Certainly!" answered Jimmy Rabbit, who always tried to be obliging.

"I hope the stranger won't eat him," remarked Tommy Fox, "because I hope
to do that some day, myself."

It was queer--but Jimmy Rabbit was the only one of the four that wasn't
afraid of those glaring features. He hopped straight up to the big round
head, which was just a bit higher than one of the fence posts, against
which the stranger seemed to be leaning. And after a moment or two Jimmy
Rabbit called to Solomon and Fatty and Tommy Fox:

"He won't go away! He's going to stay right where he is!"

"Come here a minute!" said Tommy.

Jimmy Rabbit shook his head.

"You come over here!" he answered. And he did not stir from the side of
the stranger. He knew very well that Tommy Fox was afraid of the man with
the head with the glaring eyes.

As for Tommy Fox, he did not even reply--that is, to Jimmy Rabbit. But he
spoke his mind freely enough to his two friends in the tree.

"It seems to me one of you ought to do something," said he. "We'll eat no
pullets to-night if we can't get rid of this meddlesome stranger."

Fatty Coon quite agreed with him.

"The one who was here first is the one to act!" Fatty declared. "That's
_you_!" he told Solomon Owl.

So Solomon Owl felt most uncomfortable.

"I don't know what I can do," he said. "I spoke to the stranger--asked him
who he was. And he wouldn't answer me."

"Can't you frighten him away?" Tommy Fox inquired. "Fly right over his
head and give him a blow with your wing as you pass!"

Solomon Owl coughed. He was embarrassed, to say the least.

"He's afraid!" Fatty Coon cried. And both he and Tommy Fox kept repeating,
over and over again, "He's afraid! He's afraid! He's afraid!"

It was really more than Solomon Owl could stand.

"I'm not!" he retorted angrily. "Watch me and you'll see!" And without
another word he darted out of the tree and swooped down upon the stranger,
just brushing the top of his head. Solomon Owl knew at once that he had
knocked something off the top of that dreadful head--something that fell to
the ground and made Jimmy Rabbit jump nervously.

Then Solomon returned to his perch in the tree.

"He hasn't moved," he said. "But I knocked off his hat."

"You took off the top of his head!" cried Fatty Coon in great excitement.
"Look! The inside of his head is afire."

And peering down from the tree-top, Solomon Owl saw that Fatty Coon had
told the truth.

IX
HALLOWE