t she had always said some wretched, abominable
villain would tell her child about that horrid, ridiculous legend,
that was a perfect falsehood, as anybody could see, and very likely
invented by the Dragon himself, because no human being with any
feelings at all would think of such a cruel, absurd idea; and if they
ever did, they deserved to be eaten themselves; and she would not have
it.

She said a great deal more that Elaine, in the next room, could not
hear (though the door was open between), because the Governess put her
fat old face under the cold water in the basin, and, though she went
on talking just the same, it only produced an angry sort of bubbling,
which conveyed very little notion of what she meant.

So they descended the stairway, Miss Elaine walking first, very
straight and solemn; and that was the way she marched into the
banquet-hall, where Sir Godfrey waited.

"Papa," said she, "I think I'll meet the Dragon on Christmas Eve!"

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III

Reueals the _Dragon_ in his Den

[Illustration: BROTHER HUBERT]

Around the sullen towers of Oyster-le-Main the snow was falling
steadily. It was slowly banking up in the deep sills of the windows,
and Hubert the Sacristan had given up sweeping the steps. Patches of
it, that had collected on the top of the great bell as the slanting
draughts blew it in through the belfry-window, slid down from time to
time among the birds which had nestled for shelter in the beams below.
From the heavy main outer-gates, the country spread in a white
unbroken sheet to the woods. Twice, perhaps, through the morning had
wayfarers toiled by along the nearly-obliterated high-road.

"Good luck to the holy men!" each had said to himself as he looked at
the chill and austere walls of the Monastery. "Good luck! and I hope
that within there they be warmer than I am." Then I think it very
likely that as he walked on, blowing the fingers of the hand that held
his staff, he thought of his fireside and his wife, and blessed
Providence for not making him pious enough to be a monk and a
bachelor.

This is what was doing in the world outside. Now inside the stone
walls of Oyster-le-Main, whose grim solidity spoke of narrow cells and
of pious knees continually bent in prayer, not a monk paced the
corridors, and not a step could be heard above or below in the
staircase that wound up through the round towers. Silenc