nd her.

"Just missed her!" the old dog yelped. "How unlucky!"

"Just escaped!" Mrs. Woodchuck gasped. "How fortunate!"

She knew that she was safe. So she took her own time in crawling through
the long hall that led to her one-room dwelling.

"Dear me!" she exclaimed as she entered her underground home and saw
that it was empty. "Mr. Woodchuck and Billy are away. I must hurry and
warn them that old dog Spot is prowling about the pasture."

Meanwhile Spot lingered at Mrs. Woodchuck's front door. He scratched in
the dirt that was thrown up before it. He sniffed at the tracks that the
Woodchuck family had made all about.

"I know now where that fat Mrs. Woodchuck lives," he growled. "I'll keep
an eye on this hole. Some day I may be able to get between her and her
home. And then--"

He did not finish what he was saying, but licked his lips as if he had
just enjoyed a hearty meal.

For a long time Spot waited there. He could hardly have expected Mrs.
Woodchuck to come out and invite him to enter her house. The most that
she was likely to do would be to creep not quite to the upper end of
her front hall and peer out to see what she could through the small
round opening.

"That dame must have a family," Spot thought. "I'd like to meet
them--whether there's one youngster or seven. The more the merrier for
me."

If Spot had happened to look around just then he would have had his wish
granted. Or if the wind had been blowing the other way he could have
told, without looking around, that Mrs. Woodchuck's son Billy was gazing
at him, with popeyes, from behind a near-by hummock. He had meandered
homewards, pausing here and there to nip off a clover head or tear at a
plantain leaf, little dreaming that old dog Spot was right in his
door-yard.

When he caught sight of the unwelcome caller Billy sat up and took one
good, long look at him.

Then Mrs Woodchuck's son turned and ran down the hillside as fast as his
short legs would carry him. He didn't stop until he had reached the
fence between the pasture and the meadow. Dashing in among the brakes
that grew deep along the fence he cowered under the cover that they gave
him.

All at once he felt quite ashamed of himself.

"I almost forgot the rule!" he chattered. "The rule says, 'When there's
a Dog about, warn everybody!'"

XVII

THE DANGER SIGNAL

Billy Woodchuck remembered, after he had fled from old dog Spot, that he
ought to warn his family and his fr