that the right hour had come for sharing with them the wonderful
things that had come to him. It was perhaps the loveliest of all
hours in the year. The summer was young and soft, and this was the
warmest evening they had yet had - dusky, dark even below, while
above, the stars were bright and large and sharp in the blackest
blue sky. The night came close around them, clasping them in one
universal arm of love, and although it neither spoke nor smiled,
seemed all eye and ear, seemed to see and hear and know everything
they said and did. It is a way the night has sometimes, and there
is a reason for it. The only sound was that of the brook, for
there was no wind, and no trees for it to make its music upon if
there had been, for the cottage was high up on the mountain, on a
great shoulder of stone where trees would not grow.

There, to the accompaniment of the water, as it hurried down to the
valley and the sea, talking busily of a thousand true things which
it could not understand, Curdie told his tale, outside and in, to
his father and mother. What a world had slipped in between the
mouth of the mine and his mother's cottage! Neither of them said
a word until he had ended.

'Now what am I to make of it, Mother? it's so strange!' he said,
and stopped.

'It's easy enough to see what Curdie has got to make of it, isn't
it, Peter?' said the good woman, turning her face toward all she
could see of her husband's.

'it seems so to me,' answered Peter, with a smile which only the
night saw, but his wife felt in the tone of his words. They were