CHAPTER 16 - The Ring
The same moment her nurse came into the room,
sobbing. When she saw her sitting there she started back with a loud cry of
amazement and joy. Then running to her, she caught her in her arms and covered
her with kisses.
'My precious darling princess! where have you
been? What has happened to you? We've all been crying our eyes out, and
searching the house from top to bottom for you.'
'Not quite from the top,' thought Irene to
herself; and she might have added, 'not quite to the bottom', perhaps, if she
had known all. But the one she would not, and the other she could not say. 'Oh,
Lootie! I've had such a dreadful adventure!' she replied, and told her all
about the cat with the long legs, and how she ran out upon the mountain, and
came back again. But she said nothing of her grandmother or her lamp.
'And there we've been searching for you all over
the house for more than an hour and a half!' exclaimed the nurse. 'But that's
no matter, now we've got you! Only, princess, I must say,' she added, her mood
changing, 'what you ought to have done was to call for your own Lootie to come
and help you, instead of running out of the house, and up the mountain, in that
wild, I must say, foolish fashion.'
'Well, Lootie,' said Irene quietly, 'perhaps if
you had a big cat, all legs, running at you, you might not exactly know what
was the wisest thing to do at the moment.'
'I wouldn't run up the mountain, anyhow,' returned
Lootie.
'Not if you had time to think about it. But when
those creatures came at you that night on the mountain, you were so frightened
yourself that you lost your way home.'
This put a stop to Lootie's reproaches. She had
been on the point of saying that the long-legged cat must have been a twilight
fancy of the princess's, but the memory of the horrors of that night, and of
the talking-to which the king had given her in consequence, prevented her from saying
what after all she did not half believe—having a strong suspicion that the cat
was a goblin; for she knew nothing of the difference between the goblins and
their creatures: she counted them all just goblins.
Without another word she went and got some fresh
tea and bread and butter for the princess. Before she returned, the whole
household, headed by the housekeeper, burst into the nursery to exult over
their darling. The gentlemen-at-arms followed, and were ready enough to believe
all she told them about the long-legged cat. Indeed, though wise enough to say
nothing about it, they remembered, with no little horror, just such a creature
amongst those they had surprised at their gambols upon the princess's lawn.
In their own hearts they blamed themselves for not
having kept better watch. And their captain gave orders that from this night
the front door and all the windows on the ground floor should be locked
immediately the sun set, and opened after upon no pretence whatever. The
men-at-arms redoubled their vigilance, and for some time there was no further
cause of alarm.
When the princess woke the next morning, her nurse
was bending over her. 'How your ring does glow this morning, princess!—just
like a fiery rose!' she said.
'Does it, Lootie?' returned Irene. 'Who gave me
the ring, Lootie? I know I've had it a long time, but where did I get it? I
don't remember.'
'I think it must have been your mother gave it
you, princess; but really, for as long as you have worn it, I don't remember
that ever I heard,' answered her nurse.
'I will ask my king-papa the next time he comes,'
said Irene.
CHAPTER 17 - Springtime
The spring so dear to all creatures, young and
old, came at last, and before the first few days of it had gone, the king rode
through its budding valleys to see his little daughter. He had been in a
distant part of his dominions all the winter, for he was not in the habit of
stopping in one great city, or of visiting only his favourite country houses,
but he moved from place to place, that all his people might know him. Wherever
he journeyed, he kept a constant look-out for the ablest and best men to put into
office; and wherever he found himself mistaken, and those he had appointed
incapable or unjust, he removed them at once. Hence you see it was his care of
the people that kept him from seeing his princess so often as he would have
liked. You may wonder why he did not take her about with him; but there were
several reasons against his doing so, and I suspect her great-great-grandmother
had had a principal hand in preventing it. Once more Irene heard the
bugle-blast, and once more she was at the gate to meet her father as he rode up
on his great white horse.
After they had been alone for a little while, she
thought of what she had resolved to ask him.
'Please, king-papa,' she said, 'Will you tell me
where I got this pretty ring? I can't remember.'
The king looked at it. A strange beautiful smile
spread like sunshine over his face, and an answering smile, but at the same
time a questioning one, spread like moonlight over Irene's. 'It was your
queen-mamma's once,' he said.
'And why isn't it hers now?' asked Irene.
'She does not want it now,' said the king, looking
grave.
'Why doesn't she want it now?'
