tically until suddenly he became motionless, with one arm in the
air and the other held stiffly before him with all the copper fingers
of the hand spread out like a fan.

"Dear me!" said Dorothy, in a frightened tone. "What can the matter
be?"

"He's run down, I suppose," said the hen, calmly. "You couldn't have
wound him up very tight."

"I didn't know how much to wind him," replied the girl; "but I'll try
to do better next time."

She ran around the copper man to take the key from the peg at the back
of his neck, but it was not there.

"It's gone!" cried Dorothy, in dismay.

"What's gone?" asked Billina.

"The key."

"It probably fell off when he made that low bow to you," returned the
hen. "Look around, and see if you cannot find it again."

Dorothy looked, and the hen helped her, and by and by the girl
discovered the clock-key, which had fallen into a crack of the rock.

At once she wound up Tiktok's voice, taking care to give the key as
many turns as it would go around. She found this quite a task, as you
may imagine if you have ever tried to wind a clock, but the machine
man's first words were to assure Dorothy that he would now run for at
least twenty-four hours.

"You did not wind me much, at first," he calmly said, "and I told you
that long sto-ry a-bout King Ev-ol-do; so it is no won-der that I ran
down."

She next rewound the action clock-work, and then Billina advised her to
carry the key to Tiktok in her pocket, so it would not get lost again.

"And now," said Dorothy, when all this was accomplished, "tell me what
you were going to say about the Wheelers."

"Why, they are noth-ing to be fright-en'd at," said the machine. "They
try to make folks be-lieve that they are ver-y ter-ri-ble, but as a
mat-ter of fact the Wheel-ers are harm-less e-nough to an-y one that
dares to fight them. They might try to hurt a lit-tle girl like you,
per-haps, be-cause they are ver-y mis-chiev-ous. But if I had a club
they would run a-way as soon as they saw me."

"Haven't you a club?" asked Dorothy.

"No," said Tiktok.

"And you won't find such a thing among these rocks, either," declared
the yellow hen.

"Then what shall we do?" asked the girl.

"Wind up my think-works tight-ly, and I will try to think of some
oth-er plan," said Tiktok.

So Dorothy rewound his thought machinery, and while he was thinking she
decided to eat her dinner. Billina was already pecking away at the
cracks in the roc