“Looks as if there may be something in this idea of a long, hard, cold winter,” thought Blacky, “but perhaps the Quacks are only guessing, too.  I wouldn’t take their word for it any more than I would the word of Johnny Chuck or Jerry Muskrat or Paddy the Beaver.  I’ll look about a little.”

So after warning the Quacks to remain in the pond of Paddy the Beaver if they would be safe, Blacky bade them good-by and flew away.  He headed straight for the Green Meadows and Farmer Brown’s cornfield.  A little of that yellow corn would make a good breakfast.

When he reached the cornfield, Blacky perched on top of a shock of corn, for it already had been cut and put in shocks in readiness to be carted up to Farmer Brown’s barn.  For a few minutes he sat there silent and motionless, but all the time his sharp eyes were making sure that no enemy was hiding behind one of those brown shocks.  When he was quite certain that things were as safe as they seemed, he picked out a plump ear of corn and began to tear open the husks, so as to get at the yellow grains.

“Seems to me these husks are unusually thick,” muttered Blacky, as he tore at them with his stout bill.  “Don’t remember ever having seen them as thick as these.  Wonder if it just happens to be so on this ear.”

Then, as a sudden thought popped into his black head, he left that ear and went to another.  The husks of this were as thick as those on the first.  He flew to another shock and found the husks there just the same.  He tried a third shock with the same result.

“Huh, they are all alike,” said he.  Then he looked thoughtful and for a few minutes sat perfectly still like a black statue.  “They are right,” said he at last.  “Yes, Sir, they are right.”  Of course he meant Johnny Chuck and Jerry Muskrat and Paddy the Beaver and the Quacks.  “I don’t know how they know it, but they are right; we are going to have a long, hard, cold winter.  I know it myself now.  I’ve found a sign.  Old Mother Nature has wrapped this corn in extra thick husks, and of course she has done it to protect it.  She doesn’t do things without a reason.  We are going to have a cold winter, or my name isn’t Blacky the Crow.”

CHAPTER XVI:  Blacky Finds Other Signs

   A single fact may fail to prove you either right or wrong;
   Confirm it with another and your proof will then be strong.
    — Blacky the Crow.

After his discovery that Old Mother Nature had wrapped all the ears of corn in extra thick husks, Blacky had no doubt in his own mind that Johnny Chuck and Jerry Muskrat and Paddy the Beaver and the Quacks were quite right in feeling that the coming winter would be long, hard and cold.  But Blacky long ago learned that it isn’t wise or wholly safe to depend altogether on one thing.

“Old Mother Nature never does things by halves,” thought Blacky, as he sat on the fence post on the Green Meadows, thinking over his discovery of the thick husks on the corn.  “She wouldn’t take care to protect the corn that way and not do as much for other things.  There must be other signs, if I am smart enough to find them.”