Poor Derba looked anxiously in Curdie's face.

He broke out laughing.
'They are much mistaken,' he said, 'if they fancy they could keep Lina and a miner in any house in Gwyntystorm--even if they built up doors and windows.' With that he shouldered his mattock.

But Derba begged him not to make a hole in her house just yet.

She had plenty for breakfast, she said, and before it was time for dinner they would know what the people meant by it.
And indeed they did.

For within an hour appeared one of the chief magistrates of the city, accompanied by a score of soldiers with drawn swords, and followed by a great multitude of people, requiring the miner and his brute to yield themselves, the one that he might be tried for the disturbance he had occasioned and the injury he had committed, the other that she might be roasted alive for her part in killing two valuable and harmless animals belonging to worthy citizens.