ball and made out of burnished copper. Also his head and limbs were
copper, and these were jointed or hinged to his body in a peculiar
way, with metal caps over the joints, like the armor worn by knights
in days of old. He stood perfectly still, and where the light struck
upon his form it glittered as if made of pure gold.

"Don't be frightened," called Billina, from her perch. "It isn't alive."

"I see it isn't," replied the girl, drawing a long breath.

"It is only made out of copper, like the old kettle in the barn-yard
at home," continued the hen, turning her head first to one side and
then to the other, so that both her little round eyes could examine
the object.

"Once," said Dorothy, "I knew a man made out of tin, who was a woodman
named Nick Chopper. But he was as alive as we are, 'cause he was born
a real man, and got his tin body a little at a time--first a leg and
then a finger and then an ear--for the reason that he had so many
accidents with his axe, and cut himself up in a very careless manner."

"Oh," said the hen, with a sniff, as if she did not believe the story.

"But this copper man," continued Dorothy, looking at it with big eyes,
"is not alive at all, and I wonder what it was made for, and why it
was locked up in this queer place."

"That is a mystery," remarked the hen, twisting her head to arrange
her wing-feathers with her bill.