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 rapidly, "am a Blue Djinn, by name Siddereticus, and I—"

"What is a Djinn, please?" asked Fen.

"Don't tell me that you don't know what a Djinn is!" cried the young man. "You know what genii are, don't you, that come out of bottles with a cloud of evil-smelling black smoke?"

"Yes," said Fen; "they do it in 'Twilight Land.' Have you ever read that book?"

"They do, yes,—there and elsewhere," said Siddereticus. "Well, a Djinn is very much the same sort of thing."

A troubled look came into Fen's eyes as he surveyed the young man's length.

"But did you come out of a bottle?" he asked.

"We-e-l-l," said the Djinn, "you know the way they always get rid of genii is to entice them back into their bottles, or through keyholes, or something of the 8