Identifier: princesscurdiemacd (find matches)
Title: The princess and Curdie
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: MacDonald, George, 1824-1905
Subjects:
Publisher: Philadelphia London : J.B. Lippincott
Contributing Library: Information and Library Science Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Digitizing Sponsor: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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the butler,where he lay tied hand and foot under the thirdcask. From that cask he had seen the wine runinto a great bath, and therein he expected to bedrowned. The doctor, with his crushed leg,needed no one to guard him. And now Curdie proceeded to the expulsion ofthe rest. Great men or underlings, he treatedthem all alike. From room to room over thehouse he went, and sleeping or waking took theman by the hand. Such was the state to which ayear of wicked rule had reduced the moral con-dition of the court, that in it all he found butthree with human hands. The possessors of thesehe allowed to dress themselves and depart inpeace. When they perceived his mission, andhow he was backed, they yielded without dispute. Then commenced a general hunt, to clear thehouse of the vermin. Out of their beds in theirnight-clothing, out of their rooms, gorgeouschambers or garret nooks, the creatures huntedthem. Not one was allowed to escape. Tumultand noise there was little, for fear was too deadly 258
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ON A FOOTSTOOL A YARD OFF SAT THE SPIDER GLARING AT HIM MORE VENGEANCE for outcry. Ferreting them out everywhere, fol-lowing them upstairs and downstairs, yielding noinstant of repose except upon the way out, theavengers persecuted the miscreants, until the lastof them was shivering outside the palace gates,with hardly sense enough left to know where toturn. When they set out to look for shelter, theyfound every inn full of the servants expelledbefore them, and not one would yield his place toa superior suddenly levelled with himself. Mosthouses refused to admit them on the ground ofthe wickedness that must have drawn on themsuch a punishment; and not a few would havebeen left in the streets all night, had not Derba,roused by the vain entreaties at the doors on eachside of her cottage, opened hers, and given upeverything to them. The lord chancellor wasonly too glad to share a mattress with a stable-boy, and steal his bare feet under his jacket. In the morning Curdie appeared, and the

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