As for the door yard, it was no more than a pebbly, avalanche-swept opening among the trees and rocks, down which in the glacial age perhaps a thousand torrents had leaped, but which was now so dry and white and lifeless that one could only think of bones bleached and polished by a sun that had sickened of the work a thousand years ago.
This brief, inadequate description of the Witch's hut is given in advance of the actual descent of the personally conducted gentleman for the somewhat ambiguous reason that he was to find it not at all as described.
The two horsemen rode into the glen and came plump upon a small detachment of the royal guard, mounted and rather resolute in their lack of amiability.
"Wot's this ?" gasped Mr.Hobbs, drawing rein at the edge of the pebbly dooryard.
"Soldiers, I'd say," remarked Mr.King, scowling quite glumly from beneath the rim of his panama.

"Hello!" His eyes brightened and his hat came off with a switch.

"There's the Prince!" "My word," ejaculated Mr.Hobbs, and forthwith began to ransack his pockets for the band which said he was from Cook's.
Farther up the glen, in fact at the very door of the Witch's hut, were gathered a small but rather distinguished portion of the royal household.

It was not difficult to recognise the little Prince.

He was standing beside John Tullis; and it is not with a desire to speak ill of his valour that we add: he was clutching the slackest part of that gentleman's riding breeks with an earnestness that betrayed extreme trepidation.