ever
he could, he understood what had excited Sammy so. He was so surprised
that he almost forgot to keep his wings moving. Buster Bear had what
looked to Blacky very much like a tin pail hanging from his neck! No
wonder Sammy was excited. Blacky beat his wings fiercely and started
after Sammy.

And so they reached the edge of the Green Forest, Buster Bear running as
hard as ever he could, Sammy Jay flying just behind him and screaming,
"Thief, thief, thief!" at the top of his lungs, and behind him Blacky
the Crow, trying to catch up and yelling as loud as he could, "Caw,
caw, caw! Come on, everybody! Come on! Come on!"

Poor Buster! It was bad enough to be frightened almost to death as he
had been up in the Old Pasture when the pail had caught over his head
just as Farmer Brown's boy had yelled at him. Then to have the handle of
the pail slip down around his neck so that he couldn't get rid of the
pail but had to take it with him as he ran, was making a bad matter
worse. Now to have all his neighbors of the Green Forest see him in such
a fix and make fun of him, was more than he could stand. He felt
humiliated. That is just another way of saying shamed. Yes, Sir, Buster
felt that he was shamed in the eyes of his neighbors, and he wanted
nothing so much as to get away by himself, where no one could see him,
and try to get rid of that dreadful pail. But Buster is so big that it
is not easy for him to find a hiding place. So, when he reached the
Green Forest, he kept right on to the deepest, darkest, most lonesome
part and crept under the thickest hemlock-tree he could find.

But it was of no use. The sharp eyes of Sammy Jay and Blacky the Crow
saw him. They actually flew into the very tree under which he was
hiding, and how they did scream! Pretty soon Ol' Mistah Buzzard came
dropping down out of the blue, blue sky and took a seat on a convenient
dead tree, where he could see all that went on. Ol' Mistah Buzzard began
to grin as soon as he saw that tin pail on Buster's neck. Then came
others,--Redtail the Hawk, Scrapper the Kingbird, Redwing the Blackbird,
Drummer the Woodpecker, Welcome Robin, Tommy Tit the Chickadee, Jenny
Wren, Redeye the Vireo, and ever so many more. They came from the Old
Orchard, the Green Meadows, and even down by the Smiling Pool, for the
voices of Sammy Jay and Blacky the Crow carried far, and at the sound of
them everybody hurried over, sure that something exciting was going on.

Presently