n never forget you!' cried Curdie. 'I see now what you
really are!'

'Did I not tell you the truth when I sat at my wheel?' said the old
lady.

'Yes, ma'am,' answered Curdie.

'I can do no more than tell you the truth now,' she rejoined. 'It is a
bad thing indeed to forget one who has told us the truth. Now go.'

Curdie obeyed, and took a few steps toward the door. 'Please,
ma'am--what am I to call you?' he was going to say; but when he turned
to speak, he saw nobody. Whether she was there or not he could not
tell, however, for the moonlight had vanished, and the room was utterly
dark. A great fear, such as he had never before known, came upon him,
and almost overwhelmed him. He groped his way to the door, and crawled
down the stair--in doubt and anxiety as to how he should find his way
out of the house in the dark. And the stair seemed ever so much longer
than when he came up. Nor was that any wonder, for down and down he
went, until at length his foot struck a door, and when he rose and
opened it, he found himself under the starry, moonless sky at the foot
of the tower.

He soon discovered the way out of the garden, with which he had some
acquaintance already, and in a few minutes was climbing the mountain
with a solemn and cheerful heart. It was rather dark, but he knew the
way well. As he passed the rock from which the poor pigeon fell
wounded with his arrow, a great joy filled his heart at the thought
that he was delivered from the blood of the little bird, and he ran the
next hundred yards at full speed up the hill. Some dark shadows passed
him: he did not even care to think what they were, but let them run.
When he reached home, he found his father and mother waiting supper for
him.

CHAPTER 4

Curdie's Father and Mother

The eyes of the fathers and mothers are quick to read their children's
looks, and when Curdie entered the cottage, his parents saw at once
that something unusual had taken place. When he said to his mother, 'I
beg your pardon for being so late,' there was something in the tone
beyond the politeness that went to her heart, for it seemed to come
from the place where all lovely things were born before they began to
grow in this world. When he set his father's chair to the table, an
attention he had not shown him for a long time, Peter thanked him with
more gratitude than the boy had ever yet felt in all his life. It was
a small thing to do for the man who had been servi