Tale of Master Meadow Mouse — Chapters 16 - 18

A BOARD was floating along on the swollen waters of Black Creek.

On it sat Master Meadow Mouse.

He was very happy.

He was having his first ride, of any sort.

"This raft--" he said to himself proudly--"this raft belongs to me.

I'll be a traveler.

I'll see the world--at least as far as the big willow at the lower end of the meadow!"

He scarcely cared to go beyond the big willow.

Beyond it lay another farm.

And Master Meadow Mouse had never been off Farmer Green's place in his whole life.

He feared that he might not be able to find his way back, if he ventured too far from home.

Soon he spied a friend on the bank of the creek.

Master Meadow Mouse cried, "Good-by!"

and waved a paw at him.

The person on the bank was one of his many cousins.

And when he caught sight of Master Meadow Mouse he stared hard for a few moments.

Then he shouted, "Don't jump!

I'll rescue you."

He was already running to the water's edge when Master Meadow Mouse stopped him.

"I don't want to be rescued," he called.

"I'm seeing the world."

His cousin hurried along the bank, still watching the strange sight.

"It seems to me--" he told Master Meadow Mouse--"it seems to me that the world is seeing you.

Where would you hide if Henry Hawk discovered you?"

[Illustration: Master Meadow Mouse drifted toward Mr. Heron] Master Meadow Mouse did not answer.

To tell the truth, the question set him to thinking.

He had to admit that it might be a bit awkward to find any cover in case somebody or other made a sudden swoop at him.

"Oh, well!"

he said at last.

"It can't be helped.

There's always _some_ danger in traveling--so I've heard."

His cousin on the bank had stopped running and now stood still and watched him anxiously until the raft had borne Master Meadow Mouse out of sight around a bend.

As the flood swung the craft toward the further side of the creek Master Meadow Mouse beheld a long-legged fisherman standing in the water.

Not only did the fisherman have long legs.

He had a long bill as well.

And he was standing like a statue, waiting for a fish to swim past him.

A

fish, or a frog, or a mouse!

He didn't care which.

Master Meadow Mouse knew him at once.

He was Mr. Great Blue Heron--or plain "G. B."

as he preferred to be called.

While Master Meadow Mouse gazed at him in horror Mr. Heron swiftly thrust his spearlike bill into the water.

Even his head went out of sight for a moment.

Mr. Heron did not do that in order to cool his head.

Ah, no!

When he pulled his bill out of the creek a pickerel came with it.

And the pickerel vanished very quickly down Mr. Heron's long neck.

It was not a nice sight for Master Meadow Mouse to see, especially when he was on a pleasure trip.

Besides, he noticed with dismay that his raft was bearing him straight towards the fisherman.

"If I only had some oars, or a rudder, I could steer this old raft away from him," Master Meadow Mouse thought.

But he had nothing of the sort.

Master Meadow Mouse groaned.

"I wish I'd never gone a-traveling!"

[Illustration] [Illustration] 17 A Lucky Escape NEARER and nearer the board, with Master Meadow Mouse upon it, drifted around the bend of the creek toward Mr. Great Blue Heron.

And at last Mr. Heron noticed it.

And he noticed its passenger, too.

"Ahem!"

he said softly to himself.

Except for swallowing once or twice, he never made a move, but stood there in the water and waited.

He waited for Master Meadow Mouse's raft to drift closer; for it was plain to him--as to Master Meadow Mouse--that the current of Black Creek was slowly bearing the board straight down upon him.

"When it gets near enough I'll just reach out and pluck that fellow off," Mr. Heron promised himself with a sort of silent chuckle.

Meanwhile Master Meadow Mouse was having a very bad quarter of an hour.

Slowly though his craft moved, to him it seemed to travel with lightning speed.

"I'll pass him soon," Master Meadow Mouse thought.

"If I crouch down and make myself as small as possible perhaps he won't see me."

So he hugged the board tight.

But the closer he came to Mr. Heron the bigger and fiercer that gentleman looked.

Suddenly Master Meadow Mouse's courage oozed out through his toes.

He couldn't stay on his raft another second.

Springing to his feet, he scurried to the edge of the board and slipped off it into the water.

At his first move Mr. Heron moved too.

He lifted his great wings and flapped them, tucking his legs under his body at the same time.

A half dozen flaps carried him abreast of the floating board.

