"But you don't have to go to the photographer's to have your picture taken," Jasper Jay retorted. "Why couldn't the photographer come to you?" "I suppose he could," Brownie Beaver said. "But he's never been here." Jasper Jay gave one of his loud laughs. "That--" he said--"that is just where you are mistaken. And when I explain how I came by this news, maybe you'll believe me. "Tommy Fox told it to me," Jasper went on, "and old dog Spot told it to him. Everybody knows that old Spot sometimes goes to town with his master. They were there yesterday. And Spot saw your picture himself. What's more, he heard the photographer tell Farmer Green that he came up here almost a week ago, hid his camera in some bushes, and set a flashlight near a half--gnawed tree. And when you started to work on the tree that night you brushed against a wire, and the flashlight flared up, and the camera took your picture before you could jump away.... Now what do you say?" Jasper Jay demanded. "Now do you think I'm telling you the truth?" Brownie Beaver was so surprised that it was several minutes before he could speak. Then he said: "Grandaddy Beaver was right. It wasn't a gun. I was just having my picture taken." Brownie was actually pleased, because he knew he was the only person in his village that had ever had such a thing happen to him. After that he was ready to believe everything Jasper Jay told him. So Jasper related some wonderful news. And it would hardly be fair for anyone not present at the time to say that it wasn't perfectly true--every word of it. [Illustration: The Chain Caught on a Bush and Tripped Him] XVI LOOKING PLEASANT After Jasper Jay left Brownie Beaver, on that day when Jasper told Brownie that the photographer had made a flashlight picture of him, Brownie could hardly wait for it to grow dark. He had made up his mind that he would go back to that same tree, which was still not quite gnawed through; and he hoped that he would succeed in having his picture taken again. Like many other people, Brownie Beaver felt that he could not have too much of a good thing. There was another reason, too, for his going back to the tree. If the light flared again and the click sounded in the bushes, Brownie intended to go right into the thicket and get his picture before anybody else could carry it away with him. (You can understand how little he understood about taking photographs.) Well, the dark found Brownie back at the tree once more. And he began once more to gnaw at it. He tried to look pleasant, too, because he had heard that that was the way one should look when having his picture taken. He found it rather difficult, gnawing chips out of the tree and smiling at the same time. But he was an earnest youngster and he did the best he could. Brownie Beaver kept wishing the flashlight would go off, because--what with smiling and gnawing--his face began to ache. But no glare of light broke through the darkness.