“Better come away!” Solomon Owl called to Jimmy Rabbit, turning his head toward the fence where Jimmy had been lingering near the hot-headed stranger.
But Jimmy Rabbit didn’t answer him, either. He was no longer there. The moment he had seen Tommy Fox bounding off across the meadow Jimmy had started at once for Farmer Green’s vegetable garden.
So Solomon Owl was the last to leave.
“There’s really nothing else I can do,” he remarked to himself. “I don’t know what Aunt Polly Woodchuck would say if she knew that I didn’t follow her advice to-night and eat a pullet for my supper.... But I’ve tried my best.... And that’s all anybody can do.”
Solomon Owl was upset all the rest of that night. And just before daybreak he visited the farmyard again, to see whether the strange man with the flaring head still watched the chicken house. And Solomon found that he had vanished.
So Solomon Owl alighted on the fence. There was nothing there except a hollowed-out pumpkin, with a few holes cut in it, which someone had left on one of the fence-posts.
“Good!” said he. “Maybe I can get my pullet after all!” He turned to fly to the chicken house. But just then the woodshed door opened again. And Farmer Green stepped outside, with a lantern in his hand. He was going to the barn to milk the cows. But Solomon Owl did not wait to learn anything more.
He hurried away to his house among the hemlocks. And having quickly settled himself for a good nap, he was soon fast asleep.
That was how Johnnie Green’s jack-o’-lantern kept Tommy Fox and Fatty Coon and Solomon Owl from taking any chickens on Hallowe’en.