"It's just an errand," replied Sammy Jay, and then he asked Boomer to go down to the Green Meadows and tell Peter Rabbit how he, Boomer, had seen Sammy going to bed up in the far-away Old Pasture.

Boomer promised that he would, and off he started. He found Peter and told him. Of course Peter was very much surprised and, because he cannot keep his tongue still, he started off at once to tell everybody he could find, just as Blacky the Crow had thought he would do.

XII

NO ONE BELIEVES PETER RABBIT

Peter Rabbit sat in his secret place in the middle of the Old Briar-patch. Peter was doing some very hard thinking. He ought to have been asleep, for he had been out the whole night long. But instead of sleeping, he was wide awake and thinking and thinking.

You see early the night before Boomer the Nighthawk had told Peter that Sammy Jay was up in the far-away Old Pasture. Boomer had seen him going to bed there and had come straight down to tell Peter. This was great news, and Peter could hardly wait for Boomer to stop talking, he was so anxious to spread the news over the Green Meadows and through the Green Forest, for Peter is a great gossip and cannot keep his tongue still.

So he had hurried this way and that way, telling every one he met how Sammy
Jay had moved away to the Old Pasture. But no one believed him.

"Wait and see! Wait and see!" said Jimmy Skunk.

"It's just a trick," said Bobby Coon.

"But Boomer the Nighthawk saw him up there going to bed and talked with him!" cried Peter Rabbit.