ad waked him from it.

When he discovered, and triumphantly adduced as corroboration, that the
key was gone from the door, they said it merely showed how drunk he had
been--either that or how frightened, for he had certainly dropped it.
In vain he protested that he had never taken it out of the lock--that
he never did when he went in, and certainly had not this time stopped
to do so when he came out; they asked him why he had to go to the
cellar at such a time of the day, and said it was because he had
already drunk all the wine that was left from dinner. He said if he
had dropped the key, the key was to be found, and they must help him to
find it. They told him they wouldn't move a peg for him. He declared,
with much language, he would have them all turned out of the king's
service. They said they would swear he was drunk.

And so positive were they about it, that at last the butler himself
began to think whether it was possible they could be in the right. For
he knew that sometimes when he had been drunk he fancied things had
taken place which he found afterward could not have happened. Certain
of his fellow servants, however, had all the time a doubt whether the
cellar goblin had not appeared to him, or at least roared at him, to
protect the wine. In any case nobody wanted to find the key for him;
nothing could please them better than that the door of the wine cellar
should never more be locked. By degrees the hubbub died away, and they
departed, not even pulling to the door, for there was neither handle
nor latch to it.

As soon as they were gone, Curdie returned, knowing now that they were
in the wine cellar of the palace, as indeed, he had suspected. Finding
a pool of wine in a hollow of the floor, Lina lapped it up eagerly: she
had had no breakfast, and was now very thirsty as well as hungry. Her
master was in a similar plight, for he had but just begun to eat when
the magistrate arrived with the soldiers. If only they were all in
bed, he thought, that he might find his way to the larder! For he said
to himself that, as he was sent there by the young princess's
great-great-grandmother to serve her or her father in some way, surely
he must have a right to his food in the Palace, without which he could
do nothing. He would go at once and reconnoitre.

So he crept up the stair that led from the cellar. At the top was a
door, opening on a long passage dimly lighted by a lamp. He told Lina
to lie down