'Because she's gone where all those rings are
made.'
'And when shall I see her?' asked the princess.
'Not for some time yet,' answered the king, and
the tears came into his eyes.
Irene did not remember her mother and did not know
why her father looked so, and why the tears came in his eyes; but she put her
arms round his neck and kissed him, and asked no more questions.
The king was much disturbed on hearing the report
of the gentlemen-at-arms concerning the creatures they had seen; and I presume
would have taken Irene with him that very day, but for what the presence of the
ring on her finger assured him of. About an hour before he left, Irene saw him
go up the old stair; and he did not come down again till they were just ready
to start; and she thought with herself that he had been up to see the old lady.
When he went away he left other six gentlemen behind him, that there might be
six of them always on guard.
And now, in the lovely spring weather, Irene was
out on the mountain the greater part of the day. In the warmer hollows there
were lovely primroses, and not so many that she ever got tired of them. As
often as she saw a new one opening an eye of light in the blind earth, she
would clap her hands with gladness, and unlike some children I know, instead of
pulling it, would touch it as tenderly as if it had been a new baby, and,
having made its acquaintance, would leave it as happy as she found it. She
treated the plants on which they grew like birds' nests; every fresh flower was
like a new little bird to her. She would pay visits to all the flower-nests she
knew, remembering each by itself. She would go down on her hands and knees
beside one and say: 'Good morning! Are you all smelling very sweet this
morning? Good-bye!' and then she would go to another nest, and say the same. It
was a favourite amusement with her. There were many flowers up and down, and
she loved them all, but the primroses were her favourites.
'They're not too shy, and they're not a bit
forward,' she would say to Lootie.
There were goats too about, over the mountain, and
when the little kids came she was as pleased with them as with the flowers. The
goats belonged to the miners mostly-a few of them to Curdie's mother; but there
were a good many wild ones that seemed to belong to nobody. These the goblins
counted theirs, and it was upon them partly that they lived. They set snares
and dug pits for them; and did not scruple to take what tame ones happened to
be caught; but they did not try to steal them in any other manner, because they
were afraid of the dogs the hill-people kept to watch them, for the knowing
dogs always tried to bite their feet. But the goblins had a kind of sheep of
their own—very queer creatures, which they drove out to feed at night, and the
other goblin creatures were wise enough to keep good watch over them, for they
knew they should have their bones by and by.
CHAPTER 18 - Curdie's
Clue
Curdie was as watchful as ever, but was almost
getting tired of his ill success. Every other night or so he followed the
goblins about, as they went on digging and boring, and getting as near them as
he could, watched them from behind stones and rocks; but as yet he seemed no
nearer finding out what they had in view. As at first, he always kept hold of
the end of his string, while his pickaxe, left just outside the hole by which
he entered the goblins' country from the mine, continued to serve as an anchor
and hold fast the other end. The goblins, hearing no more noise in that
quarter, had ceased to apprehend an immediate invasion, and kept no watch.
One night, after dodging about and listening till
he was nearly falling asleep with weariness, he began to roll up his ball, for
he had resolved to go home to bed. It was not long, however, before he began to
feel bewildered. One after another he passed goblin houses, caves, that is,
occupied by goblin families, and at length was sure they were many more than he
had passed as he came. He had to use great caution to pass unseen—they lay so
close together. Could his string have led him wrong? He still followed winding
it, and still it led him into more thickly populated quarters, until he became
quite uneasy, and indeed apprehensive; for although he was not afraid of the
cobs, he was afraid of not finding his way out. But what could he do? It was of
no use to sit down and wait for the morning—the morning made no difference
here. It was dark, and always dark; and if his string failed him he was
helpless. He might even arrive within a yard of the mine and never know it.
Seeing he could do nothing better he would at least find where the end of his
string was, and, if possible, how it had come to play him such a trick. He knew
by the size of the ball that he was getting pretty near the last of it, when he
began to feel a tugging and pulling at it. What could it mean? Turning a sharp
corner, he thought he heard strange sounds. These grew, as he went on, to a
scuffling and growling and squeaking; and the noise increased, until, turning a
second sharp corner, he found himself in the midst of it, and the same moment
tumbled over a wallowing mass, which he knew must be a knot of the cobs'
creatures. Before he could recover his feet, he had caught some great scratches
on his face and several severe bites on his legs and arms. But as he scrambled
to get up, his hand fell upon his pickaxe, and before the horrid beasts could
do him any serious harm, he was laying about with it right and left in the dark.
