As he spoke there came a great rolling rumble beneath them, and the
house quivered. They all started up in affright, and rushing to the hall
found the gentlemen-at-arms in consternation also. They had sent to
wake
their captain, who said from their description that it must have been
an
earthquake, an occurrence which, although very rare in that country,
had
taken place almost within the century; and then went to bed again,
strange to say, and fell fast asleep without once thinking of Curdie, or
associating the noises they had heard with what he had told them. 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 afterward,
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
Madhuri Noah
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