“What an awful fight!” said Dorothy, catching her breath in little gasps.

“Oh, I don’t know,” purred Eureka, smoothing her ruffled fur with her paw; “we didn’t manage to hurt anybody, and nobody managed to hurt us.”

“Thank goodness we are together again, even if we are prisoners,” sighed the little girl.

“I wonder why they didn’t kill us on the spot,” remarked Zeb, who had lost his king in the struggle.

“They are probably keeping us for some ceremony,” the Wizard answered, reflectively; “but there is no doubt they intend to kill us as dead as possible in a short time.”

“As dead as poss’ble would be pretty dead, wouldn’t it?” asked Dorothy.

“Yes, my dear.  But we have no need to worry about that just now.  Let us examine our prison and see what it is like.”

The space underneath the roof, where they stood, permitted them to see on all sides of the tall building, and they looked with much curiosity at the city spread out beneath them.  Everything visible was made of wood, and the scene seemed stiff and extremely unnatural.

From their platform a stair descended into the house, and the children and the Wizard explored it after lighting a lantern to show them the way.  Several stories of empty rooms rewarded their search, but nothing more; so after a time they came back to the platform again.  Had there been any doors or windows in the lower rooms, or had not the boards of the house been so thick and stout, escape could have been easy; but to remain down below was like being in a cellar or the hold of a ship, and they did not like the darkness or the damp smell.

In this country, as in all others they had visited underneath the earth’s surface, there was no night, a constant and strong light coming from some unknown source.  Looking out, they could see into some of the houses near them, where there were open windows in abundance, and were able to mark the forms of the wooden Gargoyles moving about in their dwellings.

“This seems to be their time of rest,” observed the Wizard.  “All people need rest, even if they are made of wood, and as there is no night here they select a certain time of the day in which to sleep or doze.”

“I feel sleepy myself,” remarked Zeb, yawning.

“Why, where’s Eureka?” cried Dorothy, suddenly.

They all looked around, but the kitten was no place to be seen.

“She’s gone out for a walk,” said Jim, gruffly.

“Where?  On the roof?” asked the girl.

“No; she just dug her claws into the wood and climbed down the sides of this house to the ground.”

“She couldn’t climb down, Jim,” said Dorothy.  “To climb means to go up.”

“Who said so?” demanded the horse.

“My school-teacher said so; and she knows a lot, Jim.”

“To ‘climb down’ is sometimes used as a figure of speech,” remarked the Wizard.