y angry. One
morning, when he went to feed the biddies, he found that Shadow had
visited the henhouse in the night and killed three of his best pullets.
That decided him. He felt sure that Shadow would come again, and he
meant to give Shadow a surprise. He hunted until he found the little
hole through which Shadow had got into the henhouse, and there he set a
trap.

"I don't like to do it, but I've got to," said he. "If he had been
content with one, it would have been bad enough, but he killed three
just from the love of killing, and it is high time that something be
done to get rid of him."

The very next morning Happy Jack saw Farmer Brown's boy coming from the
henhouse with something under his arm. He came straight over to the foot
of the big maple tree and put the thing he was carrying down on the
ground. He whistled to Happy Jack, and as Happy Jack came down to see
what it was all about, Farmer Brown's boy grinned. "Here's a friend of
yours you probably will be glad to see," said he.

At first, all Happy Jack could make out was a kind of wire box. Then he
saw something white inside, and it moved. Very suspiciously Happy Jack
came nearer. Then his heart gave a great leap. That wire box was a cage,
and glaring between the wires with red, angry eyes was Shadow the
Weasel! He was a prisoner! Right away Happy Jack was so excited that he
acted as if he were crazy. He no longer had a single thing to be afraid
of. Do you wonder that he was excited?

CHAPTER XXX

A PRISONER WITHOUT FEAR

A bad name is easy to get but hard to live down.

_Happy Jack._

Shadow the Weasel was a prisoner. He who always had been free to go and
come as he pleased and to do as he pleased was now in a little narrow
cage and quite helpless. For once he had been careless, and this was the
result. Farmer Brown's boy had caught him in a trap. Of course, he
should have known better than to have visited the henhouse a second time
after killing three of the best pullets there. He should have known
that Farmer Brown's boy would be sure to do something about it. The
truth is, he had yielded to temptation when common sense had warned him
not to. So he had no one to blame for his present difficulty but
himself, and he knew it.

At first he had been in a terrible rage and had bitten at the wires
until he had made his mouth sore. When he had made sure that the wires
were stouter than his teeth, he wisely stopped trying to get out in that
wa