Or could it be that this black wilderness, perched upon its mountain chain, was indeed the magic toyland of all creation, the home of Santa Claus and---- "Come on," said Archer, "let's not stand herre. B'lieve _me_, I want to get as far away from this place as we can!" CHAPTER XXVII NONNENMATTWEIHER But the worst was yet to come. They hurried now, for whatever the cause of this extraordinary incident, they wished to get away from it, and having crossed the lake they paused not to dry their garments but continued southward following the almost obliterated wagon tracks which ran from the shore. "I wonder how the wagons got across?" said Tom. "Wings," said Archer solemnly, shaking his head. In a little while they came to the toymaker's cottage, with the mechanical cuckoo and the windmills and the basket of soldiers and animals and the old Swiss toymaker himself, sitting like a big toy, in the doorway. "Well--I'll--be----" began Archer. Tom simply gaped, too perplexed to speak. He had believed that he was something of a woodsman, and he certainly believed that he would not go north supposing that he was going south! Could there be another Swiss toymaker, and another cottage and another squawking cuckoo, exactly like the others? Were they all alike, the lonesome denizens of this spooky place, like the wooden inhabitants of a Noah's ark? "This Hun forest has got Aladdin's cave beat twenty ways," said Archer. "Either we'rre crazy or this place is." Suddenly the bright thought occurred to Tom to look at his compass. Unless the magnetic pole had changed its position, and the whole earth gone askew, they were tramping northward, as he saw to his unutterable amazement. "Did we swim across the lake or didn't we?" he demanded of Archer, roused out of his wonted stolidness. "Surre, we did!" "Then I give it up," said Tom resignedly. "The compass says north--we're going north. This is the very same toymaker." "Go-o-od _night_!" said Archer, with even more than his usual vehemence. "Maybe the Gerrmans have conquerred the Norrth Pole and taken all the steel to make mountains, just like they knocked international law all endways, hey? That's why the compass don't point right. G-o-o-o-o-od _night_!" This ingenious theory, involving a rather large piece of strategy even for "supermen," did not appeal to Tom's sober mind. "That's what it is," said Archer. "You've got to admit that if they could send Zeps and submarines and things to the North Pole and cop all the steel, the British navy, and ourrs too, would be floppin' around the ocean like a chicken with its head cut off.--It's a good idea!" Tom went up to the old toymaker, who greeted them with a smile, seeming no more surprised to see them than he had been the day before. "North--_north_?" asked Tom, pointing. "Nort--yah," said the old man, pointing too.