The great brute bowed its head, turned, and galloped away.
“Now！”she said.“we have no table—let me e.We had better put it against the trunk of a tree.”
Edmund found himlf being roughly forced to his feet.Then the dwarf t him with his back against a tree and bound him fast.He saw the Witch take off her outer mantle.Her arms were bare underh it and terribly white.Becau they were so very white he could e them, but he could not e much el, it was so dark in this valley uhe dark trees.
“Prepare the victim,”said the Witd the dwarf undid Edmund’s collar and folded back his shirt at the heook Edmund’s hair and pulled his head back so that he had to rai his .After that Edmund heard a strange noi—whizz—whizz—whizz.For a moment he couldn’t think what it was.Then he realized.It was the sound of a knife being sharpened.
At that very moment he heard loud shouts from every dire—a drumming of hoofs and a beating of wings—a scream from the Witch—fusion all round him.And then he found he was being urong arms were round him and he heard big, kind voices saying things like.“Let him lie down—give him some wine—drink this—steady now—you’ll be all right in a minute.”
Then he heard the voices of people who were not talking to him but to one another.And they were saying things lik.“Who’s got the Witch?”“I thought you had her.”“I didn’t e her after I khe k of her hand—I was after the dwarf—do you mean to say she’s escaped?”“—A chap ’t mind everything at once-what’s that?Oh, sorry, it’s only an old stump！”But just at this point Edmu off in a dead faint.
It erfectly still and prently the moon grew bright; if you had been there you would have en the moonlight shining on an old tree-stump and on a fair-sized boulder.But if you had gone on looking you would gradually have begun to think there was something odd about both the stump and the boulder.A you would have thought that the stump did look really remarkably like a little fat man croug on the ground.And if you had watched long enough you would have eump walk across to the boulder and the boulder sit up and begin talking to the stump; for iy the stump and the boulder were simply the Witd the dwarf.For it art of her magic that she could make things look like what they aren’t, and she had the prenind to do so at the very moment when the knife was knocked out of her hand.She had kept hold of her wand, so it had bee safe, too.