“You must not think, however, that they did not learn anything, these two.  They were sharp.  They listened to what was being said around them, and the crows, you know, are the greatest talkers ever; so they soon knew the difference between a man with a gun and a man without one.  They knew that an owl in the daytime is not the same thing as an owl at night.  They gathered that a scarecrow is not as dangerous as it looks.  And many other things that a crow needs to know and believe they condescended to learn, because learning came easy to them.  But common caution they did not learn, because it did not seem to them either interesting or necessary.  So it was often just luck that got them out of scrapes, though they always thought it was their own cleverness.

“It was just lucky, of course, that day when they went exploring in the patch of dark woods down in the valley, that the big brown owl did not get one or the other of them.  He was asleep on a big dead branch as brown as himself, and looking so like a part of it that they were just going to alight, either upon him or within reach of his deadly clutch, when a red squirrel saw them and shrieked at them.  Two great, round, glaring orange eyes opened upon them from that brown prong of the branch, so suddenly that they gave two startled squawks and nearly fell to the ground.  How the red squirrel tittered, hating both the owl and the crows.  But the imps, when they got over their start, were furious.  Flying over the owl’s head, they kept screaming at the top of their voices something which probably meant ‘an owl! an owl! an owl!’; and immediately every other crow within hearing took up the cry, till in two minutes half the flock were gathered in the patch of woods.  They swarmed screaming about the owl’s head, striking at him with their sharp beaks and strong black wings, but always too wary to come quite within his reach.  The great night prowler knew that in the daylight he could not catch them—­that, indeed, if he did succeed in catching one in his claws the others would throw caution to the winds and all be down upon him at once.  He sat there, straight and stiff, for a while, snapping his terrible beak and hissing at them like an angry cat.  Till at last, realizing that there was no more chance of a peaceful sleep for him there, he spread his huge, downy wings and sailed off smoothly to seek some more secluded neighborhood.  The whole flock pursued him, with their tormenting and abuse, for perhaps a couple of miles; and then, at some signal from their leaders, dropped the chase suddenly and turned their attention to what looked like a sort of game of tag, in a wide, open pasture where no enemy could steal upon them unawares.  The imps felt themselves great heroes, but if it had not been for that red squirrel, the owl, sleepy though he was, would certainly have got one of them.”

The Babe wanted to ask whether the squirrel had warned them out of friendliness or just out of dislike to the owl, but before he could frame his question quite satisfactorily, or get out anything more than a hasty “But why—?” Uncle Andy had gone on with an emphasis which discouraged interruption.