Now Irene did not know what good reason there was for her nurse's terror, for the servants had all strict orders never to mention the goblins to her, but it was very discomposing to see her nurse in such a fright. Before, however, she had time to grow thoroughly alarmed like her, she heard the sound of whistling, and that revived her. Presently she saw a boy coming up the road from the valley to meet them. He was the whistler; but before they met, his whistling changed to singing. And this is something like what he sang: "Ring! dod! bang! Go the hammers' clang! Hit and turn and bore! Whizz and puff and roar! Thus we rive the rocks. Force the goblin locks. See the shining ore! One, two, three-- Bright as gold can be! Four, five, six-- Shovels, mattocks, picks! Seven, eight, nine-- Light your lamp at mine. Ten, eleven, twelve-- Loosely hold the helve. We're the merry miner-boys, Make the goblins hold their noise." "I wish you would hold _your_ noise," said the nurse rudely, for the very word goblin at such a time and in such a place made her tremble. It would bring the goblins upon them to a certainty, she thought, to defy them in that way. But whether the boy heard her or not, he did not stop his singing. "Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen-- This is worth the siftin'; Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen-- There's the match, and lay't in. Nineteen, twenty-- Goblins in a plenty." "Do be quiet," cried the nurse, in a whispered shriek. But the boy, who was now close at hand, still went on. "Hush! scush! scurry! There you go in a hurry! Gobble! gobble! gobblin'! There you go a wobblin'; Hobble, hobble, hobblin'! Cobble! cobble! cobblin'! Hob-bob-goblin--Huuuuuh!" "There!" said the boy, as he stood still opposite them. "There! that'll do for them. They can't bear singing, and they can't stand that song. They can't sing themselves, for they have no more voice than a crow; and they don't like other people to sing." The boy was dressed in a miner's dress, with a curious cap on his head. He was a very nice-looking boy, with eyes as dark as the mines in which he worked, and as sparkling as the crystals in their rocks. He was about twelve years old. His face was almost too pale for beauty, which came of his being so little in the open air and the sunlight--for even vegetables grown in the dark are white; but he looked happy, merry indeed--perhaps at the thought of having routed the goblins; and his bearing as he stood before them had nothing clownish or rude about it.