“I know,” replied Mrs. Lightfoot softly.  “I know all about it.  You see, there were hunters on the Great Mountain.  In fact, that is how I happened to come down to the Green Forest.  They hunted me so up there that I did not dare stay, and I came down here thinking that there might be fewer hunters.  I wouldn’t have believed that I could ever be thankful to hunters for anything, but I am, truly I am.”

There was a puzzled look on Lightfoot’s face.  “What for?” he demanded.  “I can’t imagine anybody being thankful to hunters for anything.”

“Oh, you stupid,” cried Mrs. Lightfoot.  “Don’t you see that if I hadn’t been driven down from the Great Mountain, I never would have found you?”

“You mean, I never would have found you,” retorted Lightfoot.  “I guess I owe these hunters more than you do.  I owe them the greatest happiness I have ever known, but I never would have thought of it myself.  Isn’t it queer how things which seem the very worst possible sometimes turn out to be the very best possible?”

Blacky the Crow is one of Lightfoot’s friends, but sometimes even friends are envious.  It is so with Blacky.  He insists that he is quite as important in the Green Forest as is Lightfoot and that his doings are quite as interesting.  Therefore just to please him the next book is to be Blacky the Crow.

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