he Old Pasture and live for a week. Then, if the little people of the
Green Meadows and the Green Forest heard screams in the night, they would
know that it was not Sammy Jay who was waking them up. Reddy Fox chuckled
as he listened. You know misery likes company, and it tickled Reddy to
think that some one else had been forced to leave the Green Meadows and the
Green Forest.

That night Sammy Jay found a comfortable place which seemed quite safe in
which to go to sleep. Just after jolly, round, red Mr. Sun went to bed
behind the Purple Hills, Sammy saw Boomer the Nighthawk circling round high
in the air catching his dinner. Sammy screamed twice. Boomer heard him and
down he came with a rush.

"Why, Sammy Jay, what under the sun are you doing way off here?" exclaimed
Boomer.

"Going to bed," replied Sammy. "Say, Boomer, will you do something for me?"

"That depends upon what it is," replied Boomer.

"It's just an errand," replied Sammy Jay, and then he asked Boomer to go
down to the Green Meadows and tell Peter Rabbit how he, Boomer, had seen
Sammy going to bed up in the far-away Old Pasture.

Boomer promised that he would, and off he started. He found Peter and told
him. Of course Peter was very much surprised and, because he cannot keep
his tongue still, he started off at once to tell everybody he could find,
just as Blacky the Crow had thought he would do.

XII

NO ONE BELIEVES PETER RABBIT

Peter Rabbit sat in his secret place in the middle of the Old Briar-patch.
Peter was doing some very hard thinking. He ought to have been asleep, for
he had been out the whole night long. But instead of sleeping, he was wide
awake and thinking and thinking.

You see early the night before Boomer the Nighthawk had told Peter that
Sammy Jay was up in the far-away Old Pasture. Boomer had seen him going to
bed there and had come straight down to tell Peter. This was great news,
and Peter could hardly wait for Boomer to stop talking, he was so anxious
to spread the news over the Green Meadows and through the Green Forest, for
Peter is a great gossip and cannot keep his tongue still.

So he had hurried this way and that way, telling every one he met how Sammy
Jay had moved away to the Old Pasture. But no one believed him.

"Wait and see! Wait and see!" said Jimmy Skunk.

"It's just a trick," said Bobby Coon.

"But Boomer the Nighthawk saw him up there going to bed and talked with
him!" cried Peter Rabbit.

"Pe