unch, and you know if you put an egg on
a round stone it's bound to roll off and crack right in the middle.

"And I don't like cracked eggs," said the rabbit. So he laid the eggs he
had on the flat stone, and put little sticks in front of them and behind
them, so they couldn't even roll off the flat stone if they wanted to.
Then he ate his lunch.

"I guess it doesn't much matter if I am lost," said the traveling
fortune-hunting rabbit a little later. "I'll go on and perhaps I may meet
with an adventure." So on he hopped, and pretty soon he came to a place
where the leaves and the dirt were all torn up, just as if some boys had
been playing a baseball game, or leap-frog, or something like that.

"My, I must look out that I don't tumble down any holes here," thought
Uncle Wiggily, "for maybe some bad men have been setting traps to catch us
rabbits."

Well, he turned to one side, to get out of the way of some sharp thorns,
and, my goodness! if there weren't more sharp thorns on the ground on the
other side of the path. "I guess I'll have to keep straight ahead!"
thought our Uncle Wiggily. "I never saw so many thorns before in all my
life. I'll have to look out or I'll be stuck."

So he kept straight on, and all of a sudden he felt himself going down
into a big hole.

"Oh! Oh dear! Oh me! Oh my!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "I've fallen into a
trap! That's what those thorns were for--so I would have to walk toward
the trap instead of going to one side."

But, very luckily for Uncle Wiggily, his crutch happened to catch across
the hole, and so he didn't go all the way down, but hung on. But his
valise fell to the bottom. However, he managed to pull himself up on the
ground, though his rheumatism hurt him, and soon he was safe once more.

"Oh, my valise, with all my clothes in it!" he cried, as he looked down
into the hole, which had been covered over with loose leaves and dirt so
he couldn't see it before falling in. "I wonder how I can get my things
back again?" he went on.

Then he looked up, and in a tree, not far from him, he saw something
bright and yellow, shining like gold.

"Ah, ha!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "At last I have found the pot of gold,
even if the rainbow isn't here. That is yellow, and yellow is the color of
gold. Now my fortune is made. I will get that gold and go back home."

So, not worrying any more about his valise down the trap-hole, Uncle
Wiggily hopped over to the tree to get what he thought was