him
through the fence, and set out for home by a back way, studying what he
ought to do to keep everybody from laughing at him, and thinking that if
he didn't do something he'd have to leave the country or drown himself,
for he had always been so proud that if people laughed at him he knew he
could never show his face again.

"And that," said Mr. Rabbit, is the true story of that old race between
the Hare and the Tortoise, and of how the first Rabbit came to lose his
tail. I've never told it before, and none of my family ever did; but so
many stories have been told about the way those things happened that we
might just as well have this one, which is the only true one so far as I
know.

Then Mr. Rabbit lit his pipe and leaned back and smoked. Mr. Dog said it
was a fine story, and he wished he could have seen that race, and Mr.
Turtle looked as if he wanted to say something, and did open his mouth
to say it, but Mr. Crow spoke up, and asked what happened after that to
Mr. Rabbit's twenty-seventh great-grandfather, and how it was that the
rest of the Rabbits had short tails, too.

Then Mr. Rabbit said that that was another story, and Mr. Squirrel and
Mr. Robin wanted him to tell it right away, but Mr. Crow said they'd
better have supper now, and Mr. 'Possum thought that was a good plan,
and Mr. 'Coon, too, and then they all hurried around to get up some
sticks of wood from down-stairs, and to set the table, and everybody
helped, so they could get through early and have a nice long evening.

And all the time the snow was coming down outside and piling higher and
higher, and they were being snowed in without knowing it, for it was
getting too dark to see much when they tried again to look out the
window through the gloom of the Big Deep Woods.

THE FOURTH SNOWED-IN STORY

THE FOURTH SNOWED-IN STORY

MR. JACK RABBIT CONTINUES HIS FAMILY HISTORY

"Did they have enough left for supper--enough for all the visitors, I
mean?" asks the Little Lady the next evening, when the Story Teller is
ready to go on with the history of the Hollow Tree.

"Oh yes, they had plenty for supper, and more, too. They had been
getting ready a good while for just such a time as this, and had carried
in a lot of food, and they had a good many nice things down in the
store-room where the wood was, but they didn't need those yet. They just
put on what they had left from their big dinner, and Mr. Crow stirred up
a pan of hot biscui