“Would he run at you or Bill that way?” demanded the Babe in a voice of awe at the very thought of such temerity.

“Oh, he has seen lots of men,” replied Uncle Andy.  “We’re nothing new to him.  But most likely he had never seen a small boy before, and he did not know what kind of an animal it was.  The very fact that he did not know made him angry—­he’s sometimes so quick-tempered, you know!”

“I’m glad he didn’t frighten me—­so very much!” murmured the Babe, beginning to forget the exact degree of his alarm.

“I noticed you got out of his way pretty smart!” said Uncle Andy, eyeing him from under shaggy brows.  “But perhaps that was just because you were in a hurry to tell me about it!”

“No-o!” answered the Babe, hesitating but truthful.  “I thought perhaps he was going to bite my legs, and I didn’t want him to.”

“That seems reasonable enough,” agreed Uncle Andy heartily.  “No sensible person wants a fool woodchuck biting his legs.”

“But would he really have bitten me?” asked the Babe, beginning to think that perhaps he ought to go back and find the presumptuous little animal and kick him.

“As I think I’ve already said, you never can tell exactly what a woodchuck is going to do,” replied Uncle Andy.  “You know that old rhyme about him: 

  “’How much wood would a woodchuck chuck,
  If a woodchuck could chuck wood? 
  He’d chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could
  If a woodchuck could chuck wood.’

“Now that goes to show what uncertainty people have about him.  And it’s no more than right.  For instance, I was traveling through a wild part of New Brunswick once in a big red automobile, when, coming suddenly around a turn, we saw just ahead of us two old woodchucks sitting up on their fat haunches by the side of the road.  I was beside the chauffeur, and could see just what happened.  How those woodchucks’ eyes stuck out!  It was not more than three seconds before we were right up to them.  Then one of the two, frightened to death, fairly turned a back somersault into the bushes.  But the other was a hero.  Perhaps he thought he was St. George and the automobile a dragon.  Anyhow, he did all a hero could.  He jumped straight on to the front wheel and bit wildly at the tire.  We stopped so short that we almost went out on our heads—­but too late!  The wheel had gone clean over him.  We felt so sorry that we stopped and dug a hole by the roadside and gave the flattened little hero a very distinguished burial.”

“Oh, but he must have been crazy!” exclaimed the Babe, rubbing his leg thoughtfully and congratulating himself that he had not lingered to study the being which had rushed at him in the underbrush.

“Perhaps,” said Uncle Andy dryly.  “If I remember rightly, that’s just what has been said of lots of heroes before now.”