“You took off the top of his head!” cried Fatty Coon in great excitement.
“Look! The inside of his head is afire.”

And peering down from the tree-top, Solomon Owl saw that Fatty Coon had
told the truth.





IX
HALLOWE’EN


Solomon Owl was afraid of fire. And when he looked down from his perch in
the tree and saw, through the hole in the stranger’s crown, that all was
aglow inside his big, round head, Solomon couldn’t help voicing his
horror. He “_whoo-whooed_” so loudly that Tommy Fox, at the foot of the
tree, asked him what on earth was the matter.

“His head’s all afire!” Solomon Owl told him. “That’s what makes his eyes
glare so. And that’s why the fire shines through his mouth and his nose,
too. It’s no wonder he didn’t answer my question—for, of course, his
tongue must certainly be burned to a cinder.”

“Then it ought to be safe for anybody to enter the chicken house,” Tommy
Fox observed. “What could the stranger do, when he’s in such a fix?”

“He could set the chicken house afire, if he followed you inside,” replied
Solomon Owl wisely. “And I, for one, am not going near the pullets