ng him since ever he
was born, but I suspect there is nothing a man can be so grateful for
as that to which he has the most right.

There was a change upon Curdie, and father and mother felt there must
be something to account for it, and therefore were pretty sure he had
something to tell them. For when a child's heart is all right, it is
not likely he will want to keep anything from his parents. But the
story of the evening was too solemn for Curdie to come out with all at
once. He must wait until they had had their porridge, and the affairs
of this world were over for the day.

But when they were seated on the grassy bank of the brook that went so
sweetly blundering over the great stones of its rocky channel, for the
whole meadow lay on the top of a huge rock, then he felt that the right
hour had come for sharing with them the wonderful things that had come
to him. It was perhaps the loveliest of all hours in the year. The
summer was young and soft, and this was the warmest evening they had
yet had--dusky, dark even below, while above, the stars were bright and
large and sharp in the blackest blue sky. The night came close around
them, clasping them in one universal arm of love, and although it
neither spoke nor smiled, seemed all eye and ear, seemed to see and
hear and know everything they said and did. It is a way the night has
sometimes, and there is a reason for it. The only sound was that of
the brook, for there was no wind, and no trees for it to make its music
upon if there had been, for the cottage was high up on the mountain, on
a great shoulder of stone where trees would not grow.

There, to the accompaniment of the water, as it hurried down to the
valley and the sea, talking busily of a thousand true things which it
could not understand, Curdie told his tale, outside and in, to his
father and mother. What a world had slipped in between the mouth of
the mine and his mother's cottage! Neither of them said a word until
he had ended.

'Now what am I to make of it, Mother? it's so strange!' he said, and
stopped.

'It's easy enough to see what Curdie has got to make of it, isn't it,
Peter?' said the good woman, turning her face toward all she could see
of her husband's.

'It seems so to me,' answered Peter, with a smile which only the night
saw, but his wife felt in the tone of his words. They were the
happiest couple in that country, because they always understood each
other, and that was beca