tle
round doorways. Hooty's great eyes grew brighter and fiercer.
Without a sound he floated through the moonlight until he was just
over Danny Meadow Mouse.

Too late Danny looked up. His little song ended in a tiny squeak of
fear, and he started for his nearest little round doorway. Hooty the
Owl reached down with his long cruel claws and--Danny Meadow Mouse
was caught at last!

CHAPTER X

_A Strange Ride and How It Ended_

Danny Meadow Mouse often had sat watching Skimmer the Swallow
sailing around up in the blue, blue sky. He had watched Ol' Mistah
Buzzard go up, up, up, until he was nothing but a tiny speck, and
Danny had wondered how it would seem to be way up above the Green
Meadows and the Green Forest and look down. It had seemed to him
that it must be very wonderful and beautiful. Sometimes he had
wished that he had wings and could go up in the air and look down.
And now here he was, he, Danny Meadow Mouse, actually doing that
very thing!

But Danny could see nothing wonderful or beautiful now. No, indeed!
Everything was terrible, for you see Danny Meadow Mouse wasn't
flying himself. He was being carried. Yes, sir, Danny Meadow Mouse
was being carried through the air in the cruel claws of Hooty the
Owl! And all because Danny had forgotten--forgotten to watch up in
the sky for danger.

Poor, poor Danny Meadow Mouse! Hooty's great cruel claws hurt him
dreadfully! But it wasn't the pain that was the worst. No, indeed!
It wasn't the pain! It was the thought of what would happen when
Hooty reached his home in the Green Forest, for he knew that there
Hooty would gobble him up, bones and all. As he flew, Hooty kept
chuckling, and Danny Meadow Mouse knew just what those chuckles
meant. They meant that Hooty was thinking of the good meal he was
going to have.

Hanging there in Hooty's great cruel claws, Danny looked down on the
snow-covered Green Meadows he loved so well. They seemed a
frightfully long way below him, though really they were not far at
all, for Hooty was flying very low. But Danny Meadow Mouse had never
in all his life been so high up before, and so it seemed to him that
he was way, way up in the sky, and he shut his eyes so as not to
see. But he couldn't keep them shut. No, sir, he couldn't keep them
shut! He just _had_ to keep opening them. There was the dear old
Green Forest drawing nearer and nearer. It always had looked very
beautiful to Danny Meadow Mouse, but now it looked ter