Sometimes
he felt little shivers of fear run all over him as he thought of what
might become of him if he should be found. Sometimes a little tickly
feeling of pleasure ran all over him, as he bit a hole in the end of a
freshly laid egg and sucked the egg out of the shell.
Now Unc' Billy was very, very crafty. He had found Jimmy Skunk's
tracks boldly leading up to the hen-house, so Unc' Billy had stepped
as carefully as he knew how in the footprints of Jimmy Skunk, in order
that Farmer Brown's boy might think that Jimmy Skunk was the only
visitor to the hen-house. But with all his craft, there was one thing
that Unc' Billy forgot. Yes, Sir, there was one thing Unc' Billy
forgot all about. He forgot to keep his tail up. He was trying so hard
to step in the footprints of Jimmy Skunk, that he forgot all about
that little, smooth, handy old tail of his, and he let it drag along
the snow.
[Illustration: He just ate and ate until he couldn't eat another one.]
When Unc' Billy was safely in the hen-house, he hurried from one nest
to another. There were eggs, plenty of them. It seemed to him that
nothing he had ever seen before had looked half so good as those eggs.
He just ate and ate and ate until he couldn't eat another one. Now a
full stomach is very apt to make a sleepy head. Unc' Billy knew that
the thing for him to do was to hurry home as fast as he could go, but
he didn't.
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