spent in the South did a great deal to improve Mr.
Crow's health, as well as his state of mind. When he came back to
Pleasant Valley the following March he told his cousin Jasper Jay
that he really felt he would be able to eat corn again.

As the spring lengthened, that feeling grew upon Mr. Crow. And when
planting-time arrived the black rascal had his old look again.

It was a very solemn look--unless you regarded him closely. But it was a
very sly, knowing look if you took the pains to stare boldly into his
eye.

Farmer Green would have liked to do that, because then he might have
caught old Mr. Crow. As it happened, he did _catch sight_ of Mr. Crow the
very first day he began to plant his corn.

"I declare--there's that old crow again!" he exclaimed. "He's come back
to bother me once more. But maybe I'm smarter than he thinks!"

Mr. Crow knew better than to come too near the men who were working in
the cornfield. He just sat on the fence on the further side of the road
and watched them for a while. And he was getting hungrier every minute.
But he had no chance to scratch up any corn that day.

The next day, however, the men had moved further down the field. Mr. Crow
had been waiting for that. He flew to the edge of the ploughed ground,
which they had planted the afternoon before, and dug up a kernel of corn.

He didn't stop to look at it. He knew it was corn--just by the feeling of
it. And it was inside his mouth in a twinkling.

And in another twinkling it was outside again--for Mr. Crow did not like
the taste at all.

"That's a bad one!" he remarked. And then he tried another kernel--and
another--and another. But they were all like the first one.

Thereupon, Mr. Crow paused and looked at the corn. And he saw at once
that there was something wrong. The kernels were gray, instead of a
golden yellow. He pecked at one of them and found that the gray coating
hid something black and sticky.

That was tar, though Mr. Crow did not know it. And the gray covering was
wood-ashes, in which Farmer Green had rolled the corn after dipping it in
tar. The tar made the corn taste bad. And the wood-ashes kept it from
sticking to one's fingers.

"This is a great disappointment," said Mr. Crow very solemnly. "Of all
the mean tricks that Farmer Green has played on me, this is by far the
meanest. It would serve him right if I went away and never caught a
single grasshopper or cutworm all summer."

But there were two reason