ve
Dorothy or Princess Ozma, and he had determined to be revenged upon
them.

But they, for their part, did not know they had so dangerous an enemy.
Indeed, Ozma and Dorothy had both almost forgotten that such a person
as the Nome King yet lived under the mountains of the Land of Ev--which
lay just across the deadly desert to the south of the Land of Oz.

An unsuspected enemy is doubly dangerous.

2. How Uncle Henry Got Into Trouble

Dorothy Gale lived on a farm in Kansas, with her Aunt Em and her Uncle
Henry. It was not a big farm, nor a very good one, because sometimes
the rain did not come when the crops needed it, and then everything
withered and dried up. Once a cyclone had carried away Uncle Henry's
house, so that he was obliged to build another; and as he was a poor
man he had to mortgage his farm to get the money to pay for the new
house. Then his health became bad and he was too feeble to work. The
doctor ordered him to take a sea voyage and he went to Australia and
took Dorothy with him. That cost a lot of money, too.

Uncle Henry grew poorer every year, and the crops raised on the farm
only bought food for the family. Therefore the mortgage could not be
paid. At last the banker who had loaned him the money said that if he
did not pay on a certain day, his farm would be taken away from him.

This worried Uncle Henry a good deal, for without the farm he would
have no way to earn a living. He was a good man, and worked in the
field as hard as he could; and Aunt Em did all the housework, with
Dorothy's help. Yet they did not seem to get along.

This little girl, Dorothy, was like dozens of little girls you know.
She was loving and usually sweet-tempered, and had a round rosy face
and earnest eyes. Life was a serious thing to Dorothy, and a wonderful
thing, too, for she had encountered more strange adventures in her
short life than many other girls of her age.

Aunt Em once said she thought the fairies must have marked Dorothy at
her birth, because she had wandered into strange places and had always
been protected by some unseen power. As for Uncle Henry, he thought
his little niece merely a dreamer, as her dead mother had been, for he
could not quite believe all the curious stories Dorothy told them of
the Land of Oz, which she had several times visited. He did not think
that she tried to deceive her uncle and aunt, but he imagined that she
had dreamed all of those astonishing adventures