to many people at once.  It was only in the least frequented and most difficult parts of the mountains that they were said to gather even at night in the open air.  Those who had caught sight of any of them said that they had greatly altered in the course of generations; and no wonder, seeing they lived away from the sun, in cold and wet and dark places.  They were now, not ordinarily ugly, but either absolutely hideous, or ludicrously grotesque both in face and form.  There was no invention, they said, of the most lawless imagination expressed by pen or pencil, that could surpass the extravagance of their appearance.  But I suspect those who said so had mistaken some of their animal companions for the goblins themselves--of which more by and by.  The goblins themselves were not so far removed from the human as such a description would imply.  And as they grew misshapen in body they had grown in knowledge and cleverness, and now were able to do things no mortal could see the possibility of.  But as they grew in cunning, they grew in mischief, and their great delight was in every way they could think of to annoy the people who lived in the open-air storey above them.  They had enough of affection left for each other to preserve them from being absolutely cruel for cruelty's sake to those that came in their way; but still they so heartily cherished the ancestral grudge against those who occupied their former possessions and especially against the descendants of the king who had caused their expulsion, that they sought every opportunity of tormenting them in ways that were as odd as their inventors; and although dwarfed and misshapen, they had strength equal to their cunning.  In the process of time they had got a king and a government of their own, whose chief business, beyond their own simple affairs, was to devise trouble for their neighbours.  It will now be pretty evident why the little princess had never seen the sky at night.  They were much too afraid of the goblins to let her out of the house then, even in company with ever so many attendants; and they had good reason, as we shall see by and by.

Chapter 2

The Princess Loses Herself

I have said the Princess Irene was about eight years old when my story begins.  And this is how it begins.

One very wet day, when the mountain was covered with mist which was constantly gathering itself together into raindrops, and pouring down on the roofs of the great old house, whence it fell in a fringe of water from the eaves all round about it, the princess could not of course go out.  She got very tired, so tired 

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