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 mortaldismay; 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 unspeakabledismay, 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