after a while he stopped close by a
broad brook. He told Billy and his brothers just where to stand,
and how to hold their short sticks so they would look like fifes.

The Grouse boys perched themselves high up on the trunk of a dead
tree, which had fallen against a big oak and lay slanting between
the oak and the ground.

"Come right down here!" Mr. Fox said to them.

But the Grouse brothers told him that they could drum much better
where they were.

"What tune are we going to learn?" Billy Woodchuck asked.

Mr. Fox thought for a moment. And then he said:

"The first tune will be 'Pop! Goes the Weasel.'" He hummed it to
them. And soon the Grouse boys began to drum; and Billy Woodchuck
and his brothers began to whistle.

Though they played very badly, Mr. Fox declared again and again
that he was much pleased.

"But I seem to be a little too near the music," he said. "I want
you all to face _that_ way," he went on, pointing a paw over his
shoulder. "And please keep on playing while I go off and see how
the tune sounds further away."

So they began to play "Pop! Goes the Weasel," once more, while Mr.
Fox, beating time all the while, backed slowly out of sight in the
direction in which he had pointed.

They played and played. And at last Billy Woodchuck's lips began to
feel very queer, puckered up as they were. And now and then not a
single whistle came from his mouth, though he blew as hard as he
knew how. He was out of breath, too. And so were his brothers.

Billy was wondering why Mr. Fox did not come back, when his sharp
ears caught a faint sound. It was no more than a dry leaf breaking.
Neither you nor I could have heard it.

In spite of what Mr. Fox had said about looking straight ahead,
Billy turned around. And he was always glad, afterward, that he
had. For whom should he see behind him but Mr. Fox, stealing upon
them with a horrid grin on his face!

The music stopped short. With one frightened scream Billy Woodchuck
was off. He plunged into the brook, with his brothers right at his
heels. And in no time at all they had swum across to the other side
and vanished in the thick bushes.

At the water's edge Mr. Fox paused. If there was one thing he
hated, it was getting his feet wet. The brook was too broad for
him to jump; and when at last he found a place where he could cross
by hopping from one stone to another, the Woodchuck boys were
nowhere to be found.

But the Grouse brothers still sat on t