ready for him!" called the porcupine, and he got some of his
stickery quills ready to jab into the snake. But the snake was out on a
big rock, sunning himself in the hot sun, though when he heard the rabbit
and porcupine talking he made a jump for them and tried to catch them.

But you see they were in the cool shadows, and the snake's eyes were
blinded by the sun, so he could not see very well, and thus the rabbit and
his friend escaped.

"I tell you it is a good thing we heard the locust sing, and that we kept
in the shade, or else we might have stepped right on that snake and he'd
have bitten and killed us," said the porcupine, and Uncle Wiggily said
that this was true.

Well, they kept on and on, and pretty soon they sat down in the shade of a
mulberry tree and ate their lunch. Then they rested a bit, and in the
afternoon they traveled on farther.

And, just as they were passing by a large, gray rock, that had nice, green
moss on it, all of a sudden they heard something calling like this:

"Cheep! Cheep! Chip-cheep-cheep! Oh, cheep! Peep! Peep!"

"What's that?" asked Uncle Wiggily in a whisper.

"I don't know. Maybe a burglar fox," answered the porcupine also, in a
whisper. "But I'm all ready for him."

So he got out some of his sharpest stickery quills to jab into the burglar
fox, and the noise still kept up:

"Cheep! Cheep! Yip! Yip! Yap! Yap! Cheep-chap!"

"That doesn't sound like a fox," said the rabbit, listening with his two
ears.

"No, it doesn't," admitted the porcupine, and he stuck his quills back
again like pins in a cushion. "Perhaps it is the skillery-scalery
alligator, and my quills would be of no use against him," he went on.

Then, all at once, before Uncle Wiggily could make his nose twinkle like a
star of a frosty night more than two times, there was a rustling in the
bushes, and out popped a poor, little white chickie--only she wasn't so
very white now, for her feathers were all wet and muddy.

"Cheep-chap! Yip-yap!" cried the little chickie.

"Why, what in the world are you doing away off here?" asked Uncle
Wiggily. "You poor little dear! Where is your mother?"

"Oh, me! Oh, my!" cried the little chickie. "I only wish I knew. I'm lost!
I wandered away from my mamma, and my brothers, and sisters, and I'm lost
in these woods. Oh chip! Oh chap! Oh yip! Oh yap!" Then she cried real
hard and the tears washed some of the dirt off her white feathers.

"Don't cry," said Uncle Wiggily,