"Ho, ho, ho!" shouted Jimmy Skunk. "I wonder what Reddy Fox would have
said if he could have seen old Granny go down that hollow!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" shouted Peter Rabbit. "Did you see how her eyes popped
out?"

"Hee, hee, hee!" squeaked Unc' Billy Possum in his funny cracked
voice. "Ah reckons she am bound to have sore feet if she keeps on
running the way she started."

Prickly Porky didn't say a word. He just smiled in a quiet sort of way
as he slowly climbed up to the top of the hill.

Now old Granny Fox had been badly frightened. Who wouldn't have been
at seeing a strange creature without head, tail, or legs rolling down
hill straight towards them? But Granny was too old and wise to run
very far without cause. She was hardly out of sight of the four little
scamps who had been watching her when she stopped to see if that
strange creature were following her. It didn't take her long to decide
that it wasn't. Then she did some quick thinking.

"I said beforehand that there was some trick, and now I'm sure of it,"
she muttered. "I have an idea that that good-for-nothing old Billy
Possum knows something about it, and I'm just going back to find out."

She wasted no time thinking about it, but began to steal back the way
she had come. Now, no one is lighter of foot than old Granny Fox, and
no one knows better how to keep out of sight. From tree to tree she
crawled, sometimes flat on her stomach, until at last she reached the
foot of the hill where she had just had such a fright. There was