ert covered with grey stones and
brambles. The dull grey cloud covered all the sky, and Rumpty-Dudget
was master of the whole country.

CHAPTER IV.

NO TIME TO BE LOST.

Princess Hilda and Prince Harold sat down on a heap of rubbish that
happened to be near them, and cried heartily. Tom the Cat sat before
them, moving the end of his tail first one way and then the other, and
looking very sorrowful out of his yellow eyes. But presently he said:

'Crying will not get poor Hector back again.'

'Can we ever get him back?' sobbed Harold.

'I would do anything!' whimpered Hilda.

'If our Fairy Aunt were only here,' said Harold, 'perhaps she could
tell us what we ought to do.'

'You will not see the Fairy Aunt again,' Tom replied, 'until you have
got Hector out of the grey tower, where he is at this moment standing,
with his face to the wall and his hands behind his back, in the
one-hundred-and-first corner.'

'But what can we do?' cried Hilda, beginning to weep afresh. 'We are
nothing but little children.'

'Perhaps you may be able to do more than if you were grown up,' Tom
replied. 'It depends a good deal upon how much you love Hector.'

'Oh!' exclaimed both the children at once; and as they could not think
of anything big enough to compare their love for Hector to, they said
nothing more.

'Listen to me, then,' said Tom, 'and all may yet be well. But in the
first place get on my back, so that I may take you out of this desert
and into the great forest, where we can lay our plans without being
interrupted.'

So saying Tom rose and curved his back: the two children jumped upon
it; off they all went, and, in less time than it takes to tell it,
they were in the midst of that great Forest of Mystery which they had
so often seen from the window of their chamber, but which, until now,
they had never entered. It was quite still, except a faint chopping
noise that seemed to come from a long way off.

'What makes that noise?' Hilda asked.

'That is Rumpty-Dudget cutting down the trees,' Tom replied; 'and
unless we can stop him he will cut down every one of them. However, he
will hardly get so far as this to-night. Now, children, sit down and
listen.'

The children accordingly seated themselves on a cushion of moss at the
foot of one of the tallest pine-trees in the forest, and the cat sat
down in front of them, with his thick tail curled round his toes.

'The first thing to be done,' said Tom, looking a