He had not
believed Curdie. If he had, he would at once have thought of what
he had said, and would have taken precautions. As they heard
nothing more, they concluded that Sir Walter was right, and that
the danger was over for perhaps another hundred years. The fact,
as discovered afterwards, was that the goblins had, in working up
a second sloping face of stone, arrived at a huge block which lay
under the cellars of the house, within the line of the foundations.
It was so round that when they succeeded, after hard work, in
dislodging it without blasting, it rolled thundering down the slope
with a bounding, jarring roll, which shook the foundations of the
house. The goblins were themselves dismayed at the noise, for they
knew, by careful spying and measuring, that they must now be very
near, if not under the king's house, and they feared giving an
alarm. They, therefore, remained quiet for a while, and when they
began to work again, they no doubt thought themselves very
fortunate in coming upon a vein of sand which filled a winding
fissure in the rock on which the house was built.
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