oubled-up soldiers were always getting up and walking off to
other parts of the ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion
that it was a very difficult game indeed.

The players all played at once without waiting for turns, and
quarrelled all the while at the tops of their voices, and in a
very few minutes the Queen was in a furious passion, and went
stamping about and shouting "off with his head!" of "off with her
head!" about once in a minute. All those whom she sentenced were
taken into custody by the soldiers, who of course had to leave
off being arches to do this, so that, by the end of half an hour
or so, there were no arches left, and all the players, except the
King, the Queen, and Alice, were in custody, and under sentence
of execution.

Then the Queen left off, quite out of breath, and said to Alice
"have you seen the Mock Turtle?"

"No," said Alice, "I don't even know what a Mock Turtle is."

"Come on then," said the Queen, "and it shall tell you its
history."

As they walked off together, Alice heard the King say in a low
voice, to the company generally, "you are all pardoned."

"Come, that's a good thing!" thought Alice, who had felt quite
grieved at the number of executions which the Queen had ordered.

[Illustration]

They very soon came upon a Gryphon, which lay fast asleep in the
sun: (if you don't know what a Gryphon is, look at the picture):
"Up, lazy thing!" said the Queen, "and take this young lady to
see the Mock Turtle, and to hear its history. I must go back and
see after some executions I ordered," and she walked off, leaving
Alice with the Gryphon. Alice did not quite like the look of the
creature, but on the whole she thought it quite as safe to stay
as to go after that savage Queen: so she waited.

The Gryphon sat up and rubbed its eyes: then it watched the Queen
till she was out of sight: then it chuckled. "What fun!" said the
Gryphon, half to itself, half to Alice.

"What is the fun?" said Alice.

"Why, she," said the Gryphon; "it's all her fancy, that: they
never executes nobody, you know: come on!"

"Everybody says 'come on!' here," thought Alice as she walked
slowly after the Gryphon; "I never was ordered about so before in
all my life--never!"

They had not gone far before they saw the Mock Turtle in the
distance, sitting sad and lonely on a little ledge of rock, and,
as they came nearer, Alice could here it sighing as if its heart
would break. She pitied it deeply: "w