toward home with his gun, he chuckled. "He didn't get those Ducks
this time," said Farmer Brown's boy.



CHAPTER XXVII: The Hunter Gives Up

Blacky The Crow didn't know what to think. He couldn't make himself
believe that Farmer Brown's boy had really turned hunter, yet what
else could he believe? Hadn't he with his own eyes seen Farmer
Brown's boy with a terrible gun hide in rushes along the Big River
and wait for Dusky the Black Duck and his flock to come in? And
hadn't he with his own ears heard the "bang, bang" of that very gun?

The very first thing the next morning Blacky had hastened over to
the place where Farmer Brown's boy had hidden in the rushes. With
sharp eyes he looked for feathers, that would tell the tale of a
Duck killed. But there were no feathers. There wasn't a thing to
show that anything so dreadful had happened. Perhaps Farmer Brown's
boy had missed when he shot at those Ducks. Blacky shook his head
and decided to say nothing to anybody about Farmer Brown's boy and
that terrible gun.

You may be sure that early in the afternoon he was perched in the
top of his favorite tree over by the Big River. His heart sank, just
as on the afternoon before, when he saw Farmer Brown's boy with his
terrible gun trudging across the Green Meadows to the Big
River. Instead of going to the same hiding place he made a new one
farther down.