From over in the Green Forest where the silver beeches grow, came a sound which made Tommy stop to listen. For a minute or two all was still. Then it came again, a deep, throbbing sound that began slowly and then grew faster and faster until it ended in a long rumble like distant thunder. Tommy knew it couldn’t be that, for there wasn’t a cloud in the sky; and anyway it wasn’t the season of thunder-storms. Again he heard that deep hollow throbbing grow fast and faster until there was no time between the beats and it became a thunderous rumble; and for some reason which he could not have explained, Tommy felt his pulse beat faster in unison, and a strange sense of joyous exhilaration. _Drum--drum--drum--drum--drum, drum, drum, dr-r-r-r-r-r-um!_ The sound beat out from beyond the hemlocks and rolled away through the woods. “It’s an old cock-partridge drumming.” Tommy had a way of talking to himself when he was alone. “He’s down on that old beech log at the head of the gully. Gee, I’d like to see him! Bet it’s the same one that was there last year. Dad says that old log is a reg’lar drumming-log and he’s seen partridges drum there lots of times. And yet he doesn’t really know how they make all that noise. Says some folks say they beat the log with their wings, and, because it’s hollow, it makes that sound. Don’t believe it, though. They’d break their wings doing that. Besides, that old log isn’t much hollow anyway, and I never can make it sound up much hammering it with a stick; so how could a partridge do it with nothing but his wings? “Some other folks say they do it by hitting their wings together over their backs; but I don’t see any sense in that, because their wings are mostly feathers. And some say they beat their sides to make the noise; but if they do that, I should think they’d knock all the wind out of themselves and be too sore to move. Bet if I could ever catch ol’ Thunderer drumming, I’d find out how he does it! I know what I’ll do! I’ll go over to the old wishing-stone. Wonder why I didn’t think of it before. Then I’ll find out a lot.” He thrust his hands into his pockets and trudged up the Crooked Little Path, out of the Green Forest, and over to the great gray stone on the edge of the Green Meadows where once a wish had come true, or had seemed to come true, anyway, and where he had learned so much about the life of Danny Meadow Mouse. As he tramped, his thoughts were all of Thunderer the Ruffed Grouse, whom he called a partridge, and some other people call a pheasant, but who is neither. Many times had Tommy been startled by having the handsome bird spring into the air from almost under his feet, with a noise of wings that was enough to scare anybody. It was because of this and the noise of his drumming that Tommy called him Thunderer.