Then Curdie made a clean breast of it, and told them everything.
They all sat silent for some time, pondering the strange tale. At last Curdie’s mother spoke.
“You confess, my boy,” she said, “there is something about the whole affair you do not understand?”
“Yes, of course, mother,” he answered. “I cannot understand how a child knowing nothing about the mountain, or even that I was shut up in it, should come all that way alone, straight to where I was; and then, after getting me out of the hole, lead me out of the mountain too, where I should not have known a step of the way if it had been as light as in the open air.”
“Then you have no right to say what she told you was not true. She did take you out, and she must have had something to guide her: why not a thread as well as a rope, or anything else? There is something you cannot explain, and her explanation may be the right one.”
“It’s no explanation at all, mother; and I can’t believe it.”
“That may be only because you do not understand it. If you did, you would probably find it was an explanation, and believe it thoroughly. I don’t blame you for not being able to believe it, but I do blame you for fancying such a child would try to deceive you. Why should she? Depend upon it, she told you all she knew. Until you had found a better way of accounting for it all, you might at least have been more sparing of your judgement.”
“That is what something inside me has been saying all the time,” said Curdie, hanging down his head. “But what do you make of the grandmother? That is what I can’t get over. To take me up to an old garret, and try to persuade me against the sight of my own eyes that it