in the
climate. I hear old people say that the winters are colder now than
they used to be, and the summers hotter. Maybe that has something to
do with it. Anyhow, something has happened to thin the witches out."

"Yes," said Mr. Rabbit; "I've noticed that they are scarcer than they
used to be, but I never inquired into the whys and wherefores. They
never bothered me, and I never bothered them."

"Well, when I first came here," said Mr. Thimblefinger, "I noticed
Jimmy Jay-Bird bringing sand and mortar every Friday, and it occurred
to me that he was preparing to lay the foundations of a witch's house
in this country. So I says to myself, says I, 'I'll keep an eye on
Jimmy, and see where he gets in and out; for, surely, he doesn't come
by way of the spring.' But Jimmy Jay-Bird was pretty slick, and it was
some time before I found out where he came down and went out. By some
means or other, he had discovered the big hollow poplar on the spring
branch, and he was coming and going that way."

"I know where it is," said Buster John.

"Yes," replied Mr. Thimblefinger. "It is the oldest and the biggest
tree in the whole country next door. But as soon as I found that Jimmy
Jay-Bird was using it as a passageway, I drove a peg in the hole and
put an end to his schemes, whatever they may have been. I don't know
where he carries his sand and mortar now, and I don't care.

"But I didn't start out to tell anything about Jimmy Jay-Bird,"
continued Mr. Thimblefinger, after pausing a moment. "I was thinking
about the way a witch was caught by a boy no bigger and not much older
than our young friend here."

"Tell us about it, please!" cried Buster John enthusiastically.

"Well," said Mr. Thimblefinger, "it's not much of a story. You can't
take a handful of facts and make a story of them unless you know how
to fling them together. The best I can do is to tell it just as it
happened as near as I can remember.

"When I was a little bit of a fellow--now don't laugh!" cried Mr.
Thimblefinger, seeing Mr. Rabbit wink at Mrs. Meadows,--"I mean when I
was in my teens. Well, when I was younger than I am now, an old witch
lived not far from our house. Her eyes were red around the rims, and
her eyeballs looked as if they had been boiled. Everybody called her
Peggy Pig-Eye, and she answered to that name about as well as she did
to any other. Near her house there lived a man who had a wife and a
son. He was a tolerably well-to-do man, and all