city, grouped together, but set wherever their owners' fancy dictated,
with fields here, trees there, and odd little paths connecting the
houses one with another. It was here, on the morning when Ozma so
strangely disappeared from the Emerald City, that Cayke the Cookie
Cook discovered that her diamond-studded gold dishpan had been stolen,
and she raised such a hue and cry over her loss and wailed and
shrieked so loudly that many of the Yips gathered around her house to
inquire what was the matter.

It was a serious thing in any part of the Land of Oz to accuse one of
stealing, so when the Yips heard Cayke the Cookie Cook declare that
her jeweled dishpan had been stolen, they were both humiliated and
disturbed and forced Cayke to go with them to the Frogman to see what
could be done about it. I do not suppose you have ever before heard
of the Frogman, for like all other dwellers on that tableland, he had
never been away from it, nor had anyone come up there to see him. The
Frogman was in truth descended from the common frogs of Oz, and when
he was first born he lived in a pool in the Winkie Country and was
much like any other frog. Being of an adventurous nature, however, he
soon hopped out of his pool and began to travel, when a big bird came
along and seized him in its beak and started to fly away with him to
its nest. When high in the air, the frog wriggled so frantically that
he got loose and fell down, down, down into a small hidden pool on the
tableland of the Yips. Now that pool, it seems, was unknown to the
Yips because it was surrounded by thick bushes and was not near to any
dwelling, and it proved to be an enchanted pool, for the frog grew
very fast and very big, feeding on the magic skosh which is found
nowhere else on earth except in that one pool. And the skosh not only
made the frog very big so that when he stood on his hind legs he was
as tall as any Yip in the country, but it made him unusually