, holding up his hand for silence. "I've just composed
a tune called 'The Speckled Alligator.' It's in patch-time, which is
much superior to rag-time, and I've composed it in honor of the
Patchwork Girl, who has just arrived."

"How did you know I had arrived?" asked Scraps, much interested.

"It's my business to know who's coming, for I'm the Guardian of the
Gate. Keep quiet while I play you 'The Speckled Alligator.'"

It wasn't a very bad tune, nor a very good one, but all listened
respectfully while he shut his eyes and swayed his head from side to
side and blew the notes from the little instrument. When it was all
over the Soldier with the Green Whiskers said:

"Guardian, I have here a prisoner."

"Good gracious! A prisoner?" cried the little man, jumping up from his
chair. "Which one? Not the Shaggy Man?"

"No; this boy."

"Ah; I hope his fault is as small as himself," said the Guardian of the
Gate. "But what can he have done, and what made him do it?"

"Can't say," replied the soldier. "All I know is that he has broken the
Law."

"But no one ever does that!"

"Then he must be innocent, and soon will be released. I hope you are
right, Guardian. Just now I am ordered to take him to prison. Get me a
prisoner's robe from your Official Wardrobe."

The Guardian unlocked a closet and took from it a white robe, which the
soldier threw over Ojo. It covered him from head to foot, but had two
holes just in front of his eyes, so he could see where to go. In this
attire the boy presented a very quaint appearance.

As the Guardian unlocked a gate leading from his room into the streets
of the Emerald City, the Shaggy Man said to Scraps:

"I think I shall take you directly to Dorothy, as the Scarecrow
advised, and the Glass Cat and the Woozy may come with us. Ojo must go
to prison with the Soldier with the Green Whiskers, but he will be well
treated and you need not worry about him."

"What will they do with him?" asked Scraps.

"That I cannot tell. Since I came to the Land of Oz no one has ever
been arrested or imprisoned--until Ojo broke the Law."

"Seems to me that girl Ruler of yours is making a big fuss over
nothing," remarked Scraps, tossing her yarn hair out of her eyes with a
jerk of her patched head. "I don't know what Ojo has done, but it
couldn't be anything very bad, for you and I were with him all the
time."

The Shaggy Man made no reply to this speech and presently the Patchwork
Girl forgot all