st take the consequences.'

'They treat them quite properly,' said the butcher. 'What right has
any one to bring an abomination like that into our city? The horror is
enough to make an idiot of every child in the place.'

'We are both subjects of the king, and my poor animal can't help her
looks. How would you like to be served like that because you were
ugly? She's not a bit fonder of her looks than you are--only what can
she do to change them?'

'I'll do to change them,' said the fellow.

Thereupon the butchers brandished their long knives and advanced,
keeping their eyes upon Lina.

'Don't be afraid, Lina,' cried Curdie. 'I'll kill one--you kill the
other.'

Lina gave a howl that might have terrified an army, and crouched ready
to spring. The butchers turned and ran.

By this time a great crowd had gathered behind the butchers, and in it
a number of boys returning from school who began to stone the
strangers. It was a way they had with man or beast they did not expect
to make anything by. One of the stones struck Lina; she caught it in
her teeth and crunched it so that it fell in gravel from her mouth.
Some of the foremost of the crowd saw this, and it terrified them.
They drew back; the rest took fright from their retreat; the panic
spread; and at last the crowd scattered in all directions. They ran,
and cried out, and said the devil and his dam were come to Gwyntystorm.
So Curdie and Lina were left standing unmolested in the market place.
But the terror of them spread throughout the city, and everybody began
to shut and lock his door so that by the time the setting sun shone
down the street, there was not a shop left open, for fear of the devil
and his horrible dam. But all the upper windows within sight of them
were crowded with heads watching them where they stood lonely in the
deserted market place.

Curdie looked carefully all round, but could not see one open door. He
caught sight of the sign of an inn, however, and laying down his
mattock, and telling Lina to take care of it, walked up to the door of
it and knocked. But the people in the house, instead of opening the
door, threw things at him from the windows. They would not listen to a
word he said, but sent him back to Lina with the blood running down his
face. When Lina saw that she leaped up in a fury and was rushing at
the house, into which she would certainly have broken; but Curdie
called her, and made her lie down beside him whi