"Well, if I must, I must," said the King with a sad look. He fold-ed his arms and frowned at the cook till his eyes were al-most out of sight, then asked in a stern voice, "What are tarts made of?" "Pep-per, most-ly," said the cook. "Sug-ar," said a weak voice near her. "Catch that Dor-mouse," the Queen shrieked out. "Off with his head! Turn him out of court! Pinch him! Off with his head!" The whole court ran here and there, get-ting the Dor-mouse turned out, and by the time this was done, the cook had gone. "That's all right," said the King, as if he were glad to be rid of her. "Call the next," and he add-ed in a low tone to the Queen, "Now, my dear, you must take the next wit-ness in hand; it quite makes my head ache!" Al-ice watched the White Rab-bit as he looked o-ver the list. She thought to her-self, "I want to see what the next witness will be like, for they haven't found out much yet." Think, if you can, how she felt when the White Rab-bit read out, at the top of his shrill lit-tle voice, the name "Al-ice!" CHAPTER XII. AL-ICE ON THE STAND. "Here!" cried Al-ice, but she quite for-got how large she had grown in the last few min-utes, and jumped up in such haste that the edge of her skirt tipped the ju-ry box and turned them all out on the heads of the crowd be-low; and there they lay sprawl-ing a-bout, which made her think of a globe of gold-fish which she had up-set the week be-fore. [Illustration] "Oh, I beg your par-don!" she said, and picked them up and put them backed in the ju-ry box as fast as she could. "The tri-al can not go on," said the King in a grave voice, "till all the men are back in place--all," he said with great force and looked hard at Al-ice. She looked at the ju-ry box and saw that in her haste she had put the Liz-ard in head first and the poor thing was wav-ing its tail in the air, but could not move. She soon got it out and put it right; "not that it mat-ters much," she thought; "I should think it would be quite as much use in the tri-al one way up as the oth-er." [Illustration] As soon as their slates and pen-cils had been hand-ed back to them, the ju-ry set to work to write out an ac-count of their fall, all but the Liz-ard, who seem-ed too weak to write, but sat and gazed up in-to the roof of the court. "What do you know of this case?" the King asked Al-ice. "Not one thing," said Al-ice. "Not one thing, at all?" asked the King. "Not one thing, at all," said Al-ice. "Write that down," the King said to the ju-ry. The King sat for some time and wrote in his note-book, then he called out, "Si-lence!" and read from his book, "Rule For-ty-two. Each one more than a mile high to leave the court." All looked at Al-ice. "I'm not a mile high," said Al-ice. "You are," said the King. "Not far from two miles high," add-ed the Queen. "Well, I shan't go," said Al-ice, "for I know that's a new rule you have just made." "It's the first rule in the book," said the King.