"So I will," said Bevis, "but how can I hit you both?"
"I will show you," said the weasel. "I will walk along the bank till I am just in a line with the thrush's nest, and then you can take aim at both together."
So he went along the bank and stopped behind the nest, and Bevis moved his cannon-stick and took another aim.
"Dear me!" cried the thrush, dreadfully alarmed, "you surely are not going to shoot me? I never did any harm. Bevis, stop—listen to me!"
Now if the thrush had flown away she might have escaped, but she was very fond of talking, and while she was talking Bevis was busy getting his gun ready.
"It is straight now," said the weasel; "it is pointed quite straight. Hold it still there, and I will sit so that I shall die quick;—here is my bosom. Tell the hare to forgive me."
"Oh," said the thrush, "don't shoot!"
"Shoot!" cried the weasel.
Bevis dropped his match on the touch-hole, puff went the priming, and bang went the cannon. Directly the smoke had cleared away, Bevis looked in the ditch, to see the dead weasel and the thrush. There was the thrush right enough, quite dead, and fallen out of the nest; the nest, too, was knocked to pieces, and the eggs had fallen out (two were broken), but there was one not a bit smashed, lying on the dead leaves at the bottom of the ditch. But the weasel was nowhere to be seen.
"Weasel," cried Bevis, "where are you?" But the weasel did not answer. Bevis looked everywhere, over the bank and round about, but could not find him. At last he saw that under some grass on the bank there was a small rabbit's-hole. Now the weasel had sat up for Bevis to shoot him right over this hole, and when he saw him move the match, just as the priming went puff, the weasel dropped down into the hole, and the shot went over his head.