“Winding stairway,” puffed the old soldier joyfully. “Why, this must be the way out. They wind up, I’ll bet a gum drop! Get aboard everybody. Hurry! Here Loveliness!” Taking Urtha’s hand, Grampa guided her up the first step. Tatters stood on the second with Bill on his shoulder. Grampa mounted quickly to the top and striking another match looked anxiously for directions. There were no more inscriptions, but under Gorba’s name was a tiny gold handle. The match was burning lower and lower and just as it went out Grampa seized the handle and turned it sharply to the left. Then—“Great Gollywockers!” gasped the old soldier, clutching at the rail. “It’s winding down!” Poor Grampa, in his hurry, had turned the handle the wrong way, and next instant the brave little company were whirling down the wizard’s winding stairway, ’round and ’round, down and down, ’round and down, down and ’round, until they were too dizzy to know where they were going. “Hold on!” called Grampa wildly. “Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!” And hold on was about all they could do. CHAPTER 8 Strange Happenings in Perhaps City On the same bright morning that Grampa and Tatters started from Ragbad, the Peer of Perhaps City sat cozily breakfasting with Percy Vere. Percy was a poet and attended to all the guess work in Perhaps City. True he was a terribly forgetful poet, but he did the best he could and was a prime favorite with the old mountain monarch. Perhaps City itself is a tall, towered city of gold set high in the Maybe Mountains of Oz. So steep and craggy are its peaks that none of the dwellers in the city ever descend into the valleys below. Indeed there is little need of it, for life in Perhaps City, owing to the jolly nature and good management of old Peer Haps, is so delightfully entertaining that the people have no desire to leave. The Happsies themselves are of the light-hearted and old-fashioned race of Winkies, who in olden Oz times, settled all the countries of the East. The only one who ever left the city at all was Abrog, the High Sky prophet of the realm, and to his goings and comings no one paid much attention, for he was a queer, silent old man, who spoke but once a year and only then to prophesy as to the weather, crops and important events that would take place in the town. So far these events had all been happy and fortunate ones, and on this sunshiny morning, old Peer Haps, buttering his muffins in his cozy breakfast room, felt so well pleased and content with his lot that he fairly beamed upon Percy Vere. For his part, Percy Vere always was happy and, beaming back at the king, he shook his long locks out of his eye and laughed merrily at old Peer. Percy Vere always felt that his patron enjoyed his breakfast particularly if Percy opened the proceedings with a verse, so he sang, as breakfast was served, this ditty: