riends, please come with me, for it is
my duty to escort you at once to the royal palace."

The soldiers marched back through the arch again, and with them marched
the shaggy man, Dorothy, Toto, and Button-Bright. Once through the
opening they found a fine, big city spread out before them, all the
houses of carved marble in beautiful colors. The decorations were mostly
birds and other fowl, such as peacocks, pheasants, turkeys,
prairie-chickens, ducks, and geese. Over each doorway was carved a head
representing the fox who lived in that house, this effect being quite
pretty and unusual.

As our friends marched along, some of the foxes came out on the porches
and balconies to get a view of the strangers. These foxes were all
handsomely dressed, the girl-foxes and women-foxes wearing gowns of
feathers woven together effectively and colored in bright hues which
Dorothy thought were quite artistic and decidedly attractive.

Button-Bright stared until his eyes were big and round, and he would
have stumbled and fallen more than once had not the shaggy man grasped
his hand tightly. They were all interested, and Toto was so excited he
wanted to bark every minute and to chase and fight every fox he caught
sight of; but Dorothy held his little wiggling body fast in her arms and
commanded him to be good and behave himself. So he finally quieted down,
like a wise doggy, deciding there were too many foxes in Foxville to
fight at one time.

By-and-bye they came to a big square, and in the center of the square
stood the royal palace. Dorothy knew it at once because it had over its
great door the carved head of a fox just like the one she had seen on
the arch, and this fox was the only one who wore a golden crown.

There were many fox-soldiers guarding the door, but they bowed to the
captain and admitted him without question. The captain led them through
many rooms, where richly dressed foxes were sitting on beautiful chairs
or sipping tea, which was being passed around by fox-servants in white
aprons. They came to a big doorway covered with heavy curtains of cloth
of gold.

Beside this doorway stood a huge drum. The fox-captain went to this drum
and knocked his knees against it--first one knee and then the other--so
that the drum said; "Boom-boom."

"You must all do exactly what I do," ordered the captain; so the shaggy
man pounded the drum with his knees, and so did Dorothy and so did
Button-Bright. The boy wanted to keep on