She was just beginning to feel a little tired, and a little bored also. There seemed to be no squirrels nor birds to watch, nor any flowers to pick, and the path was as straight as a string, and just about as interesting to Meg! “Oh, dear!” she exclaimed at last, “I thought I should see all sorts of strange things, and I haven’t seen anything at all yet. I wish something _would_ happen! I wish I could see something queer and excit—” “How about me?” demanded a voice at her side. Meg stopped short, and she and the owner of the voice stood and stared at each other. He was a small, evil-looking dwarf, dressed in gray, with skin the colour of his clothes, and a huge hump on his back. “Who are you?” asked Meg. “Grump,” said the stranger. “Grump, the Gray Dwarf. And of all the creatures in the Wonderful Wood, I am the wickedest!” He seemed remarkably proud of the fact. Meg felt squirmy and uncomfortable. There was no doubt about it: he did look very wicked indeed! “I am not afraid of you!” she said boastfully, though her voice quavered. “That’s good!” said Grump, grinning horribly. “For we are to be comrades for a time!” Meg felt really frightened now. “Indeed we are not!” she exclaimed, trying to sound very brave and careless. “You live in the Wonderful Wood, and I am only passing through it,—as quickly as possible,” she added with much feeling. “Yes, yes!” said Grump, still grinning. “As quickly as possible!” Something in his look made Meg fear that _that_ might not be so very quickly, after all. “Come,” continued the Gray Dwarf, holding out a gray hand. “Come with me!” And, desperately frightened, but feeling in an odd way that she was quite weak and helplessly in the power of her new acquaintance, Meg followed him—where do you think? Into a little black hole in the ground! As she looked down at it, she did not dream that she could get into it, but the Gray Dwarf took her hand, and she found herself slipping in with as much ease as Grump himself. Down they went through an earthy-smelling passage-way that twisted and turned through utter darkness. The air was damp and heavy and very cold. “_Am_ I dreaming, after all?” thought Meg. “I feel like a mole,—burrowing into the earth like this!” It seemed to her that they went a very great distance, stumbling along through the moist ground, with the close earthy smell all about, and no light anywhere. At last the passage suddenly widened out, and opened onto a round space like an underground cave, lighted by a low, green flame that flickered fitfully in one corner.