ely and said to one
another:

"It is absolutely true!"

"But I want my dishpan!" cried Cayke.

"No one can blame you for that wish," remarked the Frogman.

"Then tell me where I may find it," she urged.

The look the Frogman gave her was a very wise look and he rose from his
chair and strutted up and down the room with his hands under his
coat-tails, in a very pompous and imposing manner. This was the first
time so difficult a matter had been brought to him and he wanted time to
think. It would never do to let them suspect his ignorance and so he
thought very, very hard how best to answer the woman without betraying
himself.

"I beg to inform you," said he, "that nothing in the Yip Country has
ever been stolen before."

"We know that, already," answered Cayke the Cookie Cook, impatiently.

"Therefore," continued the Frogman, "this theft becomes a very important
matter."

"Well, where is my dishpan?" demanded the woman.

"It is lost; but it must be found. Unfortunately, we have no policemen
or detectives to unravel the mystery, so we must employ other means to
regain the lost article. Cayke must first write a Proclamation and tack
it to the door of her house, and the Proclamation must read that whoever
stole the jeweled dishpan must return it at once."

"But suppose no one returns it," suggested Cayke.

"Then," said the Frogman, "that very fact will be proof that no one has
stolen it."

Cayke was not satisfied, but the other Yips seemed to approve the plan
highly. They all advised her to do as the Frogman had told her to, so
she posted the sign on her door and waited patiently for someone to
return the dishpan--which no one ever did.

Again she went, accompanied by a group of her neighbors, to the Frogman,
who by this time had given the matter considerable thought. Said he to
Cayke:

"I am now convinced that no Yip has taken your dishpan, and, since it is
gone from the Yip Country, I suspect that some stranger came from the
world down below us, in the darkness of night when all of us were
asleep, and took away your treasure. There can be no other explanation
of its disappearance. So, if you wish to recover that golden,
diamond-studded dishpan, you must go into the lower world after it."

[Illustration]

This was indeed a startling proposition. Cayke and her friends went to
the edge of the flat tableland and looked down the steep hillside to the
plains below. It was so far to the bottom of the hill