountain above the city they
+built themselves a warm house for their old age, high in the clear
+air.
+
+As Peter mined one day, at the back of the king's wine Cellar, he
+broke into a cavern crusted with gems, and much wealth flowed
+therefrom, and the king used it wisely.
+
+Queen Irene - that was the right name of the old princess - was
+thereafter seldom long absent from the palace.  Once or twice when
+she was missing, Barbara, who seemed to know of her sometimes when
+nobody else had a notion whither she had gone, said she was with
+the dear old Uglies in the wood.  Curdie thought that perhaps her
+business might be with others there as well.  All the uppermost
+rooms in the palace were left to her use, and when any one was in
+need of her help, up thither he must go.  But even when she was
+there, he did not always succeed in finding her.  She, however,
+always knew that such a one had been looking for her.
+
+Curdie went to find her one day.  As he ascended the last stair, to
+meet him came the well-known scent of her roses; and when he opened
+the door, lo! there was the same gorgeous room in which his touch
+had been glorified by her fire!  And there burned the fire - a huge
+heap of red and white roses.  Before the hearth stood the princess,
+an old grey-haired woman, with Lina a little behind her, slowly
+wagging her tail, and looking like a beast of prey that can hardly
+so long restrain itself from springing as to be sure of its victim. 
+The queen was casting roses, more and more roses, upon the fire. 
+At last she turned and said, 'Now Lina!' - and Lina dashed
+burrowing into the fire.  There went up a black smoke and a dust,
+and Lina was never more seen in the palace.
+
+Irene and Curdie were married.  The old king died, and they were
+king and queen.  As long as they lived Gwyntystorm was a better
+city, and good people grew in it.  But they had no children, and
+when they died the people chose a king.  And the new king went
+mining and mining in the rock under the city, and grew more and
+more eager after the gold, and paid less and less heed to his
+people.  Rapidly they sank toward their old wickedness.  But still
+the king went on mining, and coining gold by the pailful, until the
+people were worse even than in the old time.  And so greedy was the
+king after gold, that when at last the ore began to fail, he caused
+the miners to reduce the pillars which Peter and they that followed
+him had left standing to bear the city.  And from the girth of an
+oak of a thousand years, they chipped them down to that of a fir
+tree of fifty.
+
+One day at noon, when life was at its highest, the whole city fell
+with a roaring crash.  The cries of men and the shrieks of women
+went up with its dust, and then there was a great silence.
+
+Where the mighty rock once towered, crowded with homes and crowned
+with a palace, now rushes and raves a stone-obstructed rapid of the
+river.  All around spreads a wilderness of wild deer, and the very
+name of Gwyntystorm had ceased from the lips of men.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of The Princess and Curdie,
+
diff --git a/old/prcur10.zip b/old/prcur10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef2972c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/prcur10.zip