monarch's strength.

"What makes you so strong?" inquired Dorothy.

"It's the zosozo," he explained, "which is an invention of my own. I
and all my people eat zosozo, and it gives us tremendous strength.
Would you like to eat some?"

"No thank you," replied the girl. "I--I don't want to get so thin."

"Well, of course one can't have strength and flesh at the same time,"
said the Czarover. "Zosozo is pure energy, and it's the only compound
of its sort in existence. I never allow our giants to have it, you
know, or they would soon become our masters, since they are bigger that
we; so I keep all the stuff locked up in my private laboratory. Once a
year I feed a teaspoonful of it to each of my people--men, women and
children--so every one of them is nearly as strong as I am. Wouldn't
YOU like a dose, sir?" he asked, turning to the Wizard.

"Well," said the Wizard, "if you would give me a little zosozo in a
bottle, I'd like to take it with me on my travels. It might come in
handy on occasion."

"To be sure. I'll give you enough for six doses," promised the
Czarover.

"But don't take more than a teaspoonful at a time. Once Ugu the
Shoemaker took two teaspoonsful, and it made him so strong that when he
leaned against the city wall, he pushed it over, and we had to build it
up again."

"Who is Ugu the Shoemaker?"

Button-Bright curiously, for he now remembered that the bird and the
rabbit had claimed Ugu the Shoemaker had enchanted the peach he had
eaten.

"Why, Ugu is a great magician who used to live here. But he's gone
away now," replied the Czarover.

"Where has he gone?" asked the Wizard quickly.

"I am told he lives in a wickerwork castle in the mountains to the west
of here. You see, Ugu became such a powerful magician that he didn't
care to live in our city any longer for fear we would discover some of
his secrets. So he went to the mountains and built him a splendid
wicker castle which is so strong that even I and my people could not
batter it down, and there he lives all by himself."

"This is good news," declared the Wizard, "for I think this is just the
magician we are searching for. But why is he called Ugu the Shoemaker?"

"Once he was a very common citizen here and made shoes for a living,"
replied the monarch of Herku. "But he was descended from the greatest
wizard and sorcerer who ever lived in this or in any other country, and
one day Ugu the Shoemaker discovered all the magical b