The hideous cries which followed gave him the satisfaction of knowing that he
had punished some of them pretty smartly for their rudeness, and by their
scampering and their retreating howls, he perceived that he had routed them. He
stood for a little, weighing his battle-axe in his hand as if it had been the
most precious lump of metal—but indeed no lump of gold itself could have been
so precious at the time as that common tool—then untied the end of the string
from it, put the ball in his pocket, and still stood thinking. It was clear
that the cobs' creatures had found his axe, had between them carried it off,
and had so led him he knew not where. But for all his thinking he could not
tell what he ought to do, until suddenly he became aware of a glimmer of light
in the distance. Without a moment's hesitation he set out for it, as fast as
the unknown and rugged way would permit. Yet again turning a corner, led by the
dim light, he spied something quite new in his experience of the underground
regions—a small irregular shape of something shining. Going up to it, he found
it was a piece of mica, or Muscovy glass, called sheep-silver in Scotland, and
the light flickered as if from a fire behind it. After trying in vain for some
time to discover an entrance to the place where it was burning, he came at
length to a small chamber in which an opening, high in the wall, revealed a
glow beyond. To this opening he managed to scramble up, and then he saw a
strange sight.
Below sat a little group of goblins around a fire,
the smoke of which vanished in the darkness far aloft. The sides of the cave
were full of shining minerals like those of the palace hall; and the company
was evidently of a superior order, for every one wore stones about head, or
arms, or waist, shining dull gorgeous colours in the light of the fire. Nor had
Curdie looked long before he recognized the king himself, and found that he had
made his way into the inner apartment of the royal family. He had never had
such a good chance of hearing something. He crept through the hole as softly as
he could, scrambled a good way down the wall towards them without attracting
attention, and then sat down and listened. The king, evidently the queen, and
probably the crown prince and the Prime Minister were talking together. He was
sure of the queen by her shoes, for as she warmed her feet at the fire, he saw
them quite plainly.
'That will be fun!' said the one he took for the
crown prince. It was the first whole sentence he heard.
'I don't see why you should think it such a grand
affair!' said his stepmother, tossing her head backward.
'You must remember, my spouse,' interposed His
Majesty, as if making excuse for his son, 'he has got the same blood in him.
His mother—'
'Don't talk to me of his mother! You positively
encourage his unnatural fancies. Whatever belongs to that mother ought to be
cut out of him.'
'You forget yourself, my dear!' said the king.
'I don't,' said the queen, 'nor you either. If you
expect me to approve of such coarse tastes, you will find yourself mistaken. I
don't wear shoes for nothing.'
'You must acknowledge, however,' the king said,
with a little groan, 'that this at least is no whim of Harelip's, but a matter
of State policy. You are well aware that his gratification comes purely from
the pleasure of sacrificing himself to the public good.
Does it not, Harelip?'
'Yes, father; of course it does. Only it will be
nice to make her cry. I'll have the skin taken off between her toes, and tie
them up till they grow together. Then her feet will be like other people's, and
there will be no occasion for her to wear shoes.'
'Do you mean to insinuate I've got toes, you
unnatural wretch?' cried the queen; and she moved angrily towards Harelip. The
councillor, however, who was betwixt them, leaned forward so as to prevent her
touching him, but only as if to address the prince.
'Your Royal Highness,' he said, 'possibly requires
to be reminded that you have got three toes yourself—one on one foot, two on
the other.'
'Ha! ha! ha!' shouted the queen triumphantly.
The councillor, encouraged by this mark of favour,
went on.
'It seems to me, Your Royal Highness, it would
greatly endear you to your future people, proving to them that you are not the
less one of themselves that you had the misfortune to be born of a sun-mother,
if you were to command upon yourself the comparatively slight operation which,
in a more extended form, you so wisely meditate with regard to your future
princess.'
'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed the queen louder than
before, and the king and the minister joined in the laugh. Harelip growled, and
for a few moments the others continued to express their enjoyment of his
discomfiture.
The queen was the only one Curdie could see with
any distinctness. She sat sideways to him, and the light of the fire shone full
upon her face. He could not consider her handsome. Her nose was certainly
broader at the end than its extreme length, and her eyes, instead of being
horizontal, were set up like two perpendicular eggs, one on the broad, the
other on the small end. Her mouth was no bigger than a small buttonhole until
she laughed, when it stretched from ear to ear—only, to be sure, her ears were
very nearly in the middle of her cheeks.
