He had not believed Curdie.

If he had, he would at once have thought of what he had said, and would have taken precautions.

As they heard nothing more, they concluded that Sir Walter was right, and that the danger was over for perhaps another hundred years.

The fact, as discovered afterwards, was that the goblins had, in working up a second sloping face of stone, arrived at a huge block which lay under the cellars of the house, within the line of the foundations.
It was so round that when they succeeded, after hard work, in dislodging it without blasting, it rolled thundering down the slope with a bounding, jarring roll, which shook the foundations of the house.

The goblins were themselves dismayed at the noise, for they knew, by careful spying and measuring, that they must now be very near, if not under the king's house, and they feared giving an alarm.