The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald (best historical biographies txt) 📕

“I see no good in trying to excuse him. He has no business here, anyhow.”

“Let me go away, then, if you please,” said Curdie.

“But we don’t please⁠—not except you give a good account of yourself.”

“I don’t feel quite sure whether I can trust you,” said Curdie.

“We are the king’s own men-at-arms,” said the captain courteously, for he was taken with Curdie’s appearance and courage.

“Well, I will tell you all about it⁠—if you will promise to listen to me and not do anything rash.”

“I call that cool!” said one of the party, laughing. “He will tell us what mischief he was about, if we promise to do as pleases him.”

“I was about no mischief,” said Curdie.

But ere he could say more he turned faint, and fell senseless on the grass. Then first they discovered that the bolt they had shot, taking him for one of the goblin creatures, had wounded him.

They carried him into the house and laid him down in the hall. The report spread that they had caught a robber, and the servants crowded in to see the villain. Amongst the rest came the nurse. The moment she saw him she exclaimed with indignation:

“I declare it’s the same young rascal of a miner that was rude to me and the princess on the mountain. He actually wanted to kiss the princess. I took good care of that⁠—the wretch! And he was prowling about, was he? Just like his impudence!” The princess being fast asleep, she could misrepresent at her pleasure.

When he heard this, the captain, although he had considerable doubt of its truth, resolved to keep Curdie a prisoner until they could search into the affair. So, after they had brought him round a little, and attended to his wound, which was rather a bad one, they laid him, still exhausted from the loss of blood, upon a mattress in a disused room⁠—one of those already so often mentioned⁠—and locked the door, and left him. He passed a troubled night, and in the morning they found him talking wildly. In the evening he came to himself, but felt very weak, and his leg was exceedingly painful. Wondering where he was, and seeing one of the men-at-arms in the room, he began to question him and soon recalled the events of the preceding night. As he was himself unable to watch any more, he told the soldier all he knew about the goblins, and begged him to tell his companions, and stir them up to watch with tenfold vigilance; but whether it was that he did not talk quite coherently, or that the whole thing appeared incredible, certainly the man concluded that Curdie was only raving still, and tried to coax him into holding his tongue. This, of course, annoyed Curdie dreadfully, who now felt in his turn what it was not to be believed, and the consequence was that his fever returned, and by the time when, at his persistent entreaties, the captain was called, there could be no doubt that he was raving. They did for him what they could, and promised everything he wanted, but with no intention of fulfilment. At last he went to sleep, and when at length his sleep grew profound and peaceful, they left him, locked the door again, and withdrew, intending to revisit him early in the morning.

That same night several of the servants were having a chat together before going to bed.

“What can that noise be?” said one of the housemaids, who had been listening for a moment or two.

“I’ve heard it the last two nights,” said the cook. “If there were any about the place, I should have taken it for rats, but my Tom keeps them far enough.”

“I’ve heard, though,” said the scullery-maid, “that rats move about in great companies sometimes. There may be an army of them invading us. I’ve heard the noises yesterday and today too.”

“It’ll be grand fun, then, for my Tom and Mrs. Housekeeper’s Bob,” said the cook. “They’ll be friends for once in their lives, and fight on the same side. I’ll engage Tom and Bob together will put to flight any number of rats.”

“It seems to me,” said the nurse, “that the noises are much too loud for that. I have heard them all day, and my princess has asked me several times what they could be. Sometimes they sound like distant thunder, and sometimes like the noises you hear in the mountain from those horrid miners underneath.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said the cook, “if it was the miners after all. They may have come on some hole in the mountain through which the noises reach to us. They are always boring and blasting and breaking, you know.”

As he spoke, there came a great rolling rumble beneath them, and the house quivered. They all started up in affright, and rushing to the hall found the gentlemen-at-arms in consternation also. They had sent to wake their captain, who said from their description that it must have been an earthquake, an occurrence which, although very rare in that country, had taken place almost within the century; and then went to bed again, strange to say, and fell fast asleep without once thinking of Curdie, or associating the noises they had heard with what he had told them. He had not believed Curdie. If he had, he would at once have thought of what he had said, and would have taken precautions. As they heard nothing more, they concluded that Sir Walter was right, and that the danger was over for perhaps another hundred years. The fact, as discovered afterwards, was that the goblins had, in working up a second sloping face of stone, arrived at a huge block which lay under the cellars of the house, within the line of the foundations.

It was so round that when they succeeded, after hard work, in dislodging it without blasting, it rolled thundering down the slope