t his oldest and most attached domestics
had but escaped from the palace with their lives--not all of them, for
the butler was missing. Mad or wicked, he was not only unfit to rule
any longer, but worse than unfit to have in his power and under his
influence the young princess, only hope of Gwyntystorm and the kingdom.

The moment the lord chancellor reached his house in the country and had
got himself clothed, he began to devise how yet to destroy his master;
and the very next morning set out for the neighbouring kingdom of
Borsagrass to invite invasion, and offer a compact with its monarch.

CHAPTER 30

Peter

At the cottage in the mountain everything for a time went on just as
before. It was indeed dull without Curdie, but as often as they looked
at the emerald it was gloriously green, and with nothing to fear or
regret, and everything to hope, they required little comforting. One
morning, however, at last, Peter, who had been consulting the gem,
rather now from habit than anxiety, as a farmer his barometer in
undoubtful weather, turned suddenly to his wife, the stone in his hand,
and held it up with a look of ghastly dismay.

'Why, that's never the emerald!' said Joan.

'It is,' answered Peter; 'but it were small blame to any one that took
it for a bit of bottle glass!'

For, all save one spot right in the centre, of intensest and most
brilliant green, it looked as if the colour had been burnt out of it.

'Run, run, Peter!' cried his wife. 'Run and tell the old princess. It
may not be too late. The boy must be lying at death's door.'

Without a word Peter caught up his mattock, darted from the cottage,
and was at the bottom of the hill in less time than he usually took to
get halfway.

The door of the king's house stood open; he rushed in and up the stair.
But after wandering about in vain for an hour, opening door after door,
and finding no way farther up, the heart of the old man had well-nigh
failed him. Empty rooms, empty rooms!--desertion and desolation
everywhere.

At last he did come upon the door to the tower stair. Up he darted.
Arrived at the top, he found three doors, and, one after the other,
knocked at them all. But there was neither voice nor hearing. Urged
by his faith and his dread, slowly, hesitatingly, he opened one. It
revealed a bare garret room, nothing in it but one chair and one
spinning wheel. He closed it, and opened the next--to start back in
terror, for he saw