e asked.

'Lootie knows nothing about it. I left her fast asleep--at least I
think so. I hope my grandmother won't let her get into trouble, for it
wasn't her fault at all, as my grandmother very well knows.'

'But how did you find your way to me?' persisted Curdie.

'I told you already,' answered Irene; 'by keeping my finger upon my
grandmother's thread, as I am doing now.'

'You don't mean you've got the thread there?'

'Of course I do. I have told you so ten times already. I have
hardly--except when I was removing the stones--taken my finger off it.
There!' she added, guiding Curdie's hand to the thread, 'you feel it
yourself--don't you?'

'I feel nothing at all,' replied Curdie. 'Then what can be the matter
with your finger? I feel it perfectly. To be sure it is very thin,
and in the sunlight looks just like the thread of a spider, though
there are many of them twisted together to make it--but for all that I
can't think why you shouldn't feel it as well as I do.'

Curdie was too polite to say he did not believe there was any thread
there at all. What he did say was:

'Well, I can make nothing of it.'

'I can, though, and you must be glad of that, for it will do for both
of us.'

'We're not out yet,' said Curdie.

'We soon shall be,' returned Irene confidently. And now the thread
went downwards, and led Irene's hand to a hole in the floor of the
cavern, whence came a sound of running water which they had been
hearing for some time.

'It goes into the ground now, Curdie,' she said, stopping.

He had been listening to another sound, which his practised ear had
caught long ago, and which also had been growing louder. It was the
noise the goblin-miners made at their work, and they seemed to be at no
great distance now. Irene heard it the moment she stopped.

'What is that noise?' she asked. 'Do you know, Curdie?'

'Yes. It is the goblins digging and burrowing,' he answered.

'And you don't know what they do it for?'

'No; I haven't the least idea. Would you like to see them?' he asked,
wishing to have another try after their secret.

'If my thread took me there, I shouldn't much mind; but I don't want to
see them, and I can't leave my thread. It leads me down into the hole,
and we had better go at once.'

'Very well. Shall I go in first?' said Curdie.

'No; better not. You can't feel the thread,' she answered, stepping
down through a narrow break in the floor of the cavern. 'Oh!'