id:

"A ladder's the thing."

"Have you one?" asked Dorothy.

"To be sure. We use ladders in our mines," said he. Then he ran away to
get the ladder, and while he was gone the Horners gathered around and
welcomed the strangers to their country, for through them a great war
had been avoided.

In a little while Diksey came back with a tall ladder which he placed
against the fence. Ojo at once climbed to the top of the ladder and
Dorothy went about halfway up and Scraps stood at the foot of it. Toto
ran around it and barked. Then Ojo pulled the Scarecrow away from the
picket and passed him down to Dorothy, who in turn lowered him to the
Patchwork Girl.

As soon as he was on his feet and standing on solid ground the Scarecrow
said:

"Much obliged. I feel much better. I'm not stuck on that picket any
more."

The Horners began to laugh, thinking this was a joke, but the Scarecrow
shook himself and patted his straw a little and said to Dorothy: "Is
there much of a hole in my back?"

The little girl examined him carefully.

"There's quite a hole," she said. "But I've got a needle and thread in
the knapsack and I'll sew you up again."

"Do so," he begged earnestly, and again the Horners laughed, to the
Scarecrow's great annoyance.

While Dorothy was sewing up the hole in the straw man's back Scraps
examined the other parts of him.

"One of his legs is ripped, too!" she exclaimed.

"Oho!" cried little Diksey; "that's bad. Give him the needle and thread
and let him mend his ways."

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Chief, and the other Horners at once roared
with laughter.

"What's funny?" inquired the Scarecrow sternly.

"Don't you see?" asked Diksey, who had laughed even harder than the
others. "That's a joke. It's by odds the best joke I ever made. You walk
with your legs, and so that's the way you walk, and your legs are the
ways. See? So, when you mend your legs, you mend your ways. Ho, ho, ho!
hee, hee! I'd no idea I could make such a fine joke!"

"Just wonderful!" echoed the Chief. "How do you manage to do it,
Diksey?"

[Illustration]

"I don't know," said Diksey modestly. "Perhaps it's the radium, but I
rather think it's my splendid intellect."

"If you don't quit it," the Scarecrow told him, "there'll be a worse war
than the one you've escaped from."

Ojo had been deep in thought, and now he asked the Chief: "Is there a
dark well in any part of your country?"

"A dark well? None that ever I heard o