'Why, that's never the emerald!' said Joan.
'It is,' answered Peter; 'but it were small blame to any one that
took it for a bit of bottle glass!'
For, all save one spot right in the centre, of intensest and most
brilliant green, it looked as if the colour had been burnt out of
it.
'Run, run, Peter!' cried his wife. 'Run and tell the old princess.
it may not be too late. The boy must be lying at death's door.'
Without a word Peter caught up his mattock, darted from the
cottage, and was at the bottom of the hill in less time than he
usually took to get halfway.
The door of the king's house stood open; he rushed in and up the
stair. But after wandering about in vain for an hour, opening door
after door, and finding no way farther up, the heart of the old man
had well-nigh failed him. Empty rooms, empty rooms! - desertion
and desolation everywhere.
At last he did come upon the door to the tower stair. Up he
darted. Arrived at the top, he found three doors, and, one after
the other, knocked at them all. But there was neither voice nor
hearing. Urged by his faith and his dread, slowly, hesitatingly,
he opened one. It revealed a bare garret room, nothing in it but
one chair and one spinning wheel. He closed it, and opened the
next - to start back in terror, for he saw nothing but a great
gulf, a moonless night, full of stars, and, for all the stars,
dark, dark! - a fathomless abyss.
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