However, if you so desire, I can learn through my arts of sorcery something of the Skeezers and the Flatheads." 

 "I wish you would," answered Ozma seriously. "You see, Glinda, if these are Oz people they are my subjects and I cannot allow any wars or troubles in the Land I rule, if I can possibly help it." 

 "Very well, your Majesty," said the Sorceress, "I will try to get some information to guide you. Please excuse me for a time, while I retire to my Room of Magic and Sorcery." 

 "May I go with you?" asked Dorothy, eagerly. 

 "No, Princess," was the reply. "It would spoil the charm to have anyone present." 

 So Glinda locked herself in her own Room of Magic and Dorothy and Ozma waited patiently for her to come out again. 

 In about an hour Glinda appeared, looking grave and thoughtful. 

 "Your Majesty," she said to Ozma, "the Skeezers live on a Magic Isle in a great lake. For that reason—because the Skeezers deal in magic—I can learn little about them." 

 "Why, I didn't know there was a lake in that part of Oz," exclaimed Ozma. "The map shows a river running through the Skeezer Country, but no lake." 

 "That is because the person who made the map never had visited that part of the country," explained the Sorceress. "The lake surely is there, and in the lake is an island—a Magic Isle—and on that island live the people called the Skeezers." 

 "What are they like?" inquired the Ruler of Oz. 

 "My magic cannot tell me that," confessed Glinda, "for the magic of the Skeezers prevents anyone outside of their domain knowing anything about them." 

 "The Flatheads must know, if they're going to fight the Skeezers," suggested Dorothy. 

 "Perhaps so," Glinda replied, "but I can get little information concerning the Flatheads, either. They are people who inhabit a mountain just south of the Lake of the Skeezers. The mountain has steep sides and a broad, hollow top, like a basin, and in this basin the Flatheads have their dwellings. They also are magic-workers and usually keep to themselves and allow no one from outside to visit them. I have learned that the Flatheads number about one hundred people—men, women and children—while the Skeezers number just one hundred and one." 

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