him toward the clouds. And that wretched gnome never stopped growing till he was three-quarters of a mile high!
If the people in the palace were frightened, Ruggedo was more frightened still. Being a giant was a new experience for him and having a castle jammed on his head was worse still. The first thing he tried to do, when he stopped growing, was to lift the castle off, but his spikes were driven fast into the foundations and it fitted closer than his scalp.
In a panic Ruggedo began to run, and when a giant runs he gets somewhere. Each step carried him a half mile and shook the country below like an earthquake and rattled the people in the castle above like pennies in a Christmas bank. Shaking with terror and hardly knowing why, the gnome made for his old Kingdom, and in an hour had reached the little country of Oogaboo, which is in the very northwestern corner of Oz, opposite his old dominions.
The Deadly Desert is so narrow at this point that with one jump Ruggedo was cross and, puffing like a volcano about to erupt, he sank down on the highest mountain in Ev. Fortunately he had not stepped on any cities in his flight, although he had crushed several forests and about a hundred fences.
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