her. 'You haven't told us
all. You ought to be very happy at having got away from those demons,
and instead of that I never saw you so gloomy. There must be something
more. Besides, you do not speak of that lovely child as I should like
to hear you. She saved your life at the risk of her own, and yet
somehow you don't seem to think much of it.'

'She talked such nonsense' answered Curdie, 'and told me a pack of
things that weren't a bit true; and I can't get over it.'

'What were they?' asked his father. 'Your mother may be able to throw
some light upon them.'

Then Curdie made a clean breast of it, and told them everything.

They all sat silent for some time, pondering the strange tale. At last
Curdie's mother spoke.

'You confess, my boy,' she said, 'there is something about the whole
affair you do not understand?'

'Yes, of course, mother,' he answered. 'I cannot understand how a
child knowing nothing about the mountain, or even that I was shut up in
it, should come all that way alone, straight to where I was; and then,
after getting me out of the hole, lead me out of the mountain too,
where I should not have known a step of the way if it had been as light
as in the open air.'

'Then you have no right to say what she told you was not true. She did
take you out, and she must have had something to guide her: why not a
thread as well as a rope, or anything else? There is something you
cannot explain, and her explanation may be the right one.'

'It's no explanation at all, mother; and I can't believe it.'

'That may be only because you do not understand it. If you did, you
would probably find it was an explanation, and believe it thoroughly.
I don't blame you for not being able to believe it, but I do blame you
for fancying such a child would try to deceive you. Why should she?
Depend upon it, she told you all she knew. Until you had found a better
way of accounting for it all, you might at least have been more sparing
of your judgement.'

'That is what something inside me has been saying all the time,' said
Curdie, hanging down his head. 'But what do you make of the
grandmother? That is what I can't get over. To take me up to an old
garret, and try to persuade me against the sight of my own eyes that it
was a beautiful room, with blue walls and silver stars, and no end of
things in it, when there was nothing there but an old tub and a
withered apple and a heap of straw and a sunbeam! It was t