"Well, it must get off from here," said the King in a firm voice, and he called to the Queen, who was near, "My dear! I wish you would see that this cat leaves here at once!" The Queen had but one cure for all ills, great or small. "Off with his head," she said, and did not so much as look round. "I'll fetch the sol-dier my-self," said the King, and rushed off. Al-ice thought she might as well go back, and see how the game went on. She heard the Queen's voice in the dis-tance, as she screamed with rage, "Off with his head! He has missed his turn!" Al-ice did not like the look of things at all, for the game was so mixed she could not tell when her turn came; so she went off to find her hedge-hog. She came up with two hedge-hogs in a fierce fight, and thought now was a good time to strike one of them, but her mal-let was gone to the oth-er side of the ground, and she saw it in a weak sort of way as it tried to fly up in-to a tree. By the time she had caught the bird and brought it back, the fight was o-ver, and both hedge-hogs were out of sight. "I don't care much," thought Al-ice, "for there is not an arch on this side the ground." So she went back to have some more talk with her friend. When she reached the place, she found quite a crowd round the Cat. The King and the Queen and the sol-dier who had come with the axe, to cut off the Cat's head, were all talking at once, while all the rest stood with closed lips and looked quite grave. As soon as they saw Al-ice, they want-ed her to say which one was right, but as all three spoke at once, she found it hard to make out what they said. [Illustration] The sol-dier said that you couldn't cut off a head unless there was a bod-y to cut it off from; that he had nev-er had to do such a thing, and he wouldn't be-gin it now, at his time of life. The King said that all heads could be cut off, and that you weren't to talk non-sense. The Queen said, if some-thing wasn't done in less than no time, heads should come off all round. (It was this last threat that had made the whole crowd look so grave as Al-ice came up.) Al-ice could think of nothing else to say but, "Ask the Duch-ess, it is her Cat." "Fetch her here," the Queen said to the sol-dier, and he went off like an ar-row. The Cat's head start-ed to fade out of sight as soon as he was gone, and by the time he had come back with the Duch-ess, it could not be seen at all; so the King and the man ran up and down look-ing for it, while the rest went back to the game. CHAPTER IX. THE MOCK TUR-TLE. "You can't think how glad I am to see you once more, you dear old thing!" said the Duch-ess as she took Al-ice's arm, and they walked off side by side. Al-ice was glad to see her in such a fine mood, and thought to her-self that the Duch-ess might not be so bad as she had seemed to be when they first met. Then Al-ice fell in-to a long train of thought as to what she would do if she were a Duch-ess.