ay containing some broiled
mushrooms, a loaf of mineral bread and some petroleum-butter. The
butter Betsy could not eat, but the bread was good and the mushrooms
delicious.

"Here's the door key," said Kaliko, "and you'd better lock yourself in."

"Won't you let Polychrome and the Rose Princess come here, too?" she
asked.

"I'll see. Where are they?"

"I don't know. I left them outside," said Betsy.

"Well, if you hear three raps on the door, open it," said Kaliko; "but
don't let anyone in unless they give the three raps."

"All right," promised Betsy, and when Kaliko left the cosy cavern she
closed and locked the door.

In the meantime Ann and her officers, finding themselves prisoners in
the pit, had shouted and screamed until they were tired out, but no one
had come to their assistance. It was very dark and damp in the pit and
they could not climb out because the walls were higher than their heads
and the cover was on. The Queen was first angry and then annoyed and
then discouraged; but the officers were only afraid. Every one of the
poor fellows heartily wished he was back in Oogaboo caring for his
orchard, and some were so unhappy that they began to reproach Ann for
causing them all this trouble and danger.

Finally the Queen sat down on the bottom of the pit and leaned her back
against the wall. By good luck her sharp elbow touched a secret spring
in the wall and a big flat rock swung inward. Ann fell over backward,
but the next instant she jumped up and cried to the others:

"A passage! A passage! Follow me, my brave men, and we may yet escape."

Then she began to crawl through the passage, which was as dark and dank
as the pit, and the officers followed her in single file. They crawled,
and they crawled, and they kept on crawling, for the passage was not
big enough to allow them to stand upright. It turned this way and
twisted that, sometimes like a corkscrew and sometimes zigzag, but
seldom ran for long in a straight line.

"It will never end--never!" moaned the officers, who were rubbing all
the skin off their knees on the rough rocks.

"It must end," retorted Ann courageously, "or it never would have been
made. We don't know where it will lead us to, but any place is better
than that loathsome pit."

So she crawled on, and the officers crawled on, and while they were
crawling through this awful underground passage Polychrome and Shaggy
and Files and the Rose Princess, who were standing outside