But Solomon Owl had caught so many mice that night that he didn’t feel like chasing anybody. So he sat motionless in the tree, merely turning his head to watch Benjamin sailing away through the dusky woods. He noticed that Benjamin didn’t dodge at all—except when there was a tree in his way. And he wondered what the reason was.
“Perhaps he’s not so crazy as I supposed,” said Solomon Owl to himself. And ever afterward, when he happened to awake and feel hungry, Solomon Owl used to look up at the ceiling above him and wish that Benjamin Bat was there.
But Benjamin Bat never cared to have anything more to do with Solomon Owl.
He said he had a good reason for avoiding him.
And ever afterward he passed for a very brave person among his friends. They often pointed him out to strangers, saying, “There’s Benjamin Bat! _He_ doesn’t know what fear is. Why, once he even spent a whole day asleep in Solomon Owl’s house! And if you don’t think _that_ was a bold thing to do, then I guess you don’t know Solomon Owl.”
Solomon Owl looked so wise that many of his neighbors fell into the habit of going to him for advice. If two of the forest folk chanced to have a dispute which they could not settle between them they frequently visited Solomon and asked him to decide which was in the right. And in the course of time Solomon became known far and wide for his ability to patch up a quarrel.
At last Jimmy Rabbit stopped Solomon Owl one night and suggested that he hang a sign outside his house, so that there shouldn’t be anybody in the whole valley that wouldn’t know what to do in case he found himself in an argument.
Solomon decided on the spot that Jimmy Rabbit’s idea was a good one. So he hurried home and before morning he had his sign made, and put out where everyone could see it. It looked like this:
There was only one objection to the sign. As soon as Jimmy Rabbit saw it he told Solomon that it should have said:
“Why, without going into your house!” said Jimmy Rabbit. “I can’t climb a tree, you know. And neither can Tommy Fox. We might have a dispute to-night; and how could you ever settle it?”
“Oh, I shall be willing to step outside,” Solomon told him. And he refused to change the sign, declaring that he liked it just as it was.