nothing but a great gulf, a moonless night, full of
stars, and, for all the stars, dark, dark!--a fathomless abyss. He
opened the third door, and a rush like the tide of a living sea invaded
his ears. Multitudinous wings flapped and flashed in the sun, and,
like the ascending column from a volcano, white birds innumerable shot
into the air, darkening the day with the shadow of their cloud, and
then, with a sharp sweep, as if bent sideways by a sudden wind, flew
northward, swiftly away, and vanished. The place felt like a tomb.
There seemed no breath of life left in it.

Despair laid hold upon him; he rushed down thundering with heavy feet.
Out upon him darted the housekeeper like an ogress-spider, and after
her came her men; but Peter rushed past them, heedless and
careless--for had not the princess mocked him?--and sped along the road
to Gwyntystorm. What help lay in a miner's mattock, a man's arm, a
father's heart, he would bear to his boy.

Joan sat up all night waiting his return, hoping and hoping. The
mountain was very still, and the sky was clear; but all night long the
miner sped northward, and the heart of his wife was troubled.

CHAPTER 31

The Sacrifice

Things in the palace were in a strange condition: the king playing with
a child and dreaming wise dreams, waited upon by a little princess with
the heart of a queen, and a youth from the mines, who went nowhere, not
even into the king's chamber, without his mattock on his shoulder and a
horrible animal at his heels; in a room nearby the colonel of his
guard, also in bed, without a soldier to obey him; in six other rooms,
far apart, six miscreants, each watched by a beast-jailer; ministers to
them all, an old woman and a page; and in the wine cellar, forty-three
animals, creatures more grotesque than ever brain of man invented.
None dared approach its gates, and seldom one issued from them.

All the dwellers in the city were united in enmity to the palace. It
swarmed with evil spirits, they said, whereas the evil spirits were in
the city, unsuspected. One consequence of their presence was that,
when the rumour came that a great army was on the march against
Gwyntystorm, instead of rushing to their defences, to make new gates,
free portcullises and drawbridges, and bar the river, each band flew
first to their treasures, burying them in their cellars and gardens,
and hiding them behind stones in their chimneys; and, next to
rebellion, signing a