goblin hammers and pickaxes at night. They were making new houses
for
themselves, to which they might retreat when the miners should
threaten
to break into their dwellings. But he had learned two things of far
greater importance. The first was, that some grievous calamity was
preparing, and almost ready to fall upon the heads of the miners; the
second was--the one weak point of a goblin's body: he had not known
that
their feet were so tender as he had now reason to suspect. He had heard
it said that they had no toes: he had never had opportunity of
inspecting them closely enough in the dusk in which they always
appeared, to satisfy himself whether it was a correct report. Indeed, he
had not been able even to satisfy himself as to whether they had no
fingers, although that also was commonly said to be the fact. One of
the
miners, indeed, who had had more schooling than the rest, was wont
to
argue that such must have been the primordial condition of humanity,
and
that education and handicraft had developed both toes and fingers-with
which proposition Curdie had once heard his father sarcastically agree,
alleging in support of it the probability that babies' gloves were a
Madhuri Noah
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