why he kept going
back there, for he was nothing if not determined. Anyhow, he had found
the hunting poor along his stone wall in the woods. And there was so
much "game," as he called it, about the farm buildings that he thought
it was silly to leave it for such scamps as Peter Mink and Tommy Fox and
Fatty Coon.

So he took to loitering near Farmer Green's corncrib. And he was not at
all pleased to find Fatty Coon there one evening. He wouldn't have
spoken to Fatty at all had not that plump young chap hurled a cutting
remark directly at him: "There are no chickens in this building. This is
a corncrib."

"Don't you suppose I know that?" Grumpy retorted. "I've come here to
guard the corn from mice and squirrels."

"There's no need of your doing that," Fatty Coon told him. "Have you
never noticed those tin pans, upside down, on top of the posts on which
the corncrib rests? How could a mouse or a squirrel ever climb past one
of those?"

"There are ways," Grumpy Weasel said wisely.

"I doubt it," Fatty replied. "I don't believe the trick can be done."

Then, not to oblige Fatty, but to show him he was mistaken, Grumpy
climbed a tree near-by, dropped from one of its branches to the roof of
the corncrib, and quickly found a crack in the side of the building
through which he slipped with no trouble at all.

Suddenly there was a great scurrying and scrambling inside. And soon
Fatty Coon saw Frisky Squirrel and several of his friends--not to
mention three frightened mice--come tumbling out and tear off in every
direction.

Presently Grumpy Weasel stuck his head through a crack between two
boards.

"Did you catch the robbers?" he called to Fatty Coon.

"They were too spry for me," Fatty told him. He wouldn't have stopped
one anyhow, for Grumpy Weasel.

"Which way did they go, old Slow Poke?" Grumpy cried as he jumped down
in great haste.

"Everywhere!" Fatty told him.

"Can't you be a little more exact? You don't think--do you?--that I can
run more than one way at a time?"

"Why don't you run round and round in a circle?" Fatty suggested. "In
that way you might catch at least half those youngsters--and perhaps all
of them."

"That's the first real idea you ever had in your life!" Grumpy
exclaimed--which was as near to thanking a person as he was ever known
to come.

XVII

GRUMPY'S MISTAKE

As soon as Grumpy Weasel left to chase the squirrels and mice that he
had frightened away from the corncrib