"Why should we do that?" inquired Pigasus, fluttering his wings nervously. "After all the grief and worry you have caused us, you are lucky to get off with your skins." "Where are the necklaces now?" asked Dorothy, stepping close to Chalk and looking eagerly up into the face of the discomfited Emperor. Skamperoo's face grew long as a balloon suddenly punctured, but remembering Chalk's last bite, he managed to keep silent. "When you have answered OUR question, we will answer yours," stated Chalk, firmly but pleasantly. "You can, of course, appeal to the Court and members of the household, but I think you will find them entirely satisfied with their present Emperor and ready to stand by him to the last man." At Chalk's words, Bitty Bit looked rather crestfallen. As the white horse had so quietly stated, they were perfectly powerless to take the necklaces by force and a quick inspection of the Emperor, when he first reached the palace, had convinced him Skamperoo was not wearing the precious emeralds. At this rather embarrassing moment a series of thumps, kicks, and knocks on the door made not only the rescuers, but the Emperor and Chalk turn rather pale. "Oh! Oh! It's Matiah!" quavered Skamperoo, whose nerves were completely shaken by the shocking disclosures of the last few moments. "Oh! Oh! What'll we do now?" "Hold your tongue," advised Chalk, and swinging round he trotted briskly over to the door. "Who's there?" he demanded in a dignified voice. "'Tis I-Iva the Kitchen Boy!" stuttered a frightened treble. "I must see the Emperor at once." "Well, shall we let him in?" Bitty Bit looked uneasily at Pigasus and Dorothy and then rather thoughtfully at Chalk. "Suit yourselves," yawned the white horse indifferently. "It's probably a messenger telling us the pudding is cold with all this delay and darkness. You asked for an hour's time and conversation and we agreed to that demand, so it is for you to decide what to do, not us." "Oh, let him in," fumed Pigasus, "and tell him to stop this hammering and yammering. What harm is there in a Kitchen Boy?" So Bitty Bit, taking the key from the lock and squinting through the keyhole to assure himself there was only a small boy outside, quickly admitted him. Now in darted Iva, screaming loudly of a mad man in the cellar and bursting into tearful and incoherent recital of his woes. Scarcely had he got out two sentences before Skamperoo fell bodily off his horse and made a desperate snatch at the Kitchen Boy's throat. But Bitty Bit was too quick for him. His eyes, too, had caught the glimmer of emeralds, and jerking the three chains from the lad's neck as Chalk made a savage lunge forward, he tossed them to Pigasus. Catching them on his nose as cleverly as a trained seal, the pink pig spread his wings and flew up to the top of a tall cabinet, where he sat panting and puffing with satisfaction and defiance.