id wonderingly. "Leaping is
one more accomplishment I can now add to the long list of deeds I am
able to perform."

"You are certainly fine at leap-frog," said the Cookie Cook, admiringly;
"but, as you say, you are wonderful in many ways. If we meet with any
people down here I am sure they will consider you the greatest and
grandest of all living creatures."

[Illustration]

"Yes," he replied, "I shall probably astonish strangers, because they
have never before had the pleasure of seeing me. Also they will marvel
at my great learning. Every time I open my mouth, Cayke, I am liable
to say something important."

"That is true," she agreed, "and it is fortunate your mouth is so very
wide and opens so far, for otherwise all the wisdom might not be able to
get out of it."

"Perhaps nature made it wide for that very reason," said the Frogman:
"But come; let us now go on, for it is getting late and we must find
some sort of shelter before night overtakes us."

[Illustration]

Among the Winkies

[Illustration]

CHAPTER 4

The settled parts of the Winkie Country are full of happy and contented
people who are ruled by a tin Emperor named Nick Chopper, who in turn is
a subject of the beautiful girl Ruler, Ozma of Oz. But not all of the
Winkie Country is fully settled. At the east, which part lies nearest
the Emerald City, there are beautiful farmhouses and roads, but as you
travel west you first come to a branch of the Winkie River, beyond
which there is a rough country where few people live, and some of these
are quite unknown to the rest of the world. After passing through this
rude section of territory, which no one ever visits, you would come to
still another branch of the Winkie River, after crossing which you would
find another well-settled part of the Winkie Country, extending westward
quite to the Deadly Desert that surrounds all the Land of Oz and
separates that favored fairyland from the more common outside world. The
Winkies who live in this west section have many tin mines, from which
metal they make a great deal of rich jewelry and other articles, all of
which are highly esteemed in the Land of Oz because tin is so bright and
pretty, and there is not so much of it as there is of gold and silver.

Not all the Winkies are miners, however, for some till the fields and
grow grains for food, and it was at one of these far west Winkie farms
that the Frogman and Cayke the Cookie Cook first arrived afte