“Well, I think I’ll travel along now, and see if I can find my fortune to-day.  Perhaps I may, and if I do I’ll come back and bring you more peanuts.”

“Oh, that’ll be fine and dandy!” cried Flitter and Flutter, and Skimmer and Dartie.  So they said good-by to the old gentleman rabbit, and once more he started off.

“My!  I’m certainly getting to be a great traveler,” he thought as he walked along through the woods and over the fields.  “But I don’t ever seem to get to any place.  Something always happens to me.  I hope everything goes along nicely to-day.”

But you just wait and see what takes place.  I’m afraid something is going to happen very shortly, but it’s not my fault, and all I can do is to tell you exactly all about it.  Wait!  There, it’s beginning to happen now.

All of a sudden, as Uncle Wiggily was traveling along, he came to a place in the woods where a whole lot of Gypsies had their wagons and tents.  And on one tent, in which was an old brown and wrinkled Gypsy lady, there was a sign which read: 

Fortunes told here.

“Ha!  If they tell fortunes in that tent, perhaps the Gypsy lady can tell me where to find mine,” thought Uncle Wiggily.  “I’ll go up and ask her.”

Well, he was just going to the tent when he happened to think that perhaps the Gypsy woman wouldn’t understand rabbit talk.  So he sat there in the bushes thinking what he had better do, when all at once, before he could wiggle his ears more than four times, a great big, bad, ugly dog sprang at him, barking, oh! so loudly.

“Come on, Browser!” cried this dog to another one.  “Here is a fat rabbit that we can catch for dinner.  Come on, let’s chase him!”

Well, you can just imagine how frightened Uncle Wiggily was.  He didn’t sit there, waiting for that dog to catch him, either.  No, indeed, and a bag of popcorn besides!  Up jumped Uncle Wiggily, with his crutch and his valise, and he hopped as hard and as fast as he could run.  My!  How his legs did twist in and out.

“Come on!  Come!” barked the first dog to the second one.

“I’m coming!  I’m coming!  Woof!  Woof!  Bow-w-w Bow-wow!” barked the second dog.

Poor Uncle Wiggily’s heart beat faster and faster, and he didn’t know which way to run.  Every way he turned the dogs were after him, and soon more of the savage animals came to join the first two, until all the dogs in that Gypsy camp were chasing the poor old gentleman rabbit.

“I guess I’ll have to drop my satchel or my crutch,” thought Uncle Wiggily.  “I can’t carry them much farther.  Still, I don’t want to lose them.”  So he held on to them a little longer, took a good breath and ran on some more.

He thought he saw a chance to escape by running across in front of the fortune-telling tent, and he started that way, but a Gypsy man, with a gun, saw him and fired at him.  I’m glad to say, however, that he didn’t shoot Uncle Wiggily, or else I couldn’t tell any more stories about him.