the bucket again, and
that it came very easily.

'Oh, don't!' she said. 'Let it go right down! There are some more people
down there.'

'Sorry, but it's against the rules. The bucket only goes down this well
forty times a day. And that was the fortieth time.'

They pulled the bucket in and banged down the lid of the well. Some one
padlocked it and put the key in his pocket. And Lucy and he stood facing
each other. He was a little round-headed man in a curious stiff red
tunic, and there was something about the general shape of him and his
tunic which reminded Lucy of something, only she could not remember
what. Behind him stood two others, also red-tunicked and round-headed.

[Illustration: Lucy threw herself across the well parapet.]

Brenda crouched at Lucy's feet and whined softly, and Lucy waited for
the strangers to speak.

'You shouldn't do that,' said the red-tunicked man at last, 'it was a
great shock to us, your bobbing up as you did. It will keep us awake at
night, just remembering it.'

'I'm sorry,' said Lucy.

'You should always come into strange towns by the front gate,' said the
man; 'try to remember that, will you? Good-night.'

'But you're not going off like this,' said Lucy. 'Let me write a note
and drop it down to the others. Have you a bit of pencil, and paper?'

'No,' said the strange people, staring at her.

'Haven't you anything I can write on?' Lucy asked them.

'There's nothing here but pine-apples,' said one of them at last.

So she cut a pine-apple from among the hundreds that grew among the
rocks near by, and carved 'WAIT' on it with her penknife.

'Now,' she said, 'open that well lid.'

'It's as much as our lives are worth,' said the leader.

'No it isn't,' said Lucy; 'there's no law against dropping pine-apples
into the well. You know there isn't. It isn't like drawing water. And if
you don't I shall set my little dog at you. She is very fierce.'

Brenda was so flattered that she showed her teeth and growled.

'Oh, very well,' said the stranger; 'anything to avoid fuss.'

When the well lid was padlocked down again, Lucy said:

'What country is this?' though she was almost sure, because of the
pine-apples, that it was Somnolentia. And when they had said that word
she said:

'Now I'll tell you something. The Deliverer is coming up that well next
time you draw water. He is coming to deliver you from the bondage of the
Great Sloth.'

'It is true,' said the red round-he