at
looked up and saw him.

"What were you yelling about in the night, Sammy Jay?" asked Jerry.

This was too much. Sammy Jay let his wings and his tail droop dejectedly
and hung his head.

"I don't know. I really don't know anything about it," he said.

VI

SAMMY JAY THINKS HE'S GOING CRAZY

"Sammy Jay screams all day long,
And now what do you think?
Why, Sammy sits and yells all night
And doesn't sleep a wink!"

Everywhere he went Sammy Jay heard that shouted after him. Dozens and
dozens of times a day he heard it. At first he lost his temper and was the
very maddest Jaybird ever seen on the Green Meadows or in the Green Forest.

"It isn't true! It isn't true! It isn't true!" he would scream at the top
of his lungs.

And then everybody within hearing would shout: "It _is_ true!"

Sammy would just dance up and down and scream and scream and scream, he was
so angry. And then he was sure to hear some one pipe up:

"Sammy's mad and we are glad,
And we know how to tease him!
But some dark night he'll get a fright,
For Hooty'll come and seize him!"

That really began to worry him. At first he had thought that it was all a
joke on the part of the little people of the Green Forest and the Green
Meadows, and that they had made up the story about hearing him in the
night. Then he began to think that it might be true that he did talk in his
sleep, and this worried him a whole lot. If he did that, Hooty the Owl
would surely find him sooner or later, and in the morning there wouldn't be
anything left of him but a few feathers from his fine coat.

The more he thought about it, the more worried Sammy Jay became. He lost
his appetite and began to grow thin. He kept out of sight whenever possible
and no longer screamed "Thief! thief!" through the Green Forest. In fact
his voice was rarely heard during the day. But it seemed that he must be
talking just as much as ever in the night. At least everybody said that he
was. Worse still, different ones said that they heard him in different
places in the Green Forest and even down on the Green Meadows. Could it be
that he was flying about as well as talking in his sleep? And nobody
believed him when he said that he was asleep all night. They thought that
he was awake and doing it purposely. They might have known that he couldn't
see in the night, for his eyes are made for daylight and not for darkness,
like the eyes of Boomer the Nighthawk and