Appearances sometimes deceive;

Be not too ready to believe.

-Billy Mink.

After his adventure with Hooty the Owl, Billy Mink kept on his way through the Green Forest toward the Laughing Brook. He felt very good. It always makes one feel good to have proven smarter than some one else. Billy had had a very narrow escape. It is doubtful if there was one among Billy’s friends who would have escaped had they been in his place. That is because none of them act so quickly as does Billy. It was his quickness which had saved him, for when he had caught sight of that moving shadow, Hooty was already reaching for him with those great, cruel claws of his.

But escapes like this are so common to Billy Mink that he gave no further thought to the adventure. Without any trouble at all, he had given Hooty the Owl the slip, and he knew that Hooty hadn’t the least idea in which direction he had vanished. So light-heartedly he continued on his way. But never for an instant did he fail to make use of eyes, ears, and nose to find out what was going on about him.

Presently Billy spied off to one side a little white mound under a hemlock tree. It looked very much like other little white mounds scattered here and there. Billy knew that these little mounds were simply snow-covered logs and stumps. They were everywhere through the Green Forest. So Billy paid no particular attention to this little mound and ran past with hardly a glance at it. But he had gone only a few feet when a wandering Little Night Breeze caught up with him and tickled his nose. Instantly Billy Mink turned and with hardly a pause bounded straight toward that little mound. You see, that wandering Little Night Breeze was tickling his nose with a delicious scent. It was the scent of Jumper the Hare.

Billy didn’t know where Jumper was, but he knew that all he had to do to find him was to follow that scent with his nose. So Billy bounded along with the eager look of the hunter in his eyes, watching ahead for some sign of Jumper. “I don’t see him, but I know he’s somewhere near,” muttered Billy. “What a blessed thing a good nose is. I don’t know what I would do if it were not for mine. Jumper may be ever so well hidden, but my nose will take me straight to him.”

He was going straight toward that little mound under the hemlock tree. He was within two jumps of it when suddenly there wasn’t any mound there! No, sir, there wasn’t any mound there! Instead, a certain little person in white, with long hind legs, was bounding away through the Green Forest. It was Jumper the Hare.