“The very same one about whom I was thinking!” exclaimed the other alligator.  “Let’s catch him!”

“That’s what we’ll do!” said the double-jointed chap.  “We’ll hide in the woods until he comes along, as he does every day, and the we’ll jump out and grab him.  Oh, you yum-yum!”

“Fine!” grunted his brother.  “Come on!”

Off they crawled through the woods, and pretty soon they came to a willow tree, where the branches grew so low down that they looked like a curtain that had unwound itself off the roller, when the cat hangs on it.

“This is the place for us to hide—­by the weeping willow tree,” said the skillery-scalery alligator with bumps on his tail.

“The very place,” agreed his brother.

So they hid behind the thick branches of the tree, which had leafed out for early spring, and there the two bad creatures waited.

Just before this Uncle Wiggily himself had started out from his hollow stump bungalow to walk in the woods and across the fields, as he did every day.

“I wonder what sort of an adventure I shall have this time?” he said to himself.  “I hope it will be a real nice one.”

Oh!  If Uncle Wiggily had known what was in store for him, I think he would have stayed in his hollow stump bungalow.  But never mind, I’ll make it all come out right in the end, you see if I don’t.  I don’t know just how I’m going to do it, yet, but I’ll find a way, never fear.

Uncle Wiggily hopped on and on, now and then swinging his red-white-and-blue-striped rheumatism crutch like a cane, because he felt so young and spry and spring-like.  Pretty soon he came to the willow tree.  He was sort of looking up at it, wondering if a nibble of some of the green leaves would not do him good, when, all of a sudden, out jumped the two bad alligators and grabbed the bunny gentleman.

“Now we have you!” cried the humped-tail ’gator.

“And you can’t get away from us,” said the other chap—­the double-jointed tail one.

“Oh, please let me go!” begged Uncle Wiggily, but they hooked their claws in his fur, and pulled him back under the tree, which held its branches so low.  I told you it was a weeping willow tree, and just now it was weeping, I think, because Uncle Wiggily was in such trouble.

“Let’s see now,” said the double-jointed tail alligator.  “I’ll carry this rabbit home, and then—­”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” interrupted the other, and not very politely, either.  “I’ll carry him myself.  Why, I caught him as much as you did!”

“Well, maybe you did, but I saw him first.”

“I don’t care!  It was my idea.  I first thought of this way of catching him!”

And then those two alligators disputed, and talked very unpleasantly, indeed, to one another.

But, all the while, they kept tight hold of the bunny uncle, so he could not get away.