rriage by the furious rate at which their driver turned a corner.
They had left the dolls' city far behind them and were out on the long
brown road that led past the little tent where the children had been
arrested by Jinks and the sergeant. Now they were out in the open
country hurrying past the wonderful bright-colored plains, past fields
of pink and purple, blue and green and yellow, white and scarlet,
faster and faster all the time, the horses rushing along with such
curious irregular jerks and bounds that it was almost impossible for
the children to keep their seats, and they expected at each moment to
be dumped in the middle of the road.

"Look out!" shouted Rudolf to the coachman. "Don't you see you are
going to upset us?"

The coachman was a very grand-looking person in a white and gold
livery. He never even turned his powdered head as he shouted back:

"Didn't have no--or-ders--not--to!" And for some time they tore on
faster than ever.

At last Ann leaned forward and caught hold of one of the coachman's
little gold-embroidered coat tails. "Oh, do take care," she cried,
"you might run somebody down!"

"That's it,"--the coachman's voice sounded faint and jerky, and the
children could hardly catch the words that floated back to them:
"Running--down--run-ing--down! As--fast--as--ev-er--I--can.
Most--com-pli-cated--insides--in--all--the--king-dom. Can't--be
--wound--up--not--by--likes--of--you--"

The horses were no longer galloping, now they were slowing up, now
they stopped, but with such a sudden jerk that all three children were
tumbled out into the road. They had been expecting this to happen for
so long that the thing was not such a shock after all, and somehow
they landed without being hurt in the slightest. They picked
themselves up, and saw the little carriage standing at the side of the
road, the horses perfectly motionless, each with a forefoot raised in
the air, the coachman stiff and still upon his box, _gazing_ straight
in front of him.

"He'll stay like that," said Peter mournfully, rubbing the dust from
his knees, "till he's wound up again. I wish we had the key!"

"I wish we did," said Rudolf crossly. "You know what Betsy says
about--'If wishes were horses, beggars could ride'--well, they aren't,
so we've got to walk now. I wonder where we are?"

Looking around them, the children saw that they had come to the very
last of the many colored fields, where the brown road ended in a
stretch o