THE END
The king sent Curdie out into his dominions to search for men and women
that had human hands. And many such he found, honest and true, and
brought them to his master. So a new and upright government, a new and
upright court, was formed, and strength returned to the nation.
But the exchequer was almost empty, for the evil men had squandered
everything, and the king hated taxes unwillingly paid. Then came Curdie
and said to the king that the city stood upon gold. And the king sent
for men wise in the ways of the earth, and they built smelting furnaces,
and Peter brought miners, and they mined the gold, and smelted it, and
the king coined it into money, and therewith established things well in
the land.
The same day on which he found his boy, Peter set out to go home. When
he told the good news to Joan his wife, she rose from her chair and
said, "Let us go." And they left the cottage, and repaired to
Gwyntystorm. And on a mountain above the city they built themselves a
warm house for their old age, high in the clear air.
As Peter mined one day by himself, at the back of the king's
wine-cellar, he broke into a cavern all crusted with gems, and much
wealth flowed therefrom, and the king used it wisely.
Queen Irene--that was the right name of the old princess--was thereafter
seldom long absent from the palace. Once or twice when she was missing,
Barbara, who seemed to know of her sometimes when nobody else had a
notion whither she had gone, said she was with the dear old Uglies in
the wood. Curdie thought that perhaps her business might be with others
there as well. All the uppermost rooms in the palace were left to her
use, and when any one was in need of her help, up thither he must go.
But even when she was there, he did not always succeed in finding her.
She, however, always knew that such a one had been looking for her.
Curdie went to find her one day. As he ascended the last stair, to meet
him came the well-known scent of her roses; and when he opened her door,
lo! there was the same gorgeous room in which his touch had been
glorified by her fire! And there burned the fire--a huge heap of red
and white roses. Before the hearth stood the princess, an old
gray-haired woman, with Lina a little behind her, slowly wagging her
tail, and looking like a beast of prey that can hardly so long restrain
itself from springing as to be sure of its victim. The queen was casting
roses, more and more roses, upon the fire. At last she turned and said,
"Now, Lina!"--and Lina dashed burrowing into the fire. There went up a
black smoke and a dust, and Lina was never more seen in the palace.
Irene and Curdie were married. The old king died, and they were king and
queen. As long as they lived Gwyntystorm was a better city, and good
people grew in it. But they had no children, and when they died the
people chose a king. And the new king went mining and mining in the rock
under the city, and grew more and more eager after the gold, and paid
less and less heed to his people. Rapidly they sunk towards their old
wickedness. But still the king went on mining, and coining gold by the
pailful, until the people were worse even than in the old time. And so
greedy was the king after gold, that when at last the ore began to fail,
he caused the miners to reduce the pillars which Peter and they that
followed him had left standing to bear the city. And from the girth of
an oak of a thousand years, they chipped them down to that of a fir tree
of fifty.
One day at noon, when life was at its highest, the whole city fell with
a roaring crash. The cries of men and the shrieks of women went up with
its dust, and then there was a great silence.
Where the mighty rock once towered, crowded with homes and crowned with
a palace, now rushes and raves a stone-obstructed rapid of the river.
All around spreads a wilderness of wild deer, and the very name of
Gwyntystorm has ceased from the lips of men.
THE END.
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