Every one was on hand when school opened the next morning, despite the fear that the mention of Shadow the Weasel had aroused in all save Jimmy and Prickly Porky. You see, all felt they must be there so that they might learn all they possibly could about one they so feared. It might help them to escape should they discover Shadow hunting them sometime.  
“Striped ,” said Old Mother Nature, “you know something about Shadow the Weasel, tell us what you know.”
 
“I know I hate him!” declared Striped Chipmunk, and all the others nodded their heads in agreement. “I don't know a single good thing about him,” he continued, “but I know plenty of bad things. He is the one enemy I fear more than any other because he is the one who can go wherever I can. Any hole I can get into he can. I've seen him just twice in my life, and I hope I may never see him again.”
 
“What did he look like?” asked Old Mother Nature.
 
“Like a snake on legs,” declared Striped Chipmunk. “Anyway, that is what he made me think of, because his body was so long and slim and he twisted and turned so easily. He was about as long as Chatterer the Red Squirrel but looked longer because of his slim body and long neck. He was brown above and white below. His front feet were white, and his feet rather whitish, but not clear white. His short, round tail was black at the end. Somehow his small head and sharp face made me think of a Snake. Ugh! I don't like to think about him!”
 
“I saw him once, and he wasn't brown at all. Striped Chipmunk is all wrong, excepting about the end of his tail,” interrupted Jumper the Hare. “He was all white, every bit of him but the end of his tail, that was black.”
 
“Striped Chipmunk is quite right and so are you,” declared Old Mother Nature. “Striped Chipmunk saw him in summer and you saw him in winter. He changes his coat according to season, just as you do yourself, Jumper. In winter he is trapped for his fur and he isn't called Weasel then at all, but Ermine.”
 
“Oh,” said Jumper and looked as if he felt a wee bit foolish.
 
“What was he doing when you saw him?” asked Old Mother Nature, turning to Striped Chipmunk.
 
“Hunting,” replied Striped Chipmunk, and shivered. “He was hunting me. He had found my tracks where I had been beechnuts, and he was following them with his nose just the way Bowser the Hound follows Reddy Fox. I nearly died of fright when I saw him.”
 
“You are lucky to be alive,” declared Chatterer the Red Squirrel.
 
“I know it,” replied Striped Chipmunk and shivered again. “I know it. I guess I wouldn't be if Reddy Fox hadn't happened along just then and frightened Shadow away. I've had a kindlier feeling for Reddy Fox ever since.”
 
“I never ran harder in my life than the time I saw him,” up Jumper the Hare. “He was hunting me just the same way, running with his nose in the snow and following every twist and turn I had made. But for that black-tipped tail I wouldn't have seen him until too late.”
 
“Pooh!” exclaimed Jimmy Skunk. “The idea of a big fellow like you running from such a little fellow as my Cousin Shadow!”
 
“I'm not ashamed of running,” declared Jumper. “I may be ever so much bigger, but he is so quick I wouldn't stand the least chance in the world. When I suspect Shadow is about, I go somewhere else, the farther the better. If I could climb a tree like Chatterer, it would be different.”
 
“No, it wouldn't!” interrupted Chatterer. “No, it wouldn't. That fellow can climb almost as well as I can. The only thing that saved me from him once was the fact that I could make a long jump from one tree to another and he couldn't. He had found a hole in a certain tree where I was living, and it was just luck that I wasn't at home when he called. I was just returning when he popped out. I ran for my life.”
 
“He is the most awful fellow in all the Great World,” declared Whitefoot the Wood Mouse.
 
Jimmy Skunk right out. “A lot you know about the Great World,” he said. “Why, you are farther from home now than you've ever been in your ............