And there Mr. Heron let his long legs down into the water until he stood again upon the bottom of the creek.

He scanned the water eagerly, even plunging his head into it and looking all around.

But he couldn't see Master Meadow Mouse anywhere.

"This is queer," he mumbled.

"I knew those fellows were good swimmers.

But I didn't think this one could get away from me so quickly."

Mr. Great Blue Heron waded about the creek for some time, searching everywhere--or almost everywhere.

And while he was searching, the deserted raft swung off down the creek, hung for a few moments at the edge of the channel, and then drifted lazily toward shore, where it lodged at last among the reeds.

The disappointed fisherman returned to his fishing.

But it seemed as if his luck had turned.

Not another fish came his way.

And being too wise to expect that another Meadow Mouse would come traveling down the creek on a raft, Mr. Great Blue Heron at last forsook his sport and sailed away through the air towards the lake on the other side of Blue Mountain.

He hadn't been gone a great while when Master Meadow Mouse might have been seen picking his way along the bank.

He was journeying upstream, on his way home.

"It was lucky for me--" he explained to his cousin, whom he met later--"it was lucky for me that I could swim under water.

Otherwise I shouldn't have been able to hide beneath the board and stay there until it swung into the rushes."

"You had a narrow escape," his cousin told him.

"Don't say that I didn't warn you!"

That cousin was one of those persons that always exclaim, "I told you so!"

[Illustration] [Illustration] 18 Under the Snow WINTER had come.

The snow lay deep over Pleasant Valley.

But Master Meadow Mouse didn't object to that.

On the contrary, he had welcomed the snow.

Even Johnnie Green, peeping out of his chamber window at the first snowfall of the season, hadn't been any happier over it than Master Meadow Mouse was.

To Johnnie Green the snow meant fun.

To Master Meadow Mouse it meant fun and something more.

At last he could scamper about the meadow without being seen by everybody.

For he set to work at once to make tunnels beneath the snow.

They ran in every direction from his house.

And he was forever pushing them further and further.

Through those tunnels Master Meadow Mouse could look for seeds and grain in the stubble.

And while he was rambling along his network of halls he didn't have to worry about anybody's making trouble for him, unless it was Peter Mink, perhaps, or Grumpy Weasel.

Of course Master Meadow Mouse didn't stay under the snow all the time.

Now and then he liked to climb up into the open air.

And he made many shafts that led to the world above.

Although most of the birds had gone South to spend the winter, there were still some that Master Meadow Mouse had to shun.

Old Mr. Crow was spending the winter on the farm.

And there were Solomon Owl and his cousin Simon Screecher, who hunted over the meadow nightly.

And at dusk sometimes a fierce hawk known as "Rough-leg" would beat his way back and forth across the snow covered stretches in the hope of catching one of the Meadow Mouse family unawares.

In spite of such unpleasant neighbors, the big Meadow Mouse family managed to have many a gay frolic under the stars on crisp winter nights.

Sometimes Johnnie Green, wandering over the fields on snow-shoes by day, noticed a lacy tracery on the snow.

It was the tracks of the tiny toes of Master Meadow Mouse and his dozens of cousins.

At first Johnnie almost thought that he had stumbled upon the scene of a revel of fairy mice.

He did not know then that the Meadow Mouse family had a village of their own right under his feet.

But Solomon Owl and Simon Screecher and old Rough-leg, the hawk, knew all about the habits of the villagers.

In fact they sometimes complained about the way the Meadow Mouse family had built their tunnels.

They agreed that there were too many holes leading down to the village streets.

It gave the Meadow Mouse people too many openings into which to dive in case of a sudden surprise when they were having a moonlight party.

"If they ever invited me to one of their affairs I wouldn't care what they did," Solomon Owl remarked one evening to his whistling cousin, Simon Screecher.

"If they'd welcome me just once to one of their dances I'd be satisfied."

"It's plain that they don't like you," his cousin remarked.

"Nor you, either!"

Solomon Owl boomed.

And then all at once he burst forth with a peal of ghostly laughter.

_"Wha, wha, whoo-ah!

_" Now, Master Meadow Mouse had just crept out of one of his doorways and was looking up at the stars when that shivery sound came rolling out of the woods.

When he heard it he turned quickly and hurried back where he came from.

"There won't be any fun to-night," he grumbled.

[Illustration]