times, but I have never been in any danger that I
was not afraid."

"Nor I," said Dorothy, truthfully. "But I must go and set free Billina,
and then I will see you again."

She ran around to the back yard of the palace and soon found the chicken
house, being guided to it by a loud cackling and crowing and a
distracting hubbub of sounds such as chickens make when they are
excited.

Something seemed to be wrong in the chicken house, and when Dorothy
looked through the slats in the door she saw a group of hens and
roosters huddled in one corner and watching what appeared to be a
whirling ball of feathers. It bounded here and there about the chicken
house, and at first Dorothy could not tell what it was, while the
screeching of the chickens nearly deafened her.

But suddenly the bunch of feathers stopped whirling, and then, to her
amazement, the girl saw Billina crouching upon the prostrate form of a
speckled rooster. For an instant they both remained motionless, and then
the yellow hen shook her wings to settle the feathers and walked toward
the door with a strut of proud defiance and a cluck of victory, while
the speckled rooster limped away to the group of other chickens,
trailing his crumpled plumage in the dust as he went.

"Why, Billina!" cried Dorothy, in a shocked voice; "have you been
fighting?"

"I really think I have," retorted Billina. "Do you think I'd let that
speckled villain of a rooster lord it over _me_, and claim to run this
chicken house, as long as I'm able to peck and scratch? Not if my name
is Bill!"

"It isn't Bill, it's Billina; and you're talking slang, which is very
undig'n'fied," said Dorothy, reprovingly. "Come here, Billina, and I'll
let you out; for Ozma of Oz is here, and has set us free."

So the yellow hen came to the door, which Dorothy unlatched for her to
pass through, and the other chickens silently watched them from their
corner without offering to approach nearer.

The girl lifted her friend in her arms and exclaimed:

"Oh, Billina! how dreadful you look. You've lost a lot of feathers, and
one of your eyes is nearly pecked out, and your comb is bleeding!"

"That's nothing," said Billina. "Just look at the speckled rooster!
Didn't I do him up brown?"

Dorothy shook her head.

"I don't 'prove of this, at all," she said, carrying Billina away toward
the palace. "It isn't a good thing for you to 'sociate with those common
chickens. They would soon spoil your good manners