She made neither motion nor
sound. Gathering courage, and taking the thing for a spectral
illusion, he made a step forward. She showed her other teeth, with
a growl neither more than audible nor less than horrible. The
secretary sank fainting into a chair. He was not a brave man, and
besides, his conscience had gone over to the enemy, and was sitting
against the door by Lina.
To the lord chamberlain's door next, Curdie conducted the
legserpent, and let him in.
Now His Lordship had had a bedstead made for himself, sweetly
fashioned of rods of silver gilt: upon it the legserpent found him
asleep, and under it he crept. But out he came on the other side,
and crept over it next, and again under it, and so over it, under
it, over it, five or six times, every time leaving a coil of
himself behind him, until he had softly folded all his length about
the lord chamberlain and his bed. This done, he set up his head,
looking down with curved neck right over His Lordship's, and began
to hiss in his face.
He woke in terror unspeakable, and would have started up but the
moment he moved, the legserpent drew his coils closer, and closer
still, and drew and drew until the quaking traitor heard the joints
of his bedstead grinding and gnarring. Presently he persuaded
himself that it was only a horrid nightmare, and began to struggle
with all his strength to throw it off.
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