If old Mr. Crow had minded his own affairs everything would have gone well with Dickie Deer Mouse, after he moved into his new home. But Mr. Crow could not forget the time when Dickie had awakened him out of a sound sleep and frightened him almost out of his mind.

So whenever he caught sight of Dickie the old gentleman was sure to drop down upon the ground and ask him in a loud voice whose house he had prowled into lately.

"Nobody's!" Dickie Deer Mouse always told him. And then he would assure Mr. Crow that he was very sorry to have disturbed his rest.

It was quite like Mr. Crow, on such occasions, to act grumpy.

"I haven't had a good night's sleep since you broke into my house," he declared to Dickie one day.

"Perhaps you're over-eating," Dickie suggested politely.

Old Mr. Crow did not appear to like that remark.

"Nothing of the sort!" he bawled. "I don't eat enough to keep a mosquito alive."

"I often see you in the cornfield," Dickie Deer Mouse told him.

"Ha!" Mr. Crow exclaimed. "What are you doing in the cornfield, I should like to know?"

"Sometimes I go there to get a few kernels of corn," Dickie explained.

"Ha!" Mr. Crow cried once more. "That's where the corn's going! Farmer Green thinks I'm taking it. And so you're getting me into a peck of trouble, young man."

Dickie Deer Mouse couldn't help being worried when Mr. Crow said that. And he looked puzzled, too.

"I don't see," he said, "how I could have got you into a peck of trouble, Mr. Crow, for I haven't eaten a peck of Farmer Green's corn. I've had only a few kernels of it—not more than half a pint."

"Then you've got me into a half-pint of trouble, anyway," old Mr. Crow insisted. "And that's too much, for a person of my age. You'll have to keep away from my—ahem!—from Farmer Green's cornfield. And what's more, Fatty Coon says the same thing."

At the mention of Fatty Coon's name Dickie Deer Mouse had to smile.

"Fatty Coon!" he echoed. "How he does like corn!"

"Yes! But he doesn't like you," Mr. Crow snapped. "You'd better look out for him," he warned Dickie. "He'll come to call on you some night, the first thing you know.

"By the way, where are you living now?" Mr. Crow inquired.

But Dickie Deer Mouse made no answer. Right before Mr. Crow's sharp eyes he vanished among the roots of a tree. And it made the old gentleman quite peevish because he couldn't discover where Dickie Deer Mouse had hidden himself.

For a little while Mr. Crow stood like a black statue and peered at the tangle where Dickie Deer Mouse had disappeared. But Mr. Crow couldn't see him anywhere. And at last his patience came to an end.

"He never answered my question," Mr. Crow grumbled. "He wouldn't tell me where he lived. But I'll find out. I'll ask my cousin, Jasper Jay; for there isn't much that he doesn't know."