gray rain clouds.On the top of the Big Red Barn the weathercock turned to and fro on his gilded toe, for Billy Breeze was blowing across the open spaces, now sending the clouds helter-skelter over the sky, now bending the dripping bushes or shaking the raindrops from the apple trees.“I wish you’d let me point to the West,” sighed the Weathercock. “Then it would soon clear up.”“Maybe I will,” answered Billy Breeze, and all of a sudden he blew away a dark cloud and out came Mr. Merry Sun with a smile.“Hurray!” shouted the Weathercock, swinging about on his toe to point to the West. “Now we’ll have a beautiful day.”“I think so,” laughed Little Jack Rabbit, hopping out of his pretty white bungalow and down the narrow path through the rough brambles to the Sunny Meadow.Just then who should come along but Timmie Meadowmouse. My, but he was glad to see the lovely sunshine.“Howdy! Have you heard the news?” he asked. “What news?” asked the little rabbit, curiously, thinking, “Goodness me! Something dreadful has happened,” as he twinked his little pink nose and winked his two big pink eyes.“Stop!” cried the tiny meadowmouse, “you make me so dizzy, I can’t think.”“All right,” replied the little rabbit, “but hurry. I’m afraid something has happened to Chippy Chipmunk or the Big Brown Bear.”“Not a bit of it,” answered Timmie Meadowmouse, taking off his little fur cap. All of a sudden, quick as a flash, or a smash or a dash, down from the sky swooped Hungry Hawk.“Look out!” shouted the little rabbit, hopping under a bush. But, dear me! The tiny meadowmouse was just a second too late. The next minute up in the air he went, held tightly in the cruel claws of the old hawk.“Help! help!” shouted poor frightened Timmie Meadowmouse, as higher and higher flew the big feathered robber until pretty soon he looked like a tiny speck in the sky.“How can I save my little friend?” cried the unhappy bunny boy. But nobody answered him, not even Billy Breeze, who is such a good friend to all the little people of the Shady Forest and the Sunny Meadow.The anxious little rabbit looked this way and that way, but all he could see was a tiny speck in the blue sky as the old robber bird flew swiftly away.Just then the bunny boy noticed another speck in the sky, only larger and of a different shape.“What is that?” he asked himself, hoping it might be the kind American Eagle who had once befriended him.But no, it was not. No, indeed, it was something very, very different. Oh, my, yes, I should say so. As there was nothing to be gained by standing still on the Sunny Meadow, the dis-con-so-late (which means hopelessly unhappy, little readers) bunny boy rabbit hopped away until, all of a sudden, just like that, he almost bumped into the Farmer’s Boy, who was holding a long string that rose 

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