arely pulled through by the skin of his teeth? I didn't waste any
more time on him, but walked off, and then was the time that I killed
Grandfather Fox. You see the old fellow had been after my scalp more
times than I've got claws on my paws, and it so happened that I always
gave him the slip without trying very hard; but Mrs. Bunny had said to
me over and over again:

"'Don't crow, Bunny; at least, don't crow so loud. Don't you know that
pride goeth before a fall? Some day you'll meet Grandfather Fox where
he'll have the best of it, and then Sonny will be without a father.'

"I made believe laugh, when Mrs. Bunny said such things, but 'way
down in my heart I was frightened, for it stood to reason that I
couldn't always expect to come off best when I ran up against an old
villain like him. But what could I do? You wouldn't expect that I'd
stay at home every minute just because of being scared. Why, everybody
in the big woods would be laughing at me worse than ever; they say now
that I'm afraid of my own shadow, but it isn't true, as any one who
ever saw me dancing in the moonlight can testify. Besides, it is my
business as the head of the family to do the marketing, and if I laid
at home snug Mrs. Bunny and Sonny would stand a chance of starving to
death.

"You can put it down in your hat that I was mighty cautious, however,
whenever I went out, for I said to myself that if Grandfather Fox ever
got his teeth into my back it wouldn't be owing to my own
carelessness.

"Well, as I was saying, I walked away when Jimmy Hedgehog began to
make so much foolish talk, and just for the moment had forgotten all
about that miserable fox, when whom should I see staring straight at
me but the old fellow himself, and by the way he was licking his
chops I knew he felt certain I was his meat at last. But the matter
wasn't settled by considerable, for he was on one side of a
barbed-wire fence and I on the other, so there was something to be
done before he could put me into a pie.

"You can make up your mind that I did a power of thinking in a few
seconds, and even if I am just the least little bit cowardly when it
comes to fighting, I'm a master hand at finding my way out of a bad
scrape. That very morning I had seen Mr. Man and his boy Tommy setting
a big steel trap down at the edge of the swamp on the very side of the
fence I then was, and it seemed to me as if it might do me a world of
good just at that time.

"'Good-morning, G