eached the top at
last--a little landing, with a door in front and one on each side.
Which should he knock at?

As he hesitated, he heard the noise of a spinning wheel. He knew it at
once, because his mother's spinning wheel had been his governess long
ago, and still taught him things. It was the spinning wheel that first
taught him to make verses, and to sing, and to think whether all was
right inside him; or at least it had helped him in all these things.
Hence it was no wonder he should know a spinning wheel when he heard it
sing--even although as the bird of paradise to other birds was the song
of that wheel to the song of his mother's.

He stood listening, so entranced that he forgot to knock, and the wheel
went on and on, spinning in his brain songs and tales and rhymes, till
he was almost asleep as well as dreaming, for sleep does not always
come first. But suddenly came the thought of the poor bird, which had
been lying motionless in his hand all the time, and that woke him up,
and at once he knocked.

'Come in, Curdie,' said a voice.

Curdie shook. It was getting rather awful. The heart that had never
much heeded an army of goblins trembled at the soft word of invitation.
But then there was the red-spotted white thing in his hand! He dared
not hesitate, though. Gently he opened the door through which the
sound came, and what did he see? Nothing at first--except indeed a
great sloping shaft of moonlight that came in at a high window, and
rested on the floor. He stood and stared at it, forgetting to shut the
door.

'Why don't you come in, Curdie?' said the voice. 'Did you never see
moonlight before?'

'Never without a moon,' answered Curdie, in a trembling tone, but
gathering courage.

'Certainly not,' returned the voice, which was thin and quavering: 'I
never saw moonlight without a moon.'

'But there's no moon outside,' said Curdie.

'Ah! but you're inside now,' said the voice.

The answer did not satisfy Curdie; but the voice went on.

'There are more moons than you know of, Curdie. Where there is one sun
there are many moons--and of many sorts. Come in and look out of my
window, and you will soon satisfy yourself that there is a moon looking
in at it.'

The gentleness of the voice made Curdie remember his manners. He shut
the door, and drew a step or two nearer to the moonlight.

All the time the sound of the spinning had been going on and on, and
Curdie now caught sight of the