you very much!"

Then Johnnie let go his prisoner, who crept quickly into a crevice of
the stone wall, where he stayed for a long time.

As for Johnnie Green, he scrambled spryly over the wall and began to
move in a bee line toward the sweet apple tree. He walked slowly and
searched the ground with great care. But he saw no sign of his precious
knife.

Beneath the sweet apple tree Johnnie paused mournfully.

"He was only fooling me!" he exclaimed. "That old Daddy Longlegs played
a trick on me!"

Johnnie just couldn't help feeling disappointed. And he just couldn't
help feeling hungry as well. Luckily there were apples on the old tree.
So he began to shin up into its branches.

And then all at once he saw his beautiful knife sticking into the
tree-trunk right before his eyes.

Johnnie remembered then that he had visited the sweet apple tree soon
after breakfast that very day, when he had happened to feel hungry. And
he had stuck the knife there himself and gone off and forgotten it.

With a shout of joy he gripped its horn handle and pulled it out.

"Old Daddy Longlegs knew what he was about after all!" he shouted.

And Johnnie Green never guessed that his finding his jackknife was
nothing but an accident. Daddy had never even seen it. And if he had, he
wouldn't have known what it was.

But after that Johnnie was more convinced than ever that Daddy Longlegs
had a strange power.

XXII

WHY DADDY WAS CHANGED

IT was after his adventure with Johnnie Green that Daddy Longlegs'
neighbors first noticed something queer about him.

They knew that he was not the same. But strangely enough, no two of them
could agree as to what had changed him. Chirpy Cricket said that he
thought that Daddy was wearing a new coat, for his coat-tails seemed to
flap differently when he walked. Buster Bumblebee claimed that Daddy had
bought himself a new hat which tipped at an unusual angle. And little
Mrs. Ladybug insisted that Daddy's odd look was due to nothing more or
less than some new checked trousers. She remembered (she said) that he
had always worn striped ones before.

Those were the opinions of only three of Daddy's friends. It seemed as
if everybody in Pleasant Valley had his own idea about the reason why
Daddy was changed.

Naturally, many disputes arose, because everyone declared that his own
notion was the right one. And at last several excited persons went to
old Mr. Crow and asked him to settle the troub