lear the house of the vermin. Out of
their beds in their night clothing, out of their rooms, gorgeous
chambers or garret nooks, the creatures hunted them. Not one was
allowed to escape. Tumult and noise there was little, for fear was too
deadly for outcry. Ferreting them out everywhere, following them
upstairs and downstairs, yielding no instant of repose except upon the
way out, the avengers persecuted the miscreants, until the last of them
was shivering outside the palace gates, with hardly sense enough left
to know where to turn.

When they set out to look for shelter, they found every inn full of the
servants expelled before them, and not one would yield his place to a
superior suddenly levelled with himself. Most houses refused to admit
them on the ground of the wickedness that must have drawn on them such
a punishment; and not a few would have been left in the streets all
night, had not Derba, roused by the vain entreaties at the doors on
each side of her cottage, opened hers, and given up everything to them.
The lord chancellor was only too glad to share a mattress with a
stableboy, and steal his bare feet under his jacket.

In the morning Curdie appeared, and the outcasts were in terror,
thinking he had come after them again. But he took no notice of them:
his object was to request Derba to go to the palace: the king required
her services. She need take no trouble about her cottage, he said; the
palace was henceforward her home: she was the king's chatelaine over
men and maidens of his household. And this very morning she must cook
His Majesty a nice breakfast.

CHAPTER 28

The Preacher

Various reports went undulating through the city as to the nature of
what had taken place in the palace. The people gathered, and stared at
the house, eyeing it as if it had sprung up in the night. But it looked
sedate enough, remaining closed and silent, like a house that was dead.
They saw no one come out or go in. Smoke arose from a chimney or two;
there was hardly another sign of life. It was not for some little time
generally understood that the highest officers of the crown as well as
the lowest menials of the palace had been dismissed in disgrace: for
who was to recognize a lord chancellor in his nightshirt? And what
lord chancellor would, so attired in the street, proclaim his rank and
office aloud? Before it was day most of the courtiers crept down to the
river, hired boats, and betook themselves to