o more
objections to their playing with him.

By the time Keith was back again with Jonesy, the other guests had
arrived, and the Little Colonel had been lowered into a deep feed-bin,
in lieu of a dungeon. The banquet began in great state, but in a few
moments was interrupted by a fearful shrieking from the depths of the
bin. The fair ladye protested that she would not stay in her dungeon.

"There's nasty big spidahs down heah!" she called. "Ow! One is crawlin'
on my neck now, and my face is all tangled up in cobwebs! Get me out!
Get me out! Quick, Gingah!"

The king sprang up to go to her rescue, but was promptly motioned to his
seat again by a warning shake of the other crowned head.

"Why, of course! There's always spiders in dungeons," called the wicked
queen, coolly helping herself to another piece of chicken. "Besides, you
should say 'your Majesty' when you are talking to me."

"But there's a mouse in heah, too," she called back, in distress. "Oo!
Oo! It ran ovah my feet. If you don't make them take me out of heah,
Gingah Dudley, I'll do something _awful_ to you! Murdah! Murdah!" she
yelled, pounding on the sides of the bin with both her fists, and
stamping her little foot in a furious rage.

[Illustration: "THE LITTLE COLONEL HAD BEEN LOWERED INTO A DEEP
FEED-BIN."]

Seeing that Lloyd was really terrified, and fearing that her screams
would bring some one from the house, the royal couple and their guests
sprang to the rescue, nearly upsetting the banquet as they did so. The
game would have been broken up then, when she was lifted out from the
feed-bin, red and angry, if it had not been for the king's great tact.
He brushed the cobwebs from her face and hair, and even got down on his
royal knees to ask her pardon.

His polite coaxing finally had its effect on the little lady, and he
persuaded her to climb a ladder into a loft just above them. Here on a
pile of clean hay, beside an open window that looked across a peaceful
meadow, her anger cooled. Towers were far more comfortable than
dungeons, in her opinion, and when Malcolm came up the ladder with a
plateful of the choicest morsels of the feast, she began to enjoy her
part of the play. Jonesy was sent to inform his knight of the change
from dungeon to tower, and the banquet went merrily on.

He found Keith waiting below the barn, with his pony tied to a fence. On
the other side of the fence lay the railroad track, which skirted the
back of Mrs. MacIn