Anxious to hear everything they might say, Curdie
ventured to slide down a smooth part of the rock just under him, to a
projection below, upon which he thought to rest. But whether he was not careful
enough, or the projection gave way, down he came with a rush on the floor of
the cavern, bringing with him a great rumbling shower of stones.
The goblins jumped from their seats in more anger
than consternation, for they had never yet seen anything to be afraid of in the
palace. But when they saw Curdie with his pick in his hand their rage was
mingled with fear, for they took him for the first of an invasion of miners.
The king notwithstanding drew himself up to his full height of four feet,
spread himself to his full breadth of three and a half, for he was the
handsomest and squarest of all the goblins, and strutting up to Curdie, planted
himself with outspread feet before him, and said with dignity:
'Pray what right have you in my palace?'
'The right of necessity, Your Majesty,' answered
Curdie. 'I lost my way and did not know where I was wandering to.'
'How did you get in?'
'By a hole in the mountain.'
'But you are a miner! Look at your pickaxe!'
Curdie did look at it, answering:
'I came upon it lying on the ground a little way
from here. I tumbled over some wild beasts who were playing with it. Look, Your
Majesty.' And Curdie showed him how he was scratched and bitten.
The king was pleased to find him behave more
politely than he had expected from what his people had told him concerning the
miners, for he attributed it to the power of his own presence; but he did not
therefore feel friendly to the intruder.
'You will oblige me by walking out of my dominions
at once,' he said, well knowing what a mockery lay in the words.
'With pleasure, if Your Majesty will give me a
guide,' said Curdie.
'I will give you a thousand,' said the king with a
scoffing air of magnificent liberality.
'One will be quite sufficient,' said Curdie.
But the king uttered a strange shout, half halloo,
half roar, and in rushed goblins till the cave was swarming. He said something
to the first of them which Curdie could not hear, and it was passed from one to
another till in a moment the farthest in the crowd had evidently heard and
understood it. They began to gather about him in a way he did not relish, and
he retreated towards the wall. They pressed upon him.
'Stand back,' said Curdie, grasping his pickaxe
tighter by his knee.
They only grinned and pressed closer. Curdie
bethought himself and began to rhyme.
'Ten, twenty, thirty—
You're all so very dirty!
Twenty, thirty, forty—
You're all so thick and snorty!
'Thirty, forty, fifty—
You're all so puff-and-snifty!
Forty, fifty, sixty—
Beast and man so mixty!
'Fifty, sixty, seventy—
Mixty, maxty, leaventy!
Sixty, seventy, eighty—
All your cheeks so slaty!
'Seventy, eighty, ninety,
All your hands so flinty!
Eighty, ninety, hundred,
Altogether dundred!'
The goblins fell back a little when he began, and
made horrible grimaces all through the rhyme, as if eating something so
disagreeable that it set their teeth on edge and gave them the creeps; but
whether it was that the rhyming words were most of them no words at all, for, a
new rhyme being considered the more efficacious, Curdie had made it on the spur
of the moment, or whether it was that the presence of the king and queen gave
them courage, I cannot tell; but the moment the rhyme was over they crowded on
him again, and out shot a hundred long arms, with a multitude of thick nailless
fingers at the ends of them, to lay hold upon him. Then Curdie heaved up his
axe. But being as gentle as courageous and not wishing to kill any of them, he
turned the end which was square and blunt like a hammer, and with that came
down a great blow on the head of the goblin nearest him. Hard as the heads of
all goblins are, he thought he must feel that. And so he did, no doubt; but he
only gave a horrible cry, and sprung at Curdie's throat. Curdie, however, drew
back in time, and just at that critical moment remembered the vulnerable part
of the goblin body. He made a sudden rush at the king and stamped with all his
might on His Majesty's feet. The king gave a most unkingly howl and almost fell
into the fire. Curdie then rushed into the crowd, stamping right and left. The
goblins drew back, howling on every side as he approached, but they were so
crowded that few of those he attacked could escape his tread; and the shrieking
and roaring that filled the cave would have appalled Curdie but for the good
hope it gave him. They were tumbling over each other in heaps in their
eagerness to rush from the cave, when a new assailant suddenly faced him—the
queen, with flaming eyes and expanded nostrils, her hair standing half up from
her head, rushed at him. She trusted in her shoes: they were of
granite—hollowed like French sabots. Curdie would have endured much rather than
hurt a woman, even if she was a goblin; but here was an affair of life and
death: forgetting her shoes, he made a great stamp on one of her feet. But she
instantly returned it with very different effect, causing him frightful pain,
and almost disabling him. His only chance with her would have been to attack
the granite shoes with his pickaxe, but before he could think of that she had
caught him up in her arms and was rushing with him across the cave. She dashed
him into a hole in the wall, with a force that almost stunned him. But although
he could not move, he was not too far gone to hear her great cry, and the rush
of multitudes of soft feet, followed by the sounds of something heaved up
against the rock; after which came a multitudinous patter of stones falling
near him. The last had not ceased when he grew very faint, for his head had
been badly cut, and at last insensible.
