intended to take the trap to Swift River and set it for fish and eels
and turtles.

When Mr. Crow heard the news he _haw-hawed_ loudly.

"What are you laughing about?" Jasper Jay asked him. (It was Jasper who
repeated the story to Mr. Crow.) "You wouldn't think it was such a joke
if you were caught in the trap."

"Trap!" Mr. Crow sneered. "That's no trap. That's what's called a
_mail-box_. Every day a man with letters and newspapers drives over here
from the village. And he stops at the cross-roads and leaves something in
the box for Farmer Green."

As soon as he heard that, Jasper Jay flew away to tell everybody about
the mail-box. And at last Sandy Chipmunk heard the story. But by the time
it reached his ears--after it had been told by one person to another
almost forty times--the story was somewhat different from what it had
been when Mr. Crow first told it to Jasper Jay. This is what Sandy heard:
The thing on the tree was a mailbox. Every day a man drove from the
village in a wagon drawn by twelve horses. He had a load of letters as
big as six haystacks. And he left a handful of letters in that box,
because he wanted to get rid of them so he could go back to the village
for more. And any one could take a letter--if it happened to be for him.

It was Frisky Squirrel who told the story to Sandy. Of course, after so
much telling it had changed a good deal. But Sandy Chipmunk didn't know
that. And he hurried to the cross-roads at once, to watch for the man
driving the twelve horses.