saw the great staircase rising before him. When he reached the top
of it, he knew there must be more stairs yet, for he could not be
near the top of the tower. Indeed by the situation of the stairs,
he must be a good way from the tower itself. But those who work
well in the depths more easily understand the heights, for indeed
in their true nature they are one and the same; miners are in
mountains; and Curdie, from knowing the ways of the king's mines,
and being able to calculate his whereabouts in them, was now able
to find his way about the king's house. He knew its outside
perfectly, and now his business was to get his notion of the inside
right with the outside.

So he shut his eyes and made a picture of the outside of it in his
mind. Then he came in at the door of the picture, and yet kept the
picture before him all the time - for you can do that kind of thing
in your mind - and took every turn of the stair over again, always
watching to remember, every time he turned his face, how the tower
lay, and then when he came to himself at the top where he stood, he
knew exactly where it was, and walked at once in the right
direction.

On his way, however, he came to another stair, and up that he went,
of course, watching still at every turn how the tower must lie. At
the top of this stair was yet another - they were the stairs up
which the princess ran when first, without knowing it, she was on
her way to find her great-great-grandmother. At the top of the
second stair he could go no farther, and must therefore set out
again to find the tower, which, as it rose far above the rest of
the house, must have the last of its stairs inside itself.