He looked around, painfully twisting his neck, then sat still on a branch for a long time, watching and thinking, but he failed to find a single clue leading to the cause of the damage. At length he gave it up and went to work to repair it. First he looked all around carefully, then dashed away to the place where the thistles grew, planning to grab a billful of down and fly back in the briefest possible time. But the moment he was out of sight Snythergen took to his roots and ran toward the place where he had told the pig to meet him, tearing off his tree suit as he ran, and he had barely gotten out of it when the finch flew screeching by. “This time I fooled you,” thought Snythergen, as he stretched out on the ground for a nap. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER V HOW A PIG LEARNED TO TALK Snythergen dreamed that he was sitting on a pier, dangling his feet in the water. Little fishes were nibbling his toes, when suddenly a large one darted up and took a bite that hurt. Raising both feet quickly, he woke up. “You don’t need to be so rough,” said the pig, who had been bowled over by the raising of Snythergen’s feet and lay on his back, waving his legs in the air. “It’s you, is it! Up to your favorite trick of biting my toes! Well, it serves you right. Of course I am glad you like me, but I wish you would show your affection in some other way!” “Oh,” cried the pig. “So you were the strange tree that kicked me and spoke to me! I recognize you by the taste of your toes. But how was I to know that the last time I nibbled you, you were a tree,—unless I nibbled you again to find out?” “In that case, I’ll forgive you,” said Snythergen, “and I hope you’ll overlook the fright I gave you.” They lay on the ground side by side and gazed up at the stars. “Tell me, how did you learn to talk?” asked Snythergen. “The farmer’s wife taught me,” said the pig. “Why did she do that?” “Because I was hungry.” “That’s no reason. They give people food when they are hungry—they don’t teach them to talk.” “This woman did. She would not give me anything to eat until I learned to ask for it. And as I was nearly starving I learned rapidly,” said the pig. “As soon as I could ask for things I gained in weight, and when the farmer saw I was getting fat he asked his wife to keep right on feeding me so that—” “Yes,” said Snythergen. “_So that they could eat me for dinner!_” faltered the pig, dashing a tear from his eye. “Then what did you do?” asked Snythergen.