you for assistance as soon as we realized
our loss. Let us look in the Great Book of Records."

"Alas," returned the Sorceress sorrowfully, "we cannot do that, for the
Great Book of Records has also disappeared!"

CHAPTER 3

THE ROBBERY OF CAYKE THE COOKIE COOK

One more important theft was reported in the Land of Oz that eventful
morning, but it took place so far from either the Emerald City or the
castle of Glinda the Good that none of those persons we have mentioned
learned of the robbery until long afterward.

In the far southwestern corner of the Winkie Country is a broad
tableland that can be reached only by climbing a steep hill, whichever
side one approaches it. On the hillside surrounding this tableland are
no paths at all, but there are quantities of bramble bushes with sharp
prickers on them, which prevent any of the Oz people who live down
below from climbing up to see what is on top. But on top live the
Yips, and although the space they occupy is not great in extent, the
wee country is all their own. The Yips had never--up to the time this
story begins--left their broad tableland to go down into the Land of
Oz, nor had the Oz people ever climbed up to the country of the Yips.

Living all alone as they did, the Yips had queer ways and notions of
their own and did not resemble any other people of the Land of Oz.
Their houses were scattered all over the flat surface; not like a city,
grouped together, but set wherever their owners' fancy dictated, with
fields here, trees there, and odd little paths connecting the houses
one with another. It was here, on the morning when Ozma so strangely
disappeared from the Emerald City, that Cayke the Cookie Cook
discovered that her diamond-studded gold dishpan had been stolen, and
she raised such a hue and cry over her loss and wailed and shrieked so
loudly that many of the Yips gathered around her house to inquire what
was the matter.

It was a serious thing in any part of the Land of Oz to accuse one of
stealing, so when the Yips heard Cayke the Cookie Cook declare that her
jeweled dishpan had been stolen, they were both humiliated and
disturbed and forced Cayke to go with them to the Frogman to see what
could be done about it. I do not suppose you have ever before heard of
the Frogman, for like all other dwellers on that tableland, he had
never been away from it, nor had anyone come up there to see him. The
Frogman was in truth descended from the c