! I'm SO sorry!"

Ozma seemed surprised.

"Sorry for what, Dorothy?" she asked.

"For all your trouble about the Nome King," was the reply.

Ozma laughed with genuine amusement.

"Why, that has not troubled me a bit, dear Princess," she replied.
Then, looking around at the sad faces of her friends, she added: "Have
you all been worrying about this tunnel?"

"We have!" they exclaimed in a chorus.

"Well, perhaps it is more serious than I imagined," admitted the fair
Ruler; "but I haven't given the matter much thought. After dinner we
will all meet together and talk it over."

So they went to their rooms and prepared for dinner, and Dorothy
dressed herself in her prettiest gown and put on her coronet, for she
thought that this might be the last time she would ever appear as a
Princess of Oz.

The Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and Jack Pumpkinhead all sat at the
dinner table, although none of them was made so he could eat. Usually
they served to enliven the meal with their merry talk, but to-night all
seemed strangely silent and uneasy.

As soon as the dinner was finished Ozma led the company to her own
private room in which hung the Magic Picture. When they had seated
themselves the Scarecrow was the first to speak.

"Is the Nome King's tunnel finished, Ozma?" he asked.

"It was completed to-day," she replied. "They have built it right
under my palace grounds, and it ends in front of the Forbidden
Fountain. Nothing but a crust of earth remains to separate our enemies
from us, and when they march here, they will easily break through this
crust and rush upon us."

"Who will assist the Nome King?" inquired the Scarecrow.

"The Whimsies, the Growleywogs and the Phanfasms," she replied. "I
watched to-day in my Magic Picture the messengers whom the Nome King
sent to all these people to summon them to assemble in his great
caverns."

"Let us see what they are doing now," suggested the Tin Woodman.

So Ozma wished to see the Nome King's cavern, and at once the landscape
faded from the Magic Picture and was replaced by the scene then being
enacted in the jeweled cavern of King Roquat.

A wild and startling scene it was which the Oz people beheld.

Before the Nome King stood the Chief of the Whimsies and the Grand
Gallipoot of the Growleywogs, surrounded by their most skillful
generals. Very fierce and powerful they looked, so that even the Nome
King and General Guph, who stood beside his master, seemed