It was funny that Tommy never could pass that gray stone without sitting down on it for a few minutes. It seemed as if he just couldn’t, that was all. It had been a favorite seat ever since he was big enough to drive the cows to pasture and go after them at night. It was just far enough from home for him to think that he needed a rest when he reached it. You know a growing boy needs to rest often, except when he is playing. He used to take all his troubles there to think them over. The queer part of it is he left a great many of them there, though he didn’t seem to know it. If Tommy ever could have seen in one pile all the troubles he had left at that old gray stone, I am afraid that he would have called it the trouble-stone instead of the wishing-stone.  
It was only lately that he had begun to call it the wishing-stone. Several times when he had been sitting on it, he had wished foolish wishes and they had come true. At least, it seemed as if they had come true. They had come as true as he ever wanted them to. He was thinking something of this kind now as he stood idly kicking at the old stone.
 
Presently he stopped kicking at it, and, from force of habit, sat down on it. It was a bright, sunshiny day, one of those warm days that sometimes happen right in the middle of winter, as if the weather-man had somehow got mixed and slipped a spring day into the wrong place in the calendar.
 
From where he sat, Tommy could look over to the Green Forest, which was green now only where the pine-trees and the hemlock-trees and the spruce-trees grew. All the rest was bare and brown, save that the ground was white with snow. He could look across the white meadow-land to the Old Pasture, where in places the brush was so thick that, in summer, he sometimes had to hunt to find the cows. Now, even from this distance, he could trace the of the cow-paths, each a ribbon of spotless white. It puzzled him at first. He at them.
 
“When the whole thing is covered with snow, it ought to be harder to see those paths, but instead of that it is easier,” he muttered. “It isn’t reasonable!” He scowled harder than ever, but the wasn’t an unpleasant one. You know there is a difference in . Some are black and heavy, like ugly thunder-heads, and from them flashes of anger are likely to any minute, just as the lightning out from the thunder-heads. Others are like the big fleecy clouds that hide the sun for a minute or two, and make it seem all the brighter by their passing.
 
There are scowls of anger and scowls of perplexity. It was a scowl of the latter kind that wrinkled Tommy’s forehead now. He was trying to understand something that seemed to him quite beyond common sense.
 
“It isn’t reasonable!” he repeated. “I ought not to be able to see ’em at all. But I do. They stick out like——”
 
No one will ever know just what they stuck out like, for Tommy never finished that sentence. The scowl cleared and his face fairly beamed. He had made a discovery all by himself, and he felt all the joy of a discoverer. Perhaps you will think it wasn’t much, but it was really important, so far as it concerned Tommy, because it proved that Tommy was learning to use his eyes and to understand what he saw. He had reasoned the thing out, and when anybody does that, it is always important.
 
 
“Why, how simple!” exclaimed Tommy. “Of course I can see those old paths! It would be funny if I couldn’t. The bushes break through the snow on all sides, but where the paths are, there is nothing to break through, and so they are smooth and stand right out. Queer I never noticed that before. Hello! what’s that?”
 
His sharp eyes had caught sight of a little spot of red up in the Old Pasture. It was moving, and, as he watched it, it gradually took shape. It was Reddy Fox, along one of those little white paths. , Reddy was going to keep an engagement somewhere, for he along quite as if he were bound for some particular place and had no time to waste.
 
“He’s headed this way, and, if I keep still, perhaps he’ll come close,” thought Tommy.
 
So he sat as still as if he were part of the old wishing-stone itself. Reddy Fox came straight on. At the edge of the Old Pasture he stopped for a minute and looked across to the Green Forest, as if to make sure that it was perfectly safe to cross the Green Meadows. Evidently he thought it was, for he resumed his steady . If he kept on the way he was headed he would pass very near to the wishing-stone and to Tommy.
 
Just as he was half-way across the meadows, Chanticleer, Tommy’s prize Plymouth Rock rooster, crowed over in the farmyard. Instantly Reddy stopped with one black paw uplifted and turned his head in the direction of the sound. Tommy could imagine the[8] hungry look in that sharp, face. But Reddy was far too wise to think of going up to the farmyard in broad daylight, and in a moment resumed his journey.
 
Nearer and nearer he came, until he was passing not thirty feet away. How handsome he was! His beautiful red coat looked as if the coldest wind never could get through it. His great of a tail, black toward the end and just tipped with white, was held high to keep it out of the snow. His black stockings, white vest, and black-tipped ears gave him a wonderfully fine appearance. Quite a dandy is Reddy Fox, and he looked it.
 
