ted castle broke in
and disappeared; peacocks squalled and strutted on the lawns, martins
flitted to and from their nests under the eaves, pigs began to grunt,
oxen to low, sheep to bleat, rooks to caw and children to laugh and
sing. In short, all the sounds which we hear every day and all the time
and never notice, began again and seemed so loud in contrast to the
deadly silence that they almost cracked the ears.

And in every room in the castle the people who had been lying asleep for
a hundred years woke up and went on with what they had been doing just
as though nothing had happened. In the kitchen the flames of the fire
leapt up with a hiss and a roar. The kettle began to boil, the stew-pot
to bubble, and the meat before the fire to steam and hiss as the little
boy turned the spit.

"Take that," cried the cook, giving the scullion the clout she had
promised a hundred years before. "Take that for a lazy knave."

"Goodness," yawned the maid who had been plucking the black hen; "I
wonder what made me drop off to sleep like that? Well, well, it's to be
hoped the cook didn't see me!" And my word, how she made the feathers
fly!

[Illustration]

_Miaou!_ cried the cat in disgust as he made a pounce at the mouse-hole
he had been watching, for the little mouse who had poked his nose
out a hundred years before drew it back like a flash and scampered away.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

"Dear me!" said the servant who was washing the dishes; "I do believe I
have been to sleep with this crock in my hand. It's a mercy I didn't let
it fall!" And he went on with his scouring. It was the same thing in the
dairy where the maids had fallen asleep while they were skimming the
cream and churning the butter. And the cream was not sour for all that a
hundred years had passed, nor was the butter rank. But a fly which had
been sleeping on the edge of one of the milk-pans woke up and flew down
to taste the milk, and fell in and was drowned, so he was none the
better because the spell had been taken off the castle.

[Illustration]

In the Queen's ante-chamber the maids-of-honour and the
ladies-in-waiting sat up and yawned and stretched themselves. Each one
of them thought that she was the only one who had fallen asleep, and
they all began to explain at the same time that they had only closed
their eyes for forty seconds. "It was the heat," they all said to each
other. "The sun is very hot for this time of year."

In the Kin