Archer stared at the coats, then peered cautiously about among the
trees. Then he faced Tom again, who returned his stare in mute
astonishment.

"You don't s'pose we could have swum across in ourr sleep, do you?" said
Archer.

Tom shook his head thoughtfully. Could it be that those Huns, those
fiends of the air and the ocean depths, those demons who could shoot a
gun for seventy miles and rear their yellow heads suddenly up out of the
green waters close to the American shore--could it be that they were
indeed genii--ghouls of evil, who played fast and loose with poor
wanderers in the forest until the moment came for crushing them utterly?

Or could it be that this black wilderness, perched upon its mountain
chain, was indeed the magic toyland of all creation, the home of Santa
Claus and----

"Come on," said Archer, "let's not stand herre. B'lieve _me_, I want to
get as far away from this place as we can!"

CHAPTER XXVII

NONNENMATTWEIHER

But the worst was yet to come. They hurried now, for whatever the cause
of this extraordinary incident, they wished to get away from it, and
having crossed the lake they paused not to dry their garments but
continued southward following the almost obliterated wagon tracks which
ran from the shore.

"I wonder how the wagons got across?" said Tom.

"Wings," said Archer solemnly, shaking his head.

In a little while they came to the toymaker's cottage, with the
mechanical cuckoo and the windmills and the basket of soldiers and
animals and the old Swiss toymaker himself, sitting like a big toy, in
the doorway.

"Well--I'll--be----" began Archer.

Tom simply gaped, too perplexed to speak. He had believed that he was
something of a woodsman, and he certainly believed that he would not go
north supposing that he was going south! Could there be another Swiss
toymaker, and another cottage and another squawking cuckoo, exactly like
the others? Were they all alike, the lonesome denizens of this spooky
place, like the wooden inhabitants of a Noah's ark?

"This Hun forest has got Aladdin's cave beat twenty ways," said Archer.
"Either we'rre crazy or this place is."

Suddenly the bright thought occurred to Tom to look at his compass.
Unless the magnetic pole had changed its position, and the whole earth
gone askew, they were tramping northward, as he saw to his unutterable
amazement.

"Did we swim across the lake or didn't we?" he demanded of Archer,
roused out of hi