The owner of the unseen voice laughed lightly and said:

“You cannot escape the bears that way.”

“How can we ’scape?” asked Dorothy, nervously, for an unseen danger is always the hardest to face.

“You must take to the river,” was the reply. “The bears will not venture upon the water.”

“But we would be drowned!” exclaimed the girl.

“Oh, there is no need of that,” said the voice, which from its gentle tones seemed to belong to a young girl. “You are strangers in the Valley of Voe, and do not seem to know our ways; so I will try to save you.”

The next moment a broad-leaved plant was jerked from the ground where it grew and held suspended in the air before the Wizard.