ut the less clever she was with
her words, the more clever she was with her hands; and the less his
mother said, the more Curdie believed she had to say. But still he had
made no discovery as to what the goblin miners were about.

CHAPTER 13

The Cobs' Creatures

About this time the gentlemen whom the king had left behind him to
watch over the princess had each occasion to doubt the testimony of his
own eyes, for more than strange were the objects to which they would
bear witness. They were of one sort--creatures--but so grotesque and
misshapen as to be more like a child's drawings upon his slate than
anything natural. They saw them only at night, while on guard about
the house. The testimony of the man who first reported having seen one
of them was that, as he was walking slowly round the house, while yet
in the shadow, he caught sight of a creature standing on its hind legs
in the moonlight, with its forefeet upon a window-ledge, staring in at
the window. Its body might have been that of a dog or wolf, he
thought, but he declared on his honour that its head was twice the size
it ought to have been for the size of its body, and as round as a ball,
while the face, which it turned upon him as it fled, was more like one
carved by a boy upon the turnip inside which he is going to put a
candle than anything else he could think of. It rushed into the
garden. He sent an arrow after it, and thought he must have struck it;
for it gave an unearthly howl, and he could not find his arrow any more
than the beast, although he searched all about the place where it
vanished. They laughed at him until he was driven to hold his tongue,
and said he must have taken too long a pull at the ale-jug.

But before two nights were over he had one to side with him, for he,
too, had seen something strange, only quite different from that
reported by the other. The description the second man gave of the
creature he had seen was yet more grotesque and unlikely. They were
both laughed at by the rest; but night after night another came over to
their side, until at last there was only one left to laugh at all his
companions. Two nights more passed, and he saw nothing; but on the
third he came rushing from the garden to the other two before the
house, in such an agitation that they declared--for it was their turn
now--that the band of his helmet was cracking under his chin with the
rising of his hair inside it. Running with him into tha