of the great yellow cloud fell upon
him. Now he stood once more between warm earth and blue sky, and looked
down on the green plain dotted with fruit trees and red-roofed farms
and plots of gold corn. In the middle of that plain the gray town lay,
with its strong walls with the holes pierced for the archers, and its
square towers with holes for dropping melted lead on the heads of
strangers; its bridges and its steeples; the quiet river edged with
willow and alder; and the pleasant green garden place in the middle of
the town, where people sat on holidays to smoke their pipes and listen
to the band.

Edmund saw it all; and he saw, too, creeping across the plain, marking
her way by a black line as everything withered at her touch, the great
yellow dragon--and he saw that she was many times bigger than the whole
town.

"Oh, my poor, dear granny," said Edmund, for he had a feeling heart, as
I ought to have told you before.

The yellow dragon crept nearer and nearer, licking her greedy lips with
her long red tongue, and Edmund knew that in the school his master was
still teaching earnestly and still not believing Edmund's tale the least
little bit.

"He'll jolly well have to believe it soon, anyhow," said Edmund to
himself, and though he was a very tender-hearted boy--I think it only
fair to tell you that he was this--I am afraid he was not as sorry as he
ought to have been to think of the way in which his master was going to
learn how to believe what Edmund said. Then the dragon opened her jaws
wider and wider and wider. Edmund shut his eyes, for though his master
was in the town, the amiable Edmund shrank from beholding the awful
sight.

When he opened his eyes again there was no town--only a bare place where
it had stood, and the dragon licking her lips and curling herself up to
go to sleep, just as Kitty does when she has quite finished with a
mouse. Edmund gasped once or twice, and then ran into the cave to tell
the cockatrice.

"Well," said the cockatrice thoughtfully, when the tale had been told.
"What then?"

"I don't think you quite understand," said Edmund gently. "The dragon
has swallowed up the town."

"Does it matter?" said the cockatrice.

[Illustration: "Creeping across the plain." _See page 147._]

"But I live there," said Edmund blankly.

"Never mind," said the cockatrice, turning over in the pool of fire to
warm its other side, which was chilly, because Edmund had, as usual,
forgotten to c