s, one who ruled for the good of his people and not to
please himself, and he wanted the silver not to buy rich things for
himself, but to help him to govern the country, and pay the ones that
defended it from certain troublesome neighbours, and the judges whom he
set to portion out righteousness among the people, that so they might
learn it themselves, and come to do without judges at all. Nothing
that could be got from the heart of the earth could have been put to
better purposes than the silver the king's miners got for him. There
were people in the country who, when it came into their hands, degraded
it by locking it up in a chest, and then it grew diseased and was
called mammon, and bred all sorts of quarrels; but when first it left
the king's hands it never made any but friends, and the air of the
world kept it clean.

About a year before this story began, a series of very remarkable
events had just ended. I will narrate as much of them as will serve to
show the tops of the roots of my tree.

Upon the mountain, on one of its many claws, stood a grand old house,
half farmhouse, half castle, belonging to the king; and there his only
child, the Princess Irene, had been brought up till she was nearly nine
years old, and would doubtless have continued much longer, but for the
strange events to which I have referred.

At that time the hollow places of the mountain were inhabited by
creatures called goblins, who for various reasons and in various ways
made themselves troublesome to all, but to the little princess
dangerous. Mainly by the watchful devotion and energy of Curdie,
however, their designs had been utterly defeated, and made to recoil
upon themselves to their own destruction, so that now there were very
few of them left alive, and the miners did not believe there was a
single goblin remaining in the whole inside of the mountain.

The king had been so pleased with the boy--then approaching thirteen
years of age--that when he carried away his daughter he asked him to
accompany them; but he was still better pleased with him when he found
that he preferred staying with his father and mother. He was a right
good king and knew that the love of a boy who would not leave his
father and mother to be made a great man was worth ten thousand offers
to die for his sake, and would prove so when the right time came. As
for his father and mother, they would have given him up without a
grumble, for they were just as g