"How careless of me! What shall I do?" he exclaimed. And a voice answered:
"I will give you some molasses, Uncle Wiggily."
The old gentleman rabbit looked around, and there was a nice, green grasshopper, and, as she had some molasses with her, she put quite a lot on the stone. Then the rabbit threw it up at the hole in the tree, but a most surprising thing happened.
For, instead of being gold in the hole there were two unpleasant old owls there, and when the molasses-covered stone popped in on them it awakened them from their sleep, for owls sleep in the day time, and fly about at night, you know.
"Who threw that stone?" cried one owl.
"I don't know," answered the other owl, and she gnashed her sharp beak, "but whoever it was I'm going to bite him!"
"Oh, run! Run for your life, Uncle Wiggily!" cried the grasshopper, as the two owls stuck their heads out of the hole in the tree. "Hop away!"
So Uncle Wiggily hopped off, and the grasshopper hopped also, and the two owls flopped down after them. But the savage birds could not see very well in the day time, and one went ker-bunk into a tree, and the other went ker-thump into a briar bush, and they were all tangled up, and so Uncle Wiggily and the grasshopper got safely away.
"Well, I didn't get any fortune that time," said the rabbit sorrowfully as he hopped down a hill. "But perhaps I may find it soon."
The next place he came to was a big river, and, as he stood on the bank and looked across, it seemed to Uncle Wiggily that he could see a big field of gold on the other side.