live to a green old age
and have descendants.

"Well, that was a busy day in the Big Deep Woods. The Rabbit family got
in line by a big smooth stump that they picked out for the purpose, and
Grandpaw borrowed a hatchet and attended to the job for them, and called
out 'Next!' as they marched by. He didn't have to wait, either, for they
didn't know what minute King Lion might come. Mr. Tortoise and Mr. Fox
came along and stopped to see the job, and helped Grandpaw now and then
when his arm got tired, and by evening there was a pile of tails by that
stump as big as King Lion's house, and there never was such a call for
the all-healing-ointment as there was that night in the Big Deep Woods.

"And none of our family ever did have tails after that, for they never
would grow any more, and all the little new rabbits just had bunches of
cotton, too, and that has never changed to this day."

"And when King Lion heard how he'd been fooled by Grandpaw Hare with
that foolish prophecy that he just made up right there, out of his
head, he knew that everybody would laugh at him as much as he had
laughed at Mr. Hare, and he moved out of the country and never came
back, and there's never been a king in the Big Deep Woods since, so my
twenty-seventh great-grandfather did some good, after all.

"And that," said Mr. Rabbit, "is the whole story of the Hare and the
Tortoise and how the Rabbit family lost their tails. It's never been
told outside of our family before, but it's true, for it's been handed
down, word for word, and if Mr. Fox or Mr. Tortoise were alive now they
would say so."

Mr. Rabbit filled his pipe and lit it, and Mr. Crow was just about to
make some remarks when Mr. Turtle cleared his throat and said:--

"The story that Mr. Rabbit has been telling is all true, every word of
it--I was there."

Then all the Deep Woods People took their pipes out of their mouths and
just looked at Mr. Turtle with their mouths wide open, and when they
could say anything at all, they said:--

"_You were there!_"

You see, they could never get used to the notion of Mr. Turtle's being
so old--as old as their twenty-seventh great-grandfathers would have
been, if they had lived.

"Yes," said Mr. Turtle, "and it all comes back to me as plain as day. It
happened two hundred and fifty-eight years ago last June. They used to
call us the Tortoise family then, and I was a young fellow of
sixty-seven and fond of a joke. But I was surprised when