“Quick！ Before she drifts！” shouted Peter. He and Susan, fully dresd as they were, plunged in, and before the water to their shoulders their hands were on the side of the boat. In a few ds they had hauled her to the bank and lifted the Dwarf out, and Edmund was busily engaged in cutting his bonds with the pocket-knife. （Peter’s sword would have been sharper, but a sword is very inve for this sort of work becau you ’t hold it anywhere lower than the hilt.） When at last the Dwarf was free, he sat up, rubbed his arms and legs, and exclaimed：
“Well, whatever they say, you don’t feel like ghosts.”
Like most Dwarfs he was very stocky and deep-chested. He would have been about three feet high if he had been standing up, and an immen beard and whiskers of coar red hair left little of his face to be en except a beak-like no and twinkling black eyes.
“Anyway,” he tinued, “ghosts or not, you’ve saved my life and I’m extremely obliged to you.”
“But why should we be ghosts?” asked Lucy.
“I’ve been told all my life,” said the Dwarf, “that the woods along the shore were as full of ghosts as they were of trees. That’s what the story is. And that’s why, when they want to get rid of ahey usually bring him down here （like they were doing with me） and say they’ll leave him to the ghosts. But I always wondered if they didn’t really drown’em or cut their throats. I never quite believed in the ghosts. But tho two cowards you’ve just shot believed all right. They were more frightened of takio my death than I was of going！”
“Oh,” said Susan. “So that’s why they both ran away.”
“Eh? What’s that?” said the Dwarf.
“They got away,” said Edmund. “To the mainland.”
“I wasn’t shooting to kill, you know,” said Susan. She would not have liked ao think she could miss at such a she.
“Hm,” said the Dwarf. “That’s not so good. That may mean trouble later on. Uhey hold their tongues for their own sake.”
“What were they going to drown you for?” asked Peter.
“Oh, I’m a dangerous criminal, I am,” said the Dwarf cheerfully. “But that’s a long story. Meantime, I was w if perhaps you were going to ask me to breakfast? You’ve no idea what an appetite it gives one, being executed.”