When he came to himself there was perfect silence
about him, and utter darkness, but for the merest glimmer in one tiny spot. He
crawled to it, and found that they had heaved a slab against the mouth of the
hole, past the edge of which a poor little gleam found its way from the fire.
He could not move it a hairbreadth, for they had piled a great heap of stones
against it. He crawled back to where he had been lying, in the faint hope of
finding his pickaxe, But after a vain search he was at last compelled to
acknowledge himself in an evil plight. He sat down and tried to think, but soon
fell fast asleep.
CHAPTER 19 - Goblin Counsels
He must have slept a long time, for when he awoke
he felt wonderfully restored—indeed almost well—and very hungry. There were
voices in the outer cave.
Once more, then, it was night; for the goblins
slept during the day and went about their affairs during the night.
In the universal and constant darkness of their
dwelling they had no reason to prefer the one arrangement to the other; but
from aversion to the sun-people they chose to be busy when there was least
chance of their being met either by the miners below, when they were burrowing,
or by the people of the mountain above, when they were feeding their sheep or
catching their goats. And indeed it was only when the sun was away that the
outside of the mountain was sufficiently like their own dismal regions to be
endurable to their mole eyes, so thoroughly had they become unaccustomed to any
light beyond that of their own fires and torches.
Curdie listened, and soon found that they were
talking of himself.
'How long will it take?' asked Harelip.
'Not many days, I should think,' answered the
king. 'They are poor feeble creatures, those sun-people, and want to be always
eating. We can go a week at a time without food, and be all the better for it;
but I've been told they eat two or three times every day! Can you believe it?
They must be quite hollow inside—not at all like us, nine-tenths of whose bulk
is solid flesh and bone. Yes—I judge a week of starvation will do for him.'
'If I may be allowed a word,' interposed the
queen,—'and I think I ought to have some voice in the matter—'
'The wretch is entirely at your disposal, my
spouse,' interrupted the king. 'He is your property. You caught him yourself.
We should never have done it.'
The queen laughed. She seemed in far better humour
than the night before.
'I was about to say,' she resumed, 'that it does
seem a pity to waste so much fresh meat.'
'What are you thinking of, my love?' said the
king. 'The very notion of starving him implies that we are not going to give
him any meat, either salt or fresh.'
'I'm not such a stupid as that comes to,' returned
Her Majesty. 'What I mean is that by the time he is starved there will hardly
be a picking upon his bones.'
The king gave a great laugh.
'Well, my spouse, you may have him when you like,'
he said. 'I don't fancy him for my part. I am pretty sure he is tough eating.'
'That would be to honour instead of punish his
insolence,' returned the queen. 'But why should our poor creatures be deprived
of so much nourishment? Our little dogs and cats and pigs and small bears would
enjoy him very much.'
'You are the best of housekeepers, my lovely
queen!' said her husband. 'Let it be so by all means. Let us have our people
in, and get him out and kill him at once. He deserves it. The mischief he might
have brought upon us, now that he had penetrated so far as our most retired
citadel, is incalculable. Or rather let us tie him hand and foot, and have the
pleasure of seeing him torn to pieces by full torchlight in the great hall.'
'Better and better!' cried the queen and the
prince together, both of them clapping their hands. And the prince made an ugly
noise with his hare-lip, just as if he had intended to be one at the feast.
