t be best for dear little dogs to lose themselves? We could turn
up later, and be so _very_ glad to be found.'

'But why?' Max asked.

'I've noticed,' said Brenda, sidling up to him with eager
affectionateness, 'that wherever there's fear there's something to be
afraid of, even if it's only your fancy. It would be dreadful for dear
little dogs to be afraid, Max, wouldn't it? So undignified.'

'My dear,' said Max heavily, 'I could give seven noble reasons for being
faithful to our master. But I will only give you one. There is nothing
to eat in the desert, and nothing to drink.'

'You always were so noble, dearest,' said Brenda; 'so different from
poor little me. I've only my affectionate nature. I know I'm only a
silly little thing.'

So when the camel lurched forward and the parrot took wing, the dogs
followed closely.

'Dear faithful things,' said Lucy. 'Brenda! Max! Nice dogs!'

And the dogs politely responding, bounded enthusiastically.

The journey was not long. Quite soon they found a sort of ravine or
gully in the cliff, and a path that led through it. And then they were
on the beach, very pebbly with small stones, and there was the home of
the Dwellers by the Sea; and beyond it, broad and blue and beautiful,
the sea by which they dwelt.

The Dwelling seemed to be a sort of town of rounded buildings more like
lime-kilns than anything else, with arched doors leading to dark
insides. They were all built of tiny stones, such as lay on the beach.
Beyond the huts or houses towered the castle, a vast rough structure
with towers and arches and buttresses and bastions and glacis and
bridges and a great moat all round it.

'But I never built a city like that, did you?' Lucy asked as they drew
near.

'No,' Philip answered; 'at least--do you know, I do believe it's the
sand castle Helen and I built last summer at Dymchurch. And those huts
are the moulds I made of my pail--with the edges worn off, you know.'

Towards the castle the travellers advanced, the camel lurching like a
boat on a rough sea, and the dogs going with cat-like delicacy over the
stones. They skirted large pools and tall rocks seaweed covered. Along a
road broad enough for twelve chariots to have driven on it abreast,
slowly they came to the great gate of the castle. And as they got
nearer, they saw at every window heads leaning out; every battlement,
every terrace, was crowded with figures. And when they were quite near,
by throwing their h