“That’s a bad fellow for you, the Big Horned Owl,” growled Uncle Andy.  “He’s worse than a weasel, and that’s a hard thing to say about any of the wild folk.  He’s everybody’s enemy, and always ready to kill much more than he can eat.”

“Some owls aren’t bad,” suggested the Child.  He had a soft spot in his heart for owls, because they were so downy, and had such round faces and such round eyes, and looked as if they thought of such wonderful, mysterious things which they would never tell.

“How do you know that?” demanded Uncle Andy suspiciously.  “Mind, I’m not saying off-hand that it isn’t so, but I’d like to know where you get your information.”

“Bill told me,” said the Child, with more confidence in his tones than he usually accorded to this authority.

“Oh, Bill!” sniffed Uncle Andy.  “And haven’t you got used to Billy’s fairy stories yet?”

There was an obstinate look in the Child’s earnest blue eyes which showed that this time the imaginative guide had told him a tale which he was unwilling to discredit.

“I know very well, Uncle Andy,” said he with a judicial air, “that Bill loves to yarn, and often pretends to know a lot of things that aren’t so.  But I think he’s telling the truth this time.  He said he was.  It’s a little owl that lives out West on the big sandy plains.  And it makes its nest in holes on the ground.  It knows how to dig these holes itself, you know; but it can’t dig them half, or a quarter, so well as the prairie dogs can.  So it gets the prairie dogs to let it live in their big, comfortable burrows; and in return for this hospitality it kills and eats some of the rattlesnakes, the very small ones, I suppose, of course, which come round among the burrows looking for the young prairie dogs.  Well, you know, Uncle Andy, Bill has been out West himself, and he’s seen the villages of the prairie dogs, and the little owls sitting on the tops of the hillocks which are on the roofs of the prairie dogs’ houses, and the rattlesnakes coiled up here and there in the hot, sunny hollows.  There were lots and lots of the prairie dogs, millions and millions of them, Bill said.”

“There’d have been still more if it hadn’t been for the little owls,” said Uncle Andy with a grin.  But seeing a grieved look on the Child’s face, and remembering that he himself was none too fond of having his narratives broken in upon, he hastened to add politely, but pointedly, “I beg your pardon for interrupting.  Please go on!”

“Well, as I was going to say,” continued the Child, in quite his Uncle’s manner, “Bill saw—­he saw them himself, with his own eyes—­these millions and thousands of prairie dogs, and quite a lot of the little owls, and only just a very few of the rattlesnakes.  So, you see, it looks as if the owls must have eaten some of the snakes, and, anyhow, I think Bill was telling the truth this time.”

“Well,” said Uncle after puffing at his pipe for a few complimentary moments of reflection, “there’s one important thing which Bill appears to have neglected.  He doesn’t seem to have inquired the views of the prairie dogs on the subject.  Now, if he’d got their opinion—­”