y can't make another such in
a hurry, and one bare foot will do for my purpose. Woman as she may be,
I won't spare her next time. But I shall be careful with my light, for
I don't want them to see me. I won't stick it in my hat.'

'Go on, then, and tell us what you mean to do.'

'I mean to take a bit of paper with me and a pencil, and go in at the
mouth of the stream by which we came out. I shall mark on the paper as
near as I can the angle of every turning I take until I find the cobs
at work, and so get a good idea in what direction they are going. If
it should prove to be nearly parallel with the stream, I shall know it
is towards the king's house they are working.'

'And what if you should? How much wiser will you be then?'

'Wait a minute, mother dear. I told you that when I came upon the
royal family in the cave, they were talking of their prince--Harelip,
they called him--marrying a sun-woman--that means one of us--one with
toes to her feet. Now in the speech one of them made that night at
their great gathering, of which I heard only a part, he said that peace
would be secured for a generation at least by the pledge the prince
would hold for the good behaviour of her relatives: that's what he
said, and he must have meant the sun-woman the prince was to marry. I
am quite sure the king is much too proud to wish his son to marry any
but a princess, and much too knowing to fancy that his having a peasant
woman for a wife would be of any great advantage to them.'

'I see what you are driving at now,' said his mother.

'But,' said his father, 'our king would dig the mountain to the plain
before he would have his princess the wife of a cob, if he were ten
times a prince.'

'Yes; but they think so much of themselves!' said his mother. 'Small
creatures always do. The bantam is the proudest cock in my little
yard.'

'And I fancy,' said Curdie, 'if they once got her, they would tell the
king they would kill her except he consented to the marriage.'

'They might say so,' said his father, 'but they wouldn't kill her; they
would keep her alive for the sake of the hold it gave them over our
king. Whatever he did to them, they would threaten to do the same to
the princess.'

'And they are bad enough to torment her just for their own amusement--I
know that,' said his mother.

'Anyhow, I will keep a watch on them, and see what they are up to,'
said Curdie. 'It's too horrible to think of. I daren't let myse