In the wood all was silent and lone. Not even a bird was stirring as he sped over the cool, wet grass. The daylight had not yet crept through the thick leaves, and once he stumbled over a dead log and rolled headlong into a muddy hole. The only light he saw came from a frog who had filled himself with fireflies, and they now shone through his round stomach like a shaded lamp as he slept under a sheltering bush. The darkness was just stealing away when he came to the big hollow tree and knocked twice. “Alas, Most Powerful One, I am here again,” he cried, as the dragon writhed slowly out. “It is quite as bad to be a wise man as a pretty woman--one is stupid, the other useless. A fox is a far finer creature than either of them, so make me a fox again, O mightiest of living things, and this time will I be content for the thousand years to pass.” “Will you never be satisfied?” snorted the dragon. “You are not willing to be what nature made you and you don’t like anything I do for you. Still, as you have not yet been chased by a dog, I must grant your wish. But the next time you get into trouble you needn’t come to me--remember that!” And a moment later a gray fox ran past the hollow tree and with mighty leaps and bounds went crashing through the thicket. CHAPTER V Again the fox went back to his old sly ways, and for a time was quite pleased to be only a fox and live in beautiful Napantatutu. Of men and men’s ways he had quite enough, he was often heard to say, and he would cock his head to one side and wink and grin every time he thought of the poor old lady who was still waiting for her pearl. The animals came and went, and their children and their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren, and still he lived on. Most foxes would have been happy to have such a quiet, comfortable time in an enchanted land and wouldn’t have found anything to worry about. But after a few hundred years he again got restless and tired and nothing was good enough for him. He spent all his time planning what he would do when he was a fox with nine golden tails. He talked of nothing else, and became the greatest bore in the forest. And he made so much fun of the peacock, saying it wore painted feathers, that the poor bird got ashamed to spread its tail. Soon he was shunned by all of the animals. The frog hopped away when it saw him coming, the grasshopper whirred up to the top of the tallest tree, the owls rolled their eyes at him, flapped their wings and away they went, and even the lazy old tortoise, that every day came out to take its nap in a little spot of sunshine, tried to crawl away in a hurry when it heard him coming, and sometimes in its haste rolled all the way down the river bank.