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CHAPTER 30
Peter
At the cottage in the mountain everything for a time went on just
as before. It was indeed dull without Curdie, but as often as they
looked at the emerald it was gloriously green, and with nothing to
fear or regret, and everything to hope, they required little
comforting. One morning, however, at last, Peter, who had been
consulting the gem, rather now from habit than anxiety, as a farmer
his barometer in undoubtful weather, turned suddenly to his wife,
the stone in his hand, and held it up with a look of ghastly
dismay.
'Why, that's never the emerald!' said Joan.
'It is,' answered Peter; 'but it were small blame to any one that
took it for a bit of bottle glass!'
For, all save one spot right in the centre, of intensest and most
brilliant green, it looked as if the colour had been burnt out of
it.
'Run, run, Peter!' cried his wife. 'Run and tell the old princess.
it may not be too late. The boy must be lying at death's door.'
Without a word Peter caught up his mattock, darted from the
cottage, and was at the bottom of the hill in less time than he
usually took to get halfway.
The door of the king's house stood open; he rushed in and up the
stair. But after wandering about in vain for an hour, opening door
after door, and finding no way farther up, the heart of the old man
had well-nigh failed him. Empty rooms, empty rooms! - desertion
and desolation everywhere.
At last he did come upon the door to the tower stair. Up he
darted. Arrived at the top, he found three doors, and, one after
the other, knocked at them all. But there was neither voice nor
hearing. Urged by his faith and his dread, slowly, hesitatingly,
he opened one. It revealed a bare garret room, nothing in it but
one chair and one spinning wheel. He closed it, and opened the
next - to start back in terror, for he saw nothing but a great
gulf, a moonless night, full of stars, and, for all the stars,
dark, dark! - a fathomless abyss. He opened the third door, and a
rush like the tide of a living sea invaded his ears. Multitudinous
wings flapped and flashed in the sun, and, like the ascending
column from a volcano, white birds innumerable shot into the air,
darkening the day with the shadow of their cloud, and then, with a
sharp sweep, as if bent sideways by a sudden wind, flew northward,
swiftly away, and vanished. The place felt like a tomb. There
seemed no breath of life left in it.
Despair laid hold upon him; he rushed down thundering with heavy
feet. Out upon him darted the housekeeper like an ogress-spider,
and after her came her men; but Peter rushed past them, heedless
and careless - for had not the princess mocked him? - and sped
along the road to Gwyntystorm. What help lay in a miner's mattock,
a man's arm, a father's heart, he would bear to his boy.
Joan sat up all night waiting his return, hoping and hoping. The
mountain was very still, and the sky was clear; but all night long
the miner sped northward, and the heart of his wife was troubled.
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