DEEPER MAGI BEFORE THE DAWN OF TIME WHILE the two girls still crouched in the bushes with their hands over their faces, they heard the voice of the Witch calling out, "Now! Follow me all and we will set about what remains of this war! It will not take us long to crush the human vermin and the traitors now that the great Fool, the great Cat, lies dead.」
At this moment the children were for a few seds in very great danger. For with wild cries and a noise of skirling pipes and shrill horns blowing, the whole of that vile rabble came sweeping off the hill-top and down the slht past their hiding- place. They felt the Spectres go by them like a cold wind and they felt the ground shake beh them uhe gallopi of the Minotaurs; and overhead there went a flurry of foul wings and a blaess of vultures and giant bats. At any other time they would have trembled with fear; but now the sadness and shame and horror of Aslah so filled their minds that they hardly thought of it.
As soon as the wood was silent again Susan and Lucy crept out onto the open hill-top.
The moon was getting low and thin clouds were passing across her, but still they could see the shape of the Lion lying dead in his bonds. And down they both k i grass and kissed his cold fad stroked his beautiful fur - what was left of it - and cried till they could o more. And then they looked at each other and held each others hands for mere loneliness and cried again; and then again were silent. At last Lucy said, "I t bear to look at that horrible muzzle. I wonder could we take if off?」
So they tried. And after a lot of w at it (for their fingers were cold and it was now the darkest part of the night) they succeeded. And when they saw his face without it they burst out g again and kissed it and fo and wiped away the blood and the foam as well as they could. And it was all more lonely and hopeless and horrid than I know how to describe.
"I wonder could we untie him as well?" said Susaly. But the enemies, out of pure spitefulness, had drawn the cords so tight that the girls could make nothing of the knots.
I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been - if youve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you - you will know that there es in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again. At any rate that was how it felt to these two. Hours and hours seemed to go by in this dead calm, and they hardly noticed that they were getting colder and colder. But at last Luoticed two other things. One was that the sky on the east side of the hill was a little less dark than it had been an ho.
The other was some tiny movement going on in the grass at her feet. At first she took no i in this. What did it matter? Nothing mattered now! But at last she saw that whatever-it-was had begun to move up the upright stones of the Stoable. And now whatever-they-were were moving about on Aslans body. She peered closer. They were little grey things.
"Ugh!" said Susan from the other side of the Table. "How beastly! There are horrid little mice crawling over him. Go away, you little beasts." And she raised her hand thten them away.
"Wait!" said Lucy, who had been looking at them more closely still. " you see what theyre doing?」
Both girls bent down and stared.
"I do believe -" said Susan. "