Now he had decided to attend the frolic, but not to join in the play! Mammy Cottontail, never dreaming of the sleek black form that crept so silently to the edge of the clearing, led her six out among the merry-makers. Soon Wriggly Nose and Paddy Paws, and Flap Ears and Furtive Feet, and Fuzzy Wuzz and Hippity Skip were leaping and dancing as gaily as the best of them. The full moon, shining down on the little glade, showed their furry forms so plainly that even Twinkly with his near-sighted little eyes, could see them kick their heels in air. Crouched in the shadow of the very log where a little while before Mammy and her six had hidden, he watched and waited. [Illustration: [Rabbits]] XXVI A JOKE ON THE LITTLE BLACK BEAR Twinkly Eyes had his mind all made up, as he hid there in the shadow of the tree trunk, to add a rabbit to his feast of honey. He therefore crouched with his great steel paw ready to give the one crushing blow that would be necessary the moment the first brown bunny was so foolish as to pass within his reach. He watched gleefully as he saw their sleek brown forms dancing so care-free in the moonlight. “Hippity skip and away we go!” their soft feet seemed to sing, as they galloped back and forth across a fallen log. Saucy fellows, he told himself, as they flapped their long brown ears or leaped high in the air. [Illustration: “Leaping high in the moonlight” —Page 79 ] Oddly enough, so silently had the little Bear approached that not one of the outposts was aware of his presence. The wind was blowing directly toward him, so that they did not even get his scent. Only Mammy Cottontail, prancing gaily around to the right, thought for just an instant that she had caught an alien odor. Leaping high in the moonlight, she struck her long hind feet three times upon the ground, to see if she could startle whatever it was into betraying its whereabouts. At her danger signal, every bunny in the glade stopped stone still to stare and listen; but Twinkly Eyes was not to be thus betrayed. He was too big to be startled by her stamping, and too wise to come out into the open, where every rabbit, once warned, could easily outrun him. Not he! Twinkly Eyes just bided his time, huddled down as still as any frightened field mouse. He sat so long in one position that his legs got cramped and he began to feel distinctly drowsy. Why on earth didn’t one of those fat bunnies come just a wee bit closer? How weird they looked, now chasing one another, now pausing to nibble a few grasses, but always well within the open glade where the moon would have shown them the first instant an intruder thrust a paw within the charm-ed circle.