"Ha!" exclaimed Blacky under his breath. "Those look to me as if
they might be very handy, very handy indeed, for a hunter to sit
on. Sitting there behind those bushes, he would be hidden from any
Duck who might come in to look for nice yellow corn scattered out
there among the rushes. It doesn't look right to me. No, Sir, it
doesn't look right to me. I think I'll keep an eye on this place."

So Blacky came back to the Big River several times that day. The
second time back he found that Dusky the Black Duck and his
relatives had left. When he returned in the afternoon, he saw the
same man he had seen there the afternoon before, and he was doing
the same thing, -- scattering yellow corn out in the rushes. And as
before, he went away in a boat.

"I don't like it," muttered Blacky, shaking his black head. "I
don't like it."



CHAPTER XX: Blacky Drops A Hint

When you see another's danger
Warn him though he be a stranger.
- Blacky the Crow.

Every day for a week a man came in a boat to scatter corn in the
rushes at a certain point along the bank of the Big River, and every
day Blacky the Crow watched him and shook his black head and talked
to himself and told himself that he didn't like it, and that he was