“Speak up, you old villain!” shouted Grampa, waving his sword over the Prophet’s head. But Abrog stood still and stubbornly refused to say a word, until the old soldier suddenly bethought himself of the wizard’s medicine. “Maybe there’s a cure for the tongue tied on this,” muttered Grampa. Taking out the bottle, he began to scan the green label. At the first sight of the medicine, a dreadful change came over the Prophet. He turned a sickly green and began to tremble violently. “Give me that bottle! Give me that bottle, and I will tell all,” he panted, trying desperately to snatch it from Grampa. “Don’t you do it,” cried the Prince of Ragbad. “Why, Grampa, I believe—I believe this is the wizard himself.” “But it says ‘Gorba’” muttered the old soldier, holding the bottle high above his head. “Don’t you remember?” “Gorba!” exclaimed Dorothy, writing the word with her finger in the air. “Why G-o-r-b-a is A-b-r-o-g spelled backwards!” “Abrog and Gorba!” shrieked Percy Vere, bounding to his feet. The poet instantly broke into verse in his customary style: “Abrog and Gorba are one and the same— A prophet and wizard wrapped up in one—one—one?” “Name!” finished Peer Haps, almost tumbling from his throne. “This is the most exciting story I ever was in,” wheezed the head of Fumbo, from its place on the table. The Prophet had fairly crumpled up at Dorothy’s discovery and, seeing that further resistance was useless, he whined out the whole of his story. Determined to save Pretty Good from the monster and marry her himself, he had decided to change her to mud. For a Princess as ugly as mud, even a monster would not marry, explained the old villain tearfully. So for this purpose he had carried her to the hidden garden, where all his magic appliances were kept. But so sweet, lovely and good was the little Princess of Perhaps City, that the evil spell of the wizard, instead of changing her to a muddy image as Abrog intended, had turned her into a bewitching little flower fairy. Disappointed at the way his magic had worked, Abrog had nevertheless resolved to keep her under the spell until after the day of the prophecy and then change her back to her own self and marry her at once. But when he returned to the garden he found her gone and he had hurried as fast as he could back to Perhaps City. How he had been robbed of his magic medicine on the first day he bewitched Urtha, and how Urtha herself had been released by Tatters and Grampa, we know. “But what about this monster?” panted the old soldier, as Abrog finished speaking and began uncomfortably shuffling his feet on the golden floor. “Let me see that prophecy,” demanded Dorothy. The unwilling Prophet drew the crumpled parchment from his sleeve. “A youth, wrapped in the skin of an old bear—a youth with two heads upon his shoulders and carrying a red umbrella—will marry the Princess of Perhaps City,” read Dorothy in some surprise. “Why, that’s Tatters!” cried the little girl in delight.