Well, the grasshopper started to go out of the hole, leaving Uncle Wiggily fast asleep, but, all of a sudden the tiny jumping fellow came back, and, instead of being green, as he usually was, he had turned quite pale.
"What's the matter?" asked Katy.
"The hole is stopped up!" cried the grasshopper. "Some one has filled up the front door with dirt and we can't get out."
"Oh, that's too bad!" said the pussy, and she and the grasshopper looked at the lightning bug, who was shining brightly like a Christmas tree-candle down in the dark hole so they could see. He had shone all night for them. "How will we ever get out?" went on the pussy. "It is terrible to be shut up here."
"What's that? Is there more trouble?" suddenly asked Uncle Wiggily, as he got out of bed feet first.
"Yes," said the grasshopper, "the front door of the hole is stopped up, and we can't get out. I think the bad fox did it."
"Very likely," agreed Uncle Wiggily. "But don't worry, for I can easily dig out the dirt, and then we can go up and find out who it was that said Katy threw nuts at us when she didn't."
So Uncle Wiggily went to the front door of the hole-house and began to dig with his strong feet. And then he happened to think of something.
"If I dig a new front door near the place where the fox stopped up the old one," said the old gentleman rabbit thoughtful-like, "that bad creature may be there waiting to grab us when we go out. So I'll play a trick on him. I'll dig a new door for this hole-house and we'll go out that way. I'll dig it at the back."
So Uncle Wiggily did this and soon there was a nice opening from the hole underground, and it was some distance away from the one by which the three friends had gone in. And, surely enough, they looked through the trees when they went out, and there was that bad fox near the stopped-up hole, waiting for them to come out so that he might grab them.