When he entered the gate into the court, there sat the king on his horse, with all the people of the house about him, weeping and hanging their heads.
The king was not weeping, but his face was white as a dead man's, and he looked as if the life had gone out of him.

The men-at-arms he had brought with him sat with horror-stricken faces, but eyes flashing with rage, waiting only for the word of the king to do something--they did not know what, and nobody knew what.
The day before, the men-at-arms belonging to the house, as soon as they were satisfied the princess had been carried away, rushed after the goblins into the hole, but found that they had already so skilfully blockaded the narrowest part, not many feet below the cellar, that without miners and their tools they could do nothing.

Not one of them knew where the mouth of the mine lay, and some of those who had set out to find it had been overtaken by the storm and had not even yet returned.

Poor Sir Walter was especially filled with shame, and almost hoped the king would order his head to be cut off, for to think of that sweet little face down amongst the goblins was unendurable.
When Curdie ran in at the gate with the princess in his arms, they were all so absorbed in their own misery and awed by the king's presence and grief, that no one observed his arrival.

He went straight up to the king, where he sat on his horse.
'Papa! papa!' the princess cried, stretching out her arms to him; 'here I am!' The king started.