The weasel leaped straight at its victim's throat. But it never arrived. For at that moment the Child gave vent to a shrill yell of indignation and jumped at the slayer with hands, eyes and mouth wide open. He made such a picture that Uncle Andy exploded. The astonished weasel vanished. The rabbit, shocked back into its senses, vanished also, but in another direction. And the Child, pulling himself together, turned to his uncle with a very red face. "I'm sorry!" he said sheepishly. "I'm so sorry, Uncle Andy. But I just _couldn't_ help it. I didn't think." "Oh, well!" said Uncle Andy, getting up and stretching, and rubbing his stiffened legs tenderly. "I can't say that I blame you I came mighty near doing the same thing myself when that fool of a rabbit squealed." CHAPTER XI THE LITTLE VILLAGER AND HIS UNFRIENDLY GUESTS Across the still surface of Silverwater, a-gleam in the amber and violet dusk, came a deep booming call, hollow and melancholy and indescribably wild. _Tooh-hoo-oo-whooh-ooh-oo_, and again _whooh-ooh-ooh-oo_, it sounded; and though the evening was warm the Child gave a little shiver of delicious awe, as he always did when he heard the sunset summons of the great horned owl. "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.