ardly got any rest at all.
This made her very tired.

The baby could make up for its bad nights during the day if it liked,
but the poor mother couldn't. So whenever she had nothing to do she used
to sit and cry, because she was tired out with work and worry.

One evening the blacksmith was busy with his forge. He was making a
goat-shoe for the goat of a very rich lady, who wished to see how the
goat liked being shod, and also whether the shoe would come to fivepence
or sevenpence before she ordered the whole set. This was the only order
John had had that week. And as he worked his wife sat and nursed the
baby, who, for a wonder, was not crying.

Presently, over the noise of the bellows and over the clank of the iron,
there came another sound. The blacksmith and his wife looked at each
other.

"I heard nothing," said he.

"Neither did I," said she.

But the noise grew louder--and the two were so anxious not to hear it
that he hammered away at the goat-shoe harder than he had ever hammered
in his life, and she began to sing to the baby--a thing she had not had
the heart to do for weeks.

But through the blowing and hammering and singing the noise came louder
and louder, and the more they tried not to hear it, the more they had
to. It was like the noise of some great creature purring, purring,
purring--and the reason they did not want to believe they really heard
it was that it came from the great dungeon down below, where the old
iron was, and the firewood and the twopence worth of coal, and the
broken steps that went down into the dark and ended no one knew where.

"It can't be anything in the dungeon," said the blacksmith, wiping his
face. "Why, I shall have to go down there after more coals in a minute."

"There isn't anything there, of course. How could there be?" said his
wife. And they tried so hard to believe that there could be nothing
there that presently they very nearly did believe it.

Then the blacksmith took his shovel in one hand and his riveting hammer
in the other, and hung the old stable lantern on his little finger, and
went down to get the coals.

"I am not taking the hammer because I think there is something there,"
said he, "but it is handy for breaking the large lumps of coal."

"I quite understand," said his wife, who had brought the coal home in
her apron that very afternoon, and knew that it was all coal dust.

So he went down the winding stairs to the dungeon and stood at the
bo