And when she had put it into the hole of the rock, and turned it, a
sudden sharp snap was heard; then, with a solemn creak that made the
shivers run down the child's back, the face of the rock fell outward,
like a door on hinges, and revealed a small dark chamber just inside.

"Good gracious!" cried Dorothy, shrinking back as far as the narrow path
would let her.

For, standing within the narrow chamber of rock, was the form of a
man--or, at least, it seemed like a man, in the dim light. He was only
about as tall as Dorothy herself, and his body was round as a ball and
made out of burnished copper. Also his head and limbs were copper, and
these were jointed or hinged to his body in a peculiar way, with metal
caps over the joints, like the armor worn by knights in days of old. He
stood perfectly still, and where the light struck upon his form it
glittered as if made of pure gold.

[Illustration: "THIS COPPER MAN IS NOT ALIVE AT ALL"]

"Don't be frightened," called Billina, from her perch. "It isn't alive."

"I see it isn't," replied the girl, drawing a long breath.

"It is only made out of copper, like the old kettle in the barn-yard at
home," continued the hen, turning her head first to one side and then to
the other, so that both her little round eyes could examine the object.

"Once," said Dorothy, "I knew a man made out of tin, who was a woodman
named Nick Chopper. But he was as alive as we are, 'cause he was born a
real man, and got his tin body a little at a time--first a leg and then
a finger and then an ear--for the reason that he had so many accidents
with his axe, and cut himself up in a very careless manner."

"Oh," said the hen, with a sniff, as if she did not believe the story.

"But this copper man," continued Dorothy, looking at it with big eyes,
"is not alive at all, and I wonder what it was made for, and why it was
locked up in this queer place."

"That is a mystery," remarked the hen, twisting her head to arrange her
wing-feathers with her bill.

Dorothy stepped inside the little room to get a back view of the copper
man, and in this way discovered a printed card that hung between his
shoulders, it being suspended from a small copper peg at the back of his
neck. She unfastened this card and returned to the path, where the light
was better, and sat herself down upon a slab of rock to read the
printing.

"What does it say?" asked the hen, curiously.

Dorothy read the card aloud, spelling ou