she looked steadily at the boy and asked, "Are you
Ozma? Tell me truly!"

Button-Bright laughed.

"You're getting rattled, Dorothy," he replied. "Nothing ever enchants
ME. If I were Ozma, do you think I'd have tumbled into that hole?"

"Anyhow," said the Wizard, "Ozma would never try to deceive her friends
or prevent them from recognizing her in whatever form she happened to
be. The puzzle is still a puzzle, so let us go on to the wicker castle
and question the magician himself. Since it was he who stole our Ozma,
Ugu is the one who must tell us where to find her."

CHAPTER 21

MAGIC AGAINST MAGIC

The Wizard's advice was good, so again they started in the direction of
the low mountain on the crest of which the wicker castle had been
built. They had been gradually advancing uphill, so now the elevation
seemed to them more like a round knoll than a mountaintop. However,
the sides of the knoll were sloping and covered with green grass, so
there was a stiff climb before them yet.

Undaunted, they plodded on and had almost reached the knoll when they
suddenly observed that it was surrounded by a circle of flame. At
first, the flames barely rose above the ground, but presently they grew
higher and higher until a circle of flaming tongues of fire taller than
any of their heads quite surrounded the hill on which the wicker castle
stood. When they approached the flames, the heat was so intense that
it drove them back again.

"This will never do for me!" exclaimed the Patchwork Girl. "I catch
fire very easily."

"It won't do for me either," grumbled the Sawhorse, prancing to the
rear.

"I also strongly object to fire," said the Bear King, following the
Sawhorse to a safe distance and hugging the little Pink Bear with his
paws.

"I suppose the foolish Shoemaker imagines these blazes will stop us,"
remarked the Wizard with a smile of scorn for Ugu. "But I am able to
inform you that this is merely a simple magic trick which the robber
stole from Glinda the Good, and by good fortune I know how to destroy
these flames as well as how to produce them. Will some one of you
kindly give me a match?"

You may be sure the girls carried no matches, nor did the Frogman or
any of the animals. But Button-Bright, after searching carefully
through his pockets, which contained all sorts of useful and useless
things, finally produced a match and handed it to the Wizard, who tied
it to the end of a branch which