He looked about him anxiously. The Red City of the Wicked King was a place of many and narrow streets, that turned, every other moment, in the queerest, crookedest ways imaginable, and sometimes brought up in short dark alleys that frightened Dick. He wandered about for some time between the silent dark-red buildings,—everything was crimson in this horrid city,—and for a long time he did not meet a living soul. He wondered what had become of the people who must live in these funny red houses. They surely couldn’t all be dead, or sick, or asleep, or in prison, or away visiting in the country. There must be some few who were shopping, or paying calls, or attending to their business, or looking out of their front doors, or taking a walk. Yet there seemed to be no one at all. There was something really rather horrid and frightening in these little silent red streets, with so many corners and turnings and so many blind alleys (they are little short streets only open at one end) and shut-up-looking houses. Dick found himself hurrying faster than before, and looking around every now and then, as though something unpleasant and big were behind him. Where did the Wicked King live? he wondered; and where, oh, where was the highest tower in the city? At last, as he was hastening along, he happened to peer into a window that was nearly on a level with his own head. Of course it is always rude to look into people’s windows, and Dick knew it; but things were so very dreadful, and he was so anxious to find some human being, that he thought that this once he might do it. And there, gazing out of the window, was a little boy of about his own age. Dick stopped at once, and said “Hollo!” and the other little boy said the same; and then the two little boys stood and stared at each other. “My name’s Dick,” said one. “Mine’s Mudge,” said the other. “What!” cried Dick. “Not the Sea Kobold’s son?” “Yes, indeed!” sighed the little boy. “And I’m kept a prisoner here in the Red City, because my father made the Wicked King angry. I am very tired of being a prisoner; I want to go back and live in the sea. They took all my lovely scales away, too; and I do so want them back!” Dick was very sorry for poor Mudge, but he was glad they had met, and he asked him to tell him the way to the highest tower in the city. “You go on to the right, always to the right,” said Mudge, “until you come to the Palace; and then you walk around the Palace three times, moving to the left; and then you stop under a tree with green flowers on it; and then you look up, and you will see the Princess in her tower.” “Oh, dear!” said Dick. “I’ll never remember all that! Could you not come with me and show me? Oh, I forgot; you’re a prisoner!” “Oh,” said Mudge, “I’m not a prisoner in that way. I can get out of this house whenever I want to. It is the city that I can’t leave. I’ll come with you if you like. I often go to see the Princess and tell her how Humpty Dumpty is looking.”