another was pierced, but Bulger, after sniffing at the hole, turned away with a bewildered look in his eyes as if he didn't half understand why I was ordering him to thrust his warm nose into such cold places.
And so we tramped from corridor to corridor, until the quarrymen began to show signs of fatigue, and the sounding rod turned slower and slower in their hands.
Phrostyphiz blinked his cold gray eyes as much as to say, "Little baron, thou must bide with us for another year!" But I merely turned to the quarrymen, and ordered them to pierce one more portal of ice ere we abandoned the task for the day. They went at the work of piercing the eleventh door with the pace of pack-mules up a mountain-side. But at last the sounding-rod bored a way through, and at a wave of my hand the quarrymen fell back. In an instant Bulger had his nose at the hole, and took three or four quick, nervous sniffs, ending with a long, deep-drawn one, and then breaking out into a string of sharp, jerky, joyful barks, he began scratching furiously at the bottom of the portal.
"Your frigid Majesty," said I, with a low and stately bend of my body such as only those born to the manner can make, "by this portal, at the coming of to-morrow's sun, I shall pass from your Majesty's icy dominion!" And when Phrostyphiz and Glacierbhoy heard these words of mine uttered so loftily, their eyes gleamed cold as steel, and they followed the King in silence back to the palace of ice. Schneeboule met them in the grand hallway; and when she had looked upon their faces she began to weep, for she loved me and she loved Bulger too, and her cold little heart could not bear the thought of our going.
King Gelidus, however, soon recovered his spirits, and ordered a feast with song and dance in honor of Bulger, who during the festivities sat on the highest divan with the softest pelt beneath him; and so many were the frozen tidbits which the Koltykwerps presented to him during the progress of the feast, that I grew alarmed lest he might overload his stomach and not be in a fit
