Teller, and the Artist who drew the pictures,
put the Hollow Tree and Deep Woods stories into a book to preserve them,
for they thought that was going to be all of them, because Mr. Dog, who
told them, had gone away and they did not know where they could ever
find any more. Even when other Little Ladies and their brothers wrote
and asked for more Hollow Tree stories there were no more to send for a
very long time. But then one day the Story Teller and the Artist
themselves moved into the very edge of the Big Deep Woods, and there
they found some more stories about the 'Coon and 'Possum and the Old
Black Crow, because Mr. Dog had left a young relative, very fine and
handsome, who was also friends with the Hollow Tree people and could
tell everything as it happened, right along. So the Story Teller and the
Artist made up _The Hollow Tree Snowed-In Book_ which was all about
once when the Hollow Tree people and their friends were "snowed in" and
had to sit around the fire and eat good things and play games and tell
stories to pass the time.

How Little Ladies do slip away from us! The first Hollow Tree stories
were told for one who is now a Big Lady, and the Snowed-In stories for
another, who will soon be a Big Lady, too. But in the Deep Woods the
years do not count. The Hollow Tree people never grow any older, but
stay always the same, and the Story Teller and the Artist have to keep
stepping backward to find out the new Hollow Tree stories and to tell
them to the new Little People that come along.

So now after a good many years we have a third Hollow Tree book, which
will surely be the last one, because things are so likely to go in
threes, like three cheers, and three trials, and three strikes and out.
The Deep Woods people will never desert the Hollow Tree, and though
after this we should not hear from them again, we may imagine they are
doing many of the same things, and keeping safe and happy during all the
future Hollow Tree Nights and Days.

CONTENTS

PAGE

GREETINGS FROM THE STORY TELLER AND THE ARTIST 9

LITTLE JACK RABBIT AND BUNTY BUN 19

MR. 'POSSUM'S SICK SPELL 35

MR. TURTLE'S FLYING ADVENTURE 51

THE DEEP WOODS ELOPEMENT 71

COUSIN REDFIELD AND THE MOLASSES