purpose.Perhaps the key had been lost by somebody who lived far away, but had wandered on 
this very shore.
    Musing on these things the girl put the key in the pocket of her dress and then 
slowly drew on her shoes and stockings, which the sun had fully dried.
    "I b'lieve, Billina," she said, "I'll have a look 'round, and see if I can find some 
breakfast."
    
    3.Letters in the Sand
    
    Walking a little way back from the water's edge, toward the grove of trees, Dorothy 
came to a flat stretch of white sand that seemed to have queer signs marked upon its 
surface, just as one would write upon sand with a stick.
    "What does it say?" she asked the yellow hen, who trotted along beside her in a 
rather dignified fashion.
    "How should I know?" returned the hen."I cannot read."
    "Oh!Can't you?"
    "Certainly not; I've never been to school, you know."
    "Well, I have," admitted Dorothy; "but the letters are big and far apart, and it's 
hard to spell out the words."
    But she looked at each letter carefully, and finally discovered that these words were 
written in the sand:
    
    "BEWARE THE WHEELERS!"
    
    "That's rather strange," declared the hen, when Dorothy had read aloud the 
words."What do you suppose the Wheelers are?"
    "Folks that wheel, I guess.They must have wheelbarrows, or baby-cabs or hand-carts," 
said Dorothy.
    "Perhaps they're automobiles," suggested the yellow hen."There is no need to beware 
of baby-cabs and wheelbarrows; but automobiles are dangerous things.Several of my friends 
have been run over by them."
    "It can't be auto'biles," replied the girl, "for this is a new, wild country, without 
even trolley-cars or tel'phones.The people here haven't been discovered yet, I'm sure; 
that is, if there ARE any people.
    So I don't b'lieve there CAN be any auto'biles, Billina."
    "Perhaps not," admitted the yellow hen."Where are you going now?"
    "Over to those trees, to see if I can find some fruit or nuts," answered Dorothy.
    She tramped across the sand, skirting the foot of one of the little rocky hills that 
stood near, and soon reached the edge of the forest.
    At first she was greatly disappointed, because the nearer trees were all punita, or 
cotton-wood or eucalyptus, and bore no fruit or nuts at all. But, bye and bye, when she 
was almost in despair, the little girl came upon two trees that promised to furnish her 
with plenty of food.
    One was quite full of square paper boxes, which grew in clusters on all the limbs, 
and upon the biggest and ripest boxes the word "Lunch" could be read, in neat raised 
letters.This tree seemed to bear all the year around, for there were lunch-box blossoms 
on some of the branches, and on others tiny little lunch-boxes that were as yet quite 
green, and evidently not fit to eat until they had grown bigger.
    The leaves of this tree were all paper napkins, and it presented a very pleasing 
appearance to the hungry little girl.
    But the tree next to the lunch-box tree was even more wonderful, for it bore 
quantities of tin dinner-pails, which were so full and heavy that the stout branches bent 
underneath their weight.Some were small and dark-brown in color; those larger were of a 
dull tin color; but the really ripe ones were pails of bright tin that shone and 
glistened beautifully in the rays of sunshine that touched them.
    Dorothy was delighted, and even the yellow hen acknowledged that she was surprised.
    The little girl stood on tip-toe and picked one of the nicest and biggest 
lunch-boxes, and then she sat down upon the ground and eagerly opened it.Inside she 
found, nicely wrapped in white papers, a ham sandwich, a piece of sponge-cake, a pickle, 
a slice of new cheese and an apple.Each thing had a separate stem, and so had to be 
picked off the side of the box; but Dorothy found them all to be delicious, and she ate 
every bit of luncheon in the box before she had finished.
    "A lunch isn't zactly breakfast," she said to Billina, who sat beside her curiously 
watching."But when one is hungry one can eat even supper in the morning, and not 
complain."
    "I hope your lunch-box was perfectly ripe," observed the yellow hen, in a anxious 
tone."So much sickness is caused by eating green things."
    "Oh, I'm sure it was ripe," declared Dorothy, "all, that is, 'cept the pickle, and a 
pickle just HAS to be green, Billina.But everything tasted perfectly splendid, and I'd 
rather have it than a church picnic.
    And now I think I'll pick a dinner-pail, to have when I get hungry again, and then 
we'll start out and 'splore the country, and see where we are."
    "Haven't you any idea what country this is?" inquired Billina.
    "None at all.But listen: I'm quite sure it's a fairy country, or such things as 
lunch-boxes and dinner-pails wouldn't be growing upon trees.
    Besides, Billina, being a hen, you wouldn't be able to talk in any civ'lized country, 
like Kansas, where no fairies live at all."
    "Perhaps we're in the Land of Oz," said the hen, thoughtfully.
    "No, that can't be," answered the little girl; because I've been to the Land of Oz, 
and it's all surrounded by a horrid desert that no one can cross."
    "Then how did you get away from there again?" asked Billina.
    "I had a pair of silver shoes, that carried me through the air; but I lost them," 
said Dorothy.
    "Ah, indeed," remarked the yellow hen, in a tone of unbelief.
    "Anyhow," resumed the girl, "there is no seashore near the Land of Oz, so this must 
surely be some other fairy country."
    While she was speaking she selected a bright and pretty dinner-pail that seemed to 
have a stout handle, and picked it from its branch. Then, accompanied by the yellow hen, 
she walked out of the shadow of the trees toward the sea-shore.
    They were part way across the sands when Billina suddenly cried, in a voice of terror:
    "What's that?"
    Dorothy turned quickly around, and saw coming out of a path that led from between the 
trees the most peculiar person her eyes had ever beheld.
    It had the form of a man, except that it walked, or rather rolled, upon all fours, 
and its legs were the same length as its arms, giving them the appearance of the four 
legs of a beast.Yet it was no beast that Dorothy had discovered, for the person was 
clothed most gorgeously in embroidered garments of many colors, and wore a straw hat 
perched jauntily upon the side of its head.But it differed from human beings in this 
respect, that instead of hands and feet there grew at the end of its arms and legs round 
wheels, and by means of these wheels it rolled very swiftly over the level