He was almost past when Tommy like a mouse. Like a flash Reddy turned, his sharp ears cocked forward, his yellow eyes agleam with hunger. There he stood, as motionless as Tommy himself, eagerness written in every line of his face. It was very clear that, no matter how important his business in the Green Forest was, he didn’t intend knowingly to pass anything so delicious as a meadow-mouse. Again Tommy squeaked. Instantly Reddy took several steps toward him, looking and listening intently. A look of doubt crept into his eager face. That old gray stone didn’t look just as he remembered it. For a long minute he stared straight at Tommy. Then a of wind fluttered the bottom of Tommy’s coat, and perhaps at the same time it carried to Reddy that man smell.
 
Reddy almost turned a back-somersault in his hurry to get away. Then he ran. How he did run! In almost no time at all he had reached the Green Forest and vanished from Tommy’s sight. Quite without knowing it Tommy sighed. “My, how handsome he is!” You know Tommy is freckle-faced and rather . “And , how he can run!” he added admiringly. “It must be fun to be able to run like that. It might be fun to be a fox anyhow. I wonder what it feels like. I wish I were a fox.”
 
If he had remembered where he was, perhaps Tommy would have thought twice before wishing. But he had forgotten. Forgetting was one of Tommy’s sins. Hardly had the words left his mouth when Tommy found that he was a fox, red-coated, black-stockinged—the very image of Reddy himself.
 
And with that change in himself everything else had changed. It was summer. The Green Meadows and the Green Forest were very beautiful. Even the Old Pasture was beautiful. But Tommy had no eyes for beauty. All that beauty meant nothing to him save that now there was plenty to eat and no great trouble to get it. Everywhere the birds were singing, but if Tommy at all, it was only to wish that some of the sweet songsters would come down on the ground where he could catch them.
 
Those songs made him hungry. He knew of nothing he liked better, next to fat meadow-mice, than birds. That reminded him that some of them nest on[12] the ground, Mrs. for instance. He had little hope that he could catch her, for it seemed as if she had eyes in the back of her head; but she should have a family by this time, and if he could find those youngsters—the very thought made his mouth water, and he started for the Green Forest.
 
Once there, he visited one place after another where he thought he might find Mrs. Grouse. He was almost ready to give up and go back to the Green Meadows to hunt for meadow-mice when a sudden in the dead leaves made him stop short and strain his ears. There was a faint “kwitt,” and then all was still. Tommy took three or four steps and then—could he believe his eyes?—there was Mrs. Grouse fluttering on the ground just in front of him! One wing dragged as if broken.
 
Tommy made a quick spring and then another. Somehow Mrs. Grouse just managed to get out of his way. But she couldn’t fly. She couldn’t run as she usually did. It was only luck that she had managed to him. Very stealthily he approached her as she lay fluttering among the leaves. Then, himself for a long jump, he sprang.
 
Once more he missed her, by a matter of inches it seemed. The same thing happened again and still again. It was maddening to have such a good dinner so near and yet not be able to get it. Then something happened that made Tommy feel so foolish that he wanted to away. With a roar[14] of wings Mrs. Grouse sailed up over the tree-tops and out of sight!
 
“Huh! Haven’t you learned that trick yet?” said a voice.
 
Tommy turned. There was Reddy Fox grinning at him. “What trick?” he demanded.
 
“Why, that old Grouse was just fooling you!” replied Reddy. “There was nothing the matter with her. She was just pretending. She had a whole family of young ones hidden close by the place where you first saw her. My, but you are easy!”
 
“Let’s go right back there!” cried Tommy.
 
“No use. Not the least bit,” declared Reddy. “It’s too late. Let’s go over on the meadows and hunt for mice.”
 
Together they trotted over to the[15] Green Meadows. All through the grass were private little paths made by the mice. The grass hung over them so that they were more like tunnels than paths. Reddy down by one which smelled very strong of mouse. Tommy crouched down by another.
 
Presently there was the faint sound of tiny feet running. The grass moved ever so little over the small path Reddy was watching. Suddenly he sprang, and his two black paws came down together on something that gave a pitiful . Reddy had caught a mouse without even seeing it. He had known just where to jump by the movement of the grass. Presently Tommy caught one the same way. Then, because they knew that the mice right around there were frightened,[16] they moved on to another part of the meadows.
 
“I know where there are some young woodchucks,” said Tommy, who had unsuccessfully tried for one of them that very morning.
 
“Where?” demanded Reddy.
 
“Over by that old tree on the edge of the meadow,............