eyes you would have
thought must have known they came from there, so often were they turned
up in that direction. The ceiling of her nursery was blue, with stars
in it, as like the sky as they could make it. But I doubt if ever she
saw the real sky with the stars in it, for a reason which I had better
mention at once.

These mountains were full of hollow places underneath; huge caverns,
and winding ways, some with water running through them, and some
shining with all colours of the rainbow when a light was taken in.
There would not have been much known about them, had there not been
mines there, great deep pits, with long galleries and passages running
off from them, which had been dug to get at the ore of which the
mountains were full. In the course of digging, the miners came upon
many of these natural caverns. A few of them had far-off openings out
on the side of a mountain, or into a ravine.

Now in these subterranean caverns lived a strange race of beings,
called by some gnomes, by some kobolds, by some goblins. There was a
legend current in the country that at one time they lived above ground,
and were very like other people. But for some reason or other,
concerning which there were different legendary theories, the king had
laid what they thought too severe taxes upon them, or had required
observances of them they did not like, or had begun to treat them with
more severity, in some way or other, and impose stricter laws; and the
consequence was that they had all disappeared from the face of the
country. According to the legend, however, instead of going to some
other country, they had all taken refuge in the subterranean caverns,
whence they never came out but at night, and then seldom showed
themselves in any numbers, and never to many people at once. It was
only in the least frequented and most difficult parts of the mountains
that they were said to gather even at night in the open air. Those who
had caught sight of any of them said that they had greatly altered in
the course of generations; and no wonder, seeing they lived away from
the sun, in cold and wet and dark places. They were now, not
ordinarily ugly, but either absolutely hideous, or ludicrously
grotesque both in face and form. There was no invention, they said, of
the most lawless imagination expressed by pen or pencil, that could
surpass the extravagance of their appearance. But I suspect those who
said so had mistaken some of their an