happened
to meet a blue jay friend of his known as Noisy Jake, because he was not
very quiet. In fact, one could almost always hear his voice ringing
through the woods.

"You seem to be in a hurry," Noisy Jake bawled. "Where are you going?"

"S-sh!" said Jasper. "I'm going to the farmyard to have some fun scaring
the hens. But I don't want everybody to know it. Do you want to come
along?"

Noisy Jake promptly said he did. So the two rascals hurried across the
pasture and over the meadow toward the farm buildings.

"Now----" said Jasper Jay, when they had reached the farmyard--"now I'll
hide in this oak here and you can hide in that one there." He pointed
to a tree a little further from the chicken house than the one where he
intended to perch. Naturally, it was not like Jasper Jay to give the
best seat to anybody else.

"What'll we do then?" Noisy Jake asked.

"You see those hens," said Jasper. "I'm going to scream like Mr.
Red-shouldered Hawk. And you'll laugh when the hens hurry their chicks
out of the way.... If you want to, you may scream too--but not till
after I have."

Noisy Jake agreed to Jasper's plan. And he quickly disappeared among the
branches of the oak to which Jasper had sent him.

Then Jasper just had to stop and laugh to himself over the fright he was
going to give the old hens. He was about to open his mouth to imitate
the cry of Mr. Hawk when something happened that made him terrible
angry.

"_Kee-you! kee-you!_" The fierce scream rang out over the farmyard. And
immediately the mother-hens called to their children, with frantic
_clucks_, to run for their lives into the chicken house.

Jasper Jay did not laugh at all over the way the chicks scurried out of
sight.

"Noisy Jake has played a mean trick on me!" he said to himself. "He went
and screamed before it was his turn!"

Since he didn't want to miss _all_ the fun, Jasper let out a
blood-curdling "_Kee-you! kee-you!_" himself, just to hurry the last hen
under cover. But, somehow, he had to confess to himself--though he
wouldn't have admitted it to anybody else--he had to confess that Noisy
Jake's cry sounded far more like Mr. Hawk's than did his own.

Of course, that did not make Jasper feel any pleasanter. He wished he
had not told Noisy Jake where he was going.

"I'll punish him for his meddling!" Jasper exclaimed. And he flew
straight for the tree where Noisy Jake had hidden.

But Jasper did not reach the tree.

"_Kee-you! k