Curdie shook. It was getting rather awful. The heart that had never much heeded an army of goblins trembled at the soft word of invitation. But then there was the red-spotted white thing in his hand! He dared not hesitate, though. Gently he opened the door through which the sound came, and what did he see? Nothing at first--except indeed a great sloping shaft of moonlight that came in at a high window, and rested on the floor. He stood and stared at it, forgetting to shut the door. 'Why don't you come in, Curdie?' said the voice. 'Did you never see moonlight before?' 'Never without a moon,' answered Curdie, in a trembling tone, but gathering courage. 'Certainly not,' returned the voice, which was thin and quavering: 'I never saw moonlight without a moon.' 'But there's no moon outside,' said Curdie. 'Ah! but you're inside now,' said the voice. The answer did not satisfy Curdie; but the voice went on. 'There are more moons than you know of, Curdie. Where there is one sun there are many moons--and of many sorts. Come in and look out of my window, and you will soon satisfy yourself that there is a moon looking in at it.' The gentleness of the voice made Curdie remember his manners. He shut the door, and drew a step or two nearer to the moonlight. All the time the sound of the spinning had been going on and on, and Curdie now caught sight of the wheel. Oh, it was such a thin, delicate thing--reminding him of a spider's web in a hedge. It stood in the middle of the moonlight, and it seemed as if the moonlight had nearly melted it away. A step nearer, he saw, with a start, two little hands at work with it. And then at last, in the shadow on the other side of the moonlight which came like silver between, he saw the form to which the hands belonged: a small withered creature, so old that no age would have seemed too great to write under her picture, seated on a stool beyond the spinning wheel, which looked very large beside her, but, as I said, very thin, like a long-legged spider holding up its own web, which was the round wheel itself She sat crumpled together, a filmy thing that it seemed a puff would blow away, more like the body of a fly the big spider had sucked empty and left hanging in his web, than anything else I can think of.