'But,' added the queen, bethinking herself, 'he is
so troublesome. For poor creatures as they are, there is something about those
sun-people that is very troublesome. I cannot imagine how it is that with such
superior strength and skill and understanding as ours, we permit them to exist
at all. Why do we not destroy them entirely, and use their cattle and grazing
lands at our pleasure? Of course we don't want to live in their horrid country!
It is far too glaring for our quieter and more refined tastes. But we might use
it as a sort of outhouse, you know. Even our creatures' eyes might get used to
it, and if they did grow blind that would be of no consequence, provided they
grew fat as well. But we might even keep their great cows and other creatures,
and then we should have a few more luxuries, such as cream and cheese, which at
present we only taste occasionally, when our brave men have succeeded in
carrying some off from their farms.'
'It is worth thinking of,' said the king; 'and I
don't know why you should be the first to suggest it, except that you have a
positive genius for conquest. But still, as you say, there is something very
troublesome about them; and it would be better, as I understand you to suggest,
that we should starve him for a day or two first, so that he may be a little
less frisky when we take him out.'
'Once there was a goblin
Living in a hole;
Busy he was cobblin'
A shoe without a sole.
'By came a birdie:
"Goblin, what do you do?"
"Cobble at a sturdie
Upper leather shoe."
'"What's the good o' that, Sir?"
Said the little bird.
"Why it's very Pat, Sir—
Plain without a word.
'"Where 'tis all a hole, Sir,
Never can be holes:
Why should their shoes have soles, Sir,
When they've got no souls?"'
'What's that horrible noise?' cried the queen,
shuddering from pot-metal head to granite shoes.
'I declare,' said the king with solemn
indignation, 'it's the sun-creature in the hole!'
'Stop that disgusting noise!' cried the crown
prince valiantly, getting up and standing in front of the heap of stones, with
his face towards Curdie's prison. 'Do now, or I'll break your head.'
'Break away,' shouted Curdie, and began singing
again:
'Once there was a goblin,
Living in a hole—'
'I really cannot bear it,' said the queen. 'If I
could only get at his horrid toes with my slippers again!'
'I think we had better go to bed,' said the king.
'It's not time to go to bed,' said the queen.
'I would if I was you,' said Curdie.
'Impertinent wretch!' said the queen, with the
utmost scorn in her voice.
'An impossible if,' said His Majesty with dignity.
'Quite,' returned Curdie, and began singing again:
'Go to bed,
Goblin, do.
Help the queen
Take off her shoe.
'If you do,
It will disclose
A horrid set
Of sprouting toes.'
'What a lie!' roared the queen in a rage.
'By the way, that reminds me,' said the king,
'that for as long as we have been married, I have never seen your feet, queen.
I think you might take off your shoes when you go to bed! They positively hurt
me sometimes.'
'I will do as I like,' retorted the queen sulkily.
'You ought to do as your own hubby wishes you,'
said the king.
'I will not,' said the queen.
'Then I insist upon it,' said the king.
Apparently His Majesty approached the queen for
the purpose of following the advice given by Curdie, for the latter heard a
scuffle, and then a great roar from the king.
'Will you be quiet, then?' said the queen
wickedly.
'Yes, yes, queen. I only meant to coax you.'
'Hands off!' cried the queen triumphantly. 'I'm
going to bed. You may come when you like. But as long as I am queen I will
sleep in my shoes. It is my royal privilege. Harelip, go to bed.'
'I'm going,' said Harelip sleepily.
'So am I,' said the king.
'Come along, then,' said the queen; 'and mind you
are good, or I'll—'
'Oh, no, no, no!' screamed the king in the most
supplicating of tones.
Curdie heard only a muttered reply in the
distance; and then the cave was quite still.
They had left the fire burning, and the light came
through brighter than before. Curdie thought it was time to try again if anything
could be done. But he found he could not get even a finger through the chink
between the slab and the rock. He gave a great rush with his shoulder against
the slab, but it yielded no more than if it had been part of the rock. All he
could do was to sit down and think again.
By and by he came to the resolution to pretend to
be dying, in the hope they might take him out before his strength was too much
exhausted to let him have a chance. Then, for the creatures, if he could but
find his axe again, he would have no fear of them; and if it were not for the
queen's horrid shoes, he would have no fear at all.
Meantime, until they should come again at night,
there was nothing for him to do but forge new rhymes, now his only weapons. He
had no intention of using them at present, of course; but it was well to have a
stock, for he might live to want them, and the manufacture of them would help
to while away the time.
