er show his face again.

"And that," said Mr. Rabbit, "is the true story of that old race between
the Hare and the Tortoise, and of how the first Rabbit came to lose his
tail. I've never told it before, and none of my family ever did; but so
many stories have been told about the way those things happened that we
might just as well have this one, which is the only true one so far as I
know."

Then Mr. Rabbit lit his pipe and leaned back and smoked. Mr. Dog said it
was a fine story, and he wished he could have seen that race, and Mr.
Turtle looked as if he wanted to say something, and did open his mouth
to say it, but Mr. Crow spoke up, and asked what happened after that to
Mr. Rabbit's twenty-seventh great-grandfather, and how it was that the
rest of the Rabbits had short tails, too.

Then Mr. Rabbit said that that was another story, and Mr. Squirrel and
Mr. Robin wanted him to tell it right away, but Mr. Crow said they'd
better have supper now, and Mr. 'Possum thought that was a good plan,
and Mr. 'Coon, too, and then they all hurried around to get up some
sticks of wood from down stairs, and to set the table, and everybody
helped, so they could get through early and have a nice long evening.

And all the time the snow was coming down outside and piling higher and
higher, and it was getting too dark to see much when they tried to look
out the window through the gloom of the Big Deep Woods.

HOW THE OTHER RABBITS LOST THEIR TAILS

MR. JACK RABBIT CONTINUES HIS FAMILY HISTORY

"DID they have enough left for supper--enough for all the visitors, I
mean?" asks the Little Lady the next evening, when the Story Teller is
ready to go on with the history of the Hollow Tree.

Oh, yes, they had plenty for supper, and more, too. They had been
getting ready a good while for just such a time as this, and had carried
in a lot of food, and they had a good many nice things down in the store
room where the wood was, but they didn't need those yet. They just put
on what they had left from their big dinner, and Mr. Crow stirred up a
pan of hot biscuits by his best receipt, and they passed them back and
forth across the table so much that Mr. 'Possum said they went like hot
cakes, sure enough, and always took two when they came his way.

And they talked a good deal about the stories that Mr. 'Coon and Mr.
Rabbit had told them, and everybody thought how sly and smart Mr. 'Coon
had been to fool Mr. Dog that way; and Mr. 'Coon