“I think it’s a ruin,” said Lucy when they had got a good deal nearer, and her guess was the best so far. What they noas a wide oblong space flagged with smooth stones and surrounded by gray pillars but unroofed. And from end to end of it ran a long table laid with a rich crimson cloth that came down nearly to the pavement. At either side of it were many chairs of stone richly carved and with silken cushions upos. But oable itlf there was t out such a ba as had never been en, not even wheer the High Ki his court at Cair Paravel. There were turkeys and gee and peacocks, there were boars’heads and sides of venison, there were pies shaped like ships under full sail or like dragons and elephants, there were ice puddings and bright lobsters and gleaming salmon, there were nuts and grapes, pineapples and peaches, pomegranates and melons and tomatoes. There were flagons of gold and silver and curiously-wrought glass; and the smell of the fruit and the wine blew toward them like a promi of all happiness.
“I say！” said Lucy.
They came nearer and nearer, all very quietly.
“But where are the guests?” asked Eustace.
“rovide that, Sir,” said Rhince.
“Look！” said Edmund sharply. They were actually within the pillars now and standing on the pavement. Everyone looked where Edmund had poihe chairs were not all empty. At the head of the table and iwo places beside it there was something—or possibly three somethings.
“What are tho?” asked Lu a whisper. “It looks like three beavers sitting oable.”
“Or a huge bird’s ,” said Edmund.
“It looks more like a haystae,” said Caspian.
Reepicheep ran forward, jumped on a chair and then to the table, and ran along it, threading his way as nimbly as a dancer between jewelled cups and pyramids of fruit and ivory salt-cellars. He ran right up to the mysterious gray mass at the end： peered, touched, and then called out：
“The will not fight, I think.”
Everyone now came clo and saw that what sat in tho three chairs was three men, though hard tnize as men till you looked cloly. Their hair, which was gray, had growheir eyes till it almost cealed their, faces, and their beards had growhe table, climbing pound awining plates and goblets as brambles; entwine a fence, until, all mixed in one great mat of hair, they flowed over the edge and down to the floor. And from their heads the hair hung over the backs of their chairs so that they were wholly hidden. In fact the three men were nearly all hair.