While she was speaking she selected a bright and pretty dinner-pail
that seemed to have a stout handle, and picked it from its branch.
Then, accompanied by the yellow hen, she walked out of the shadow of
the trees toward the sea-shore.

They were part way across the sands when Billina suddenly cried, in a
voice of terror:

"What's that?"

Dorothy turned quickly around, and saw coming out of a path that led
from between the trees the most peculiar person her eyes had ever
beheld.

It had the form of a man, except that it walked, or rather rolled, upon
all fours, and its legs were the same length as its arms, giving them
the appearance of the four legs of a beast. Yet it was no beast that
Dorothy had discovered, for the person was clothed most gorgeously in
embroidered garments of many colors, and wore a straw hat perched
jauntily upon the side of its head. But it differed from human beings
in this respect, that instead of hands and feet there grew at the end
of its arms and legs round wheels, and by means of these wheels it
rolled very swiftly over the level ground. Afterward Dorothy found
that these odd wheels were of the same hard substance that our
finger-nails and toe-nails are composed of, and she also learned that
creatures of this strange race were born in this queer fashion. But
when our little girl first caught sight of the first individual of a
race that was destined to cause her a lot of trouble, she had an idea
that the brilliantly-clothed personage was on roller-skates, which were
attached to his hands as well as to his feet.

"Run!" screamed the yellow hen, fluttering away in great fright. "It's
a Wheeler!"

"A Wheeler?" exclaimed Dorothy. "What can that be?"

"Don't you remember the warning in the sand: 'Beware the Wheelers'?
Run, I tell you--run!"

So Dorothy ran, and the Wheeler gave a sharp, wild cry and came after
her in full chase.

Looking over her shoulder as she ran, the girl now saw a great
procession of Wheelers emerging from the forest--dozens and dozens of
them--all clad in splendid, tight-fitting garments and all rolling
swiftly toward her and uttering their wild, strange cries.

"They're sure to catch us!" panted the girl, who was still carrying the
heavy dinner-pail she had picked. "I can't run much farther, Billina."

"Climb up this hill,--quick!" said the hen; and Dorothy found she was
very near to the heap of loose and jagged rocks they had passed on
their way to