When the old black crow saw this, she whispered, “Turn back, children, and don’t speak for your lives;” and although she was as old as the hills, she turned tail as fast as she could, with her five black children after her. When she reached her nest built of sticks in the fork of an apple-tree a quarter of a mile away, she breathed more freely.
“Oh, my children,” she panted, “it was no cornstalk scarecrow at all; it was the farmer himself, alive and loading his gun for us.”
But when she awoke in the morning light, she felt rather puzzled. “I’ve seen a good many scarecrows in my time,” she said; “I should know a man from a shadow. I’ll go and have a look at him in broad daylight.”
So as soon as breakfast was over and the crow children had gone to school to hear how featherless children make crow’s nests with their fingers, she spread her wings for the cornfield where she had seen the brand new scarecrow. There he stood as plain a humbug as ever deceived the eyes of a blind crow.
“I’m not old enough to be blind yet,” she said; “you’re a dried-up cornstalk if ever there was one. You’ll not frighten me this evening and send me and my children scurrying home.” And she sang mockingly,
“Caw, caw, caw,
I know you, poor old stalk,
Bloodless is your body,
You neither run nor walk.”
But the clever scarecrow kept his temper and answered never a word. So again the old crow had to take herself off no wiser about his thoughts.