t the clergy were of no use; they could not exorcise
demons! That afternoon, catching sight of a poor old fellow in rags
and tatters, quietly walking up the street, they hounded their dogs
upon him, and had it not been that the door of Derba's cottage was
standing open, and was near enough for him to dart in and shut it ere
they reached him, he would have been torn in pieces.

And thus things went on for some days.

CHAPTER 29

Barbara

In the meantime, with Derba to minister to his wants, with Curdie to
protect him, and Irene to nurse him, the king was getting rapidly
stronger. Good food was what he most wanted and of that, at least of
certain kinds of it, there was plentiful store in the palace.
Everywhere since the cleansing of the lower regions of it, the air was
clean and sweet, and under the honest hands of the one housemaid the
king's chamber became a pleasure to his eyes. With such changes it was
no wonder if his heart grew lighter as well as his brain clearer.

But still evil dreams came and troubled him, the lingering result of
the wicked medicines the doctor had given him. Every night, sometimes
twice or thrice, he would wake up in terror, and it would be minutes
ere he could come to himself. The consequence was that he was always
worse in the morning, and had loss to make up during the day. While he
slept, Irene or Curdie, one or the other, must still be always by his
side.

One night, when it was Curdie's turn with the king, he heard a cry
somewhere in the house, and as there was no other child, concluded,
notwithstanding the distance of her grandmother's room, that it must be
Barbara. Fearing something might be wrong, and noting the king's sleep
more quiet than usual, he ran to see. He found the child in the middle
of the floor, weeping bitterly, and Derba slumbering peacefully in bed.
The instant she saw him the night-lost thing ceased her crying, smiled,
and stretched out her arms to him. Unwilling to wake the old woman,
who had been working hard all day, he took the child, and carried her
with him. She clung to him so, pressing her tear-wet radiant face
against his, that her little arms threatened to choke him.

When he re-entered the chamber, he found the king sitting up in bed,
fighting the phantoms of some hideous dream. Generally upon such
occasions, although he saw his watcher, he could not dissociate him
from the dream, and went raving on. But the moment his eyes fell upon