Leaving their raft among the reeds, they climbed up the banks and went into the wood. And as just in that part of it some fine beech-trees were growing, Fuzz and Buzz, to their great delight, found several beech-nuts lying underneath the leaves. They sat down and ate a good dinner, and then, taking the rest of the beech-nuts with them, they went back to their raft and were soon sailing down the stream again.
Winter afternoons are very short, and not long after Fuzz and Buzz had had their dinner the sun began to turn into a great red ball, and to sink behind the trees.
"But we need not stop even when it does get dark," said Buzz, "for we can float along in the night just as well as in the day, and perhaps in the morning we shall find ourselves at Aunt Patty's barn."
"Not you!" said a hoarse voice so close to them that Fuzz and Buzz gave a little start, and then, looking down into the stream, they saw that a big water-rat was swimming along beside their raft.
"What did you say, please?" Fuzz asked politely.
"I said that if you went on floating after dark you would never get to wherever you are going," said the water-rat; "for in the hollow tree at the edge of the wood a big owl lives, and if he sees you he will have you for his supper, as sure as I am swimming here. Two such tender, fat young field-mice as you are don't come his way every night, and would be a rare treat for him."
But as neither Fuzz nor Buzz wished to be a rare treat for anybody, at least not in that way, they looked at one another, and a cold shiver ran down their backs. Fuzz was the first to feel brave again, or at least to pretend that he felt brave, and he said to the water-rat:
"But owls never come out in the daytime, they only fly about at night."