"Ha! That is a curious sort of chap," said Uncle Wiggily as he hopped on. "I should like to meet him again, when I have more time to talk to him. But now I must look for my fortune." So he went on looking along the beach in the rain, but never a bit of his fortune could he find.
Now, in a little while, something is going to happen. In fact it's time for it now, so I'll tell you all about it. As Uncle Wiggily was hopping along the beach, where some bushes grew close down to the water, he thought he saw something shining in the sand.
"Perhaps that may be a diamond," he said. "I'll dig it up." So he got a nice pink shell with which to dig, and he set to work, laying aside his toadstool umbrella, and not minding the rain in the least.
Then, all of a sudden, up behind the bushes came sneaking the old fuzzy fox. He had been looking all over for something to eat, but all he could find were hard shell clams, and they were too rough on his teeth, so he couldn't eat them.
"Oh, but there is a soft, delicious morsel!" exclaimed the fox, as he saw Uncle Wiggily digging in the sand, and the fox smacked his lips, and sharpened his teeth on a stone. "Now I will have a good dinner," he added.
So he crept closer and closer to Uncle Wiggily, and the old gentleman rabbit never heard him, for he was busy digging for his fortune.
"Now the thing for me to do," thought the fox, "is to spring out on him before he has a chance to move. And I think I can do it, because his back is toward me, and he can't see."
So the fox got ready to spring right on Uncle Wiggily and maybe carry him off to his den in the woods, and the old gentleman rabbit didn't know a thing about it, but kept on digging for his fortune.
"Here I go!" said the fox to himself, and he crouched down for a spring, just as your kittie does when she plays she is after a mouse. Up into the air leaped the fox, right toward the rabbit. And then, suddenly a voice cried:
"Look out, Uncle Wiggily! Look out!"