Well, Uncle Wiggily went on and on. He saw the children in bathing, and building sand houses, and he saw the fishermen going out to sea to catch fishes and lobsters, but still he couldn't see anything of his fortune.
Then, pretty soon, in a little while, not so very long, the old gentleman rabbit came to a place on the sand where there was a little white card. And on the card was some writing, which read:
"DIG HERE AND SEE WHAT YOU
CAN FIND."
"Ha, hum! I wonder what that means," thought Uncle Wiggily, as he sat down on the sand to rest himself. "I wonder if that can be a trick?" He had been fooled so many times that he made up his mind to be careful now. So he looked all around, but he couldn't see anything that looked like danger.
To be sure, there were some bushes up on the beach, a little way off, but there seemed to be no one in them. And there was no one on the beach near where the rabbit was.
"I guess I'll take a chance and dig," thought Uncle Wiggily. So he laid aside his valise and crutch and began to dig in the sand with a clam-shell. Deeper and deeper he went down until he began to feel something hard.
"Oh, ho!" he exclaimed. "I guess I'm getting close to it. This must be a chest of gold or diamonds that the pirates or robbers buried in the sand years ago. Now, I'll dig it up and I'll be rich. This is a lucky day for me!"
So he dug deeper and still deeper until he had partly uncovered something black and round. He thought sure it was a chest of gold, and he dug faster and faster, until all of a sudden something slipped in the sand and rolled out into the hole Uncle Wiggily had dug, and, before he knew it, he found himself slipping down and there he was, held fast by one paw, under a big black stone. It was a stone he had found under the sand and not a chest of gold at all.
At first he was too surprised to say or do anything, and then, as his foot began to pain him, he cried out: