r and
scent, and remember the dry, withered-looking little thing I dibbled
into the hole in the same spot in the spring. I only think how
wonderful and lovely it all is. It seems just as full of reason as it
is of wonder. How it is done I can't tell, only there it is! And
there is this in it, too, Curdie--of which you would not be so ready to
think--that when you come home to your father and mother, and they find
you behaving more like a dear, good son than you have behaved for a
long time, they at least are not likely to think you were only
dreaming.'

'Still,' said Curdie, looking a little ashamed, 'I might have dreamed
my duty.'

'Then dream often, my son; for there must then be more truth in your
dreams than in your waking thoughts. But however any of these things
may be, this one point remains certain: there can be no harm in doing
as she told you. And, indeed, until you are sure there is no such
person, you are bound to do it, for you promised.'

'It seems to me,' said his father, 'that if a lady comes to you in a
dream, Curdie, and tells you not to talk about her when you wake, the
least you can do is to hold your tongue.'

'True, Father! Yes, Mother, I'll do it,' said Curdie.

Then they went to bed, and sleep, which is the night of the soul, next
took them in its arms and made them well.

CHAPTER 5

The Miners

It much increased Curdie's feeling of the strangeness of the whole
affair, that, the next morning, when they were at work in the mine, the
party of which he and his father were two, just as if they had known
what had happened to him the night before, began talking about all
manner of wonderful tales that were abroad in the country, chiefly, of
course, those connected with the mines, and the mountains in which they
lay. Their wives and mothers and grandmothers were their chief
authorities. For when they sat by their firesides they heard their
wives telling their children the selfsame tales, with little
differences, and here and there one they had not heard before, which
they had heard their mothers and grandmothers tell in one or other of
the same cottages.

At length they came to speak of a certain strange being they called Old
Mother Wotherwop. Some said their wives had seen her. It appeared as
they talked that not one had seen her more than once. Some of their
mothers and grandmothers, however, had seen her also, and they all had
told them tales about her when they were child