is
terrible gun and thought of what might happen, what would be almost sure
to happen, unless those Ducks were warned. "I'll wait a little while
longer," muttered Blacky, and tried to feel brave. But instead he
shivered.

CHAPTER XXII: Blacky Goes Home Happy

No greater happiness is won
Than through a deed for others done.
--Blacky the Crow.

Blacky sat in the top of a tree near the bank of the Big River and
couldn't make up his mind what to do. He wanted to get home to the big,
thick hemlock-tree in the Green Forest before dusk, for Blacky is afraid
of the dark. That is, he is afraid to be out after dark.

"Go along home," said a voice inside him, "there is hardly time now for
you to get there before the Black Shadows arrive. Don't waste any more
time here. What may happen to those silly Ducks is no business of yours,
and there is nothing you can do, anyway. Go along home."

"Wait a few minutes," said another little voice down inside him. "Don't
be a coward. You ought to warn Dusky the Black Duck and his flock that a
hunter with a terrible gun is waiting for them. Is it true that it is
no business of yours what happens to those Ducks? Think again, Blacky;
think again. It is the duty of each one who sees a common danger to warn
his neighbors. If something dreadful should happen to Dusky because
you were afraid of the dark, you never would be comfortable in your own
mind. Stay a little while and keep watch."

Not five minutes later Blacky saw something that made him, oh, so glad
he had kept watch. It was a swiftly moving black line just above the
water far down the Big River, and it was coming up. He knew what that
black line was. He looked over at the hunter hiding behind some bushes
close to the edge of the water. The hunter was crouching with his
terrible gun in his hands and was peeping over the bushes, watching that
black line. He, too, knew what it was. It was a flock of Ducks flying.

Blacky was all ashake again, but this time it wasn't with fear of being
caught away from home in the dark; it was with excitement. He knew that
those Ducks had become so eager for more of that corn, that delicious
yellow corn which every night for a week they had found scattered in the
rushes just in front of the place where that hunter was now hiding, that
they couldn't wait for the coming of the Black Shadows. They were so
sure there was no danger that they were coming in to eat without waiting
for the Black S