The horses were no longer galloping, now they were slowing up, now
they stopped, but with such a sudden jerk that all three children were
tumbled out into the road. They had been expecting this to happen for
so long that the thing was not such a shock after all, and somehow
they landed without being hurt in the slightest. They picked
themselves up, and saw the little carriage standing at the side of the
road, the horses perfectly motionless, each with a forefoot raised in
the air, the coachman stiff and still upon his box, _gazing_ straight
in front of him.

"He'll stay like that," said Peter mournfully, rubbing the dust from
his knees, "till he's wound up again. I wish we had the key!"

"I wish we did," said Rudolf crossly. "You know what Betsy says
about--'If wishes were horses, beggars could ride'--well, they aren't,
so we've got to walk now. I wonder where we are?"

Looking around them, the children saw that they had come to the very
last of the many colored fields, where the brown road ended in a
stretch of creamy-yellow grass. Just beyond a thick woods began, but
was divided from the creamy field by a broad bright strip of color,
like a long flower bed planted with flowers of all kinds and colors
set in all sorts of different patterns--stars, triangles, diamonds,
and squares.

"That's the border," shouted Ann, "and over there somewhere we'll find
the person the Queen said would help us get back to Aunt Jane. Come
on!" As she spoke she bounded off across the field, the two boys after
her, and in less time than it takes to tell it they had run through