Ozma of Oz | Page 9

the rocks and paid no attention to their
cunning enemies.
Finally the hen, fluttering over the mound, exclaimed: "Why, here's a
path!"
So Dorothy at once clambered to where Billina sat, and there, sure
enough, was a smooth path cut between the rocks. It seemed to wind
around the mound from top to bottom, like a cork-screw, twisting here
and there between the rough boulders but always remaining level and
easy to walk upon.
Indeed, Dorothy wondered at first why the Wheelers did not roll up this
path; but when she followed it to the foot of the mound she found that
several big pieces of rock had been placed directly across the end of the
way, thus preventing any one outside from seeing it and also preventing
the Wheelers from using it to climb up the mound.
Then Dorothy walked back up the path, and followed it until she came
to the very top of the hill, where a solitary round rock stood that was

bigger than any of the others surrounding it. The path came to an end
just beside this great rock, and for a moment it puzzled the girl to know
why the path had been made at all. But the hen, who had been gravely
following her around and was now perched upon a point of rock behind
Dorothy, suddenly remarked:
"It looks something like a door, doesn't it?"
"What looks like a door?" enquired the child.
"Why, that crack in the rock, just facing you," replied Billina, whose
little round eyes were very sharp and seemed to see everything. "It runs
up one side and down the other, and across the top and the bottom."
"What does?"
"Why, the crack. So I think it must be a door of rock, although I do not
see any hinges."
"Oh, yes," said Dorothy, now observing for the first time the crack in
the rock. "And isn't this a key-hole, Billina?" pointing to a round, deep
hole at one side of the door.
"Of course. If we only had the key, now, we could unlock it and see
what is there," replied the yellow hen. "May be it's a treasure chamber
full of diamonds and rubies, or heaps of shining gold, or--"
"That reminds me," said Dorothy, "of the golden key I picked up on the
shore. Do you think that it would fit this key-hole, Billina?"
"Try it and see," suggested the hen.
So Dorothy searched in the pocket of her dress and found the golden
key. And when she had put it into the hole of the rock, and turned it, a
sudden sharp snap was heard; then, with a solemn creak that made the
shivers run down the child's back, the face of the rock fell outward, like
a door on hinges, and revealed a small dark chamber just inside.
"Good gracious!" cried Dorothy, shrinking back as far as the narrow

path would let her.
For, standing within the narrow chamber of rock, was the form of a
man--or, at least, it seemed like a man, in the dim light. He was only
about as tall as Dorothy herself, and his body was round as a ball and
made out of burnished copper. Also his head and limbs were copper,
and these were jointed or hinged to his body in a peculiar way, with
metal caps over the joints, like the armor worn by knights in days of
old. He stood perfectly still, and where the light struck upon his form it
glittered as if made of pure gold.
"Don't be frightened," called Billina, from her perch. "It isn't alive."
"I see it isn't," replied the girl, drawing a long breath.
"It is only made out of copper, like the old kettle in the barn-yard at
home," continued the hen, turning her head first to one side and then to
the other, so that both her little round eyes could examine the object.
"Once," said Dorothy, "I knew a man made out of tin, who was a
woodman named Nick Chopper. But he was as alive as we are, 'cause
he was born a real man, and got his tin body a little at a time--first a leg
and then a finger and then an ear--for the reason that he had so many
accidents with his axe, and cut himself up in a very careless manner."
"Oh," said the hen, with a sniff, as if she did not believe the story.
"But this copper man," continued Dorothy, looking at it with big eyes,
"is not alive at all, and I wonder what it was made for, and why it was
locked up in this queer place."
"That is a mystery," remarked the hen, twisting her head to arrange her
wing-feathers with her bill.
Dorothy stepped inside