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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77049 ***
+
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  “Bump—Slide—Splash!—and he plunged beneath the surface of the icy
+    lake.”
+
+  —Page 3
+]
+
+
+
+
+                           THE ADVENTURES OF
+                              Twinkly Eyes
+                         THE LITTLE BLACK BEAR
+
+
+                            By ALLEN CHAFFEE
+
+            Author of TALES OF THE TIMID, Little Stories of
+               the Lives and Habits of the Wild, Told for
+                       Children and Their Elders.
+
+                       Illustrated by PETER DARU
+
+                                  1919
+                         MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY
+                       SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
+
+
+
+
+                            _Copyright 1919_
+                       By MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY
+                       Springfield, Massachusetts
+                         _All Rights Reserved_
+
+
+  Bradley Quality Books
+      _for_ Children
+
+
+
+
+                              INTRODUCTION
+
+
+These little stories, which are intended both for children and their
+elders, are really true to natural science.
+
+Disguised in fiction form, the reader gets a taste of biology, botany,
+zoology, and meteorology.
+
+Such a taste may or may not lead the child to further study along those
+lines, but it will certainly give him a heightened appreciation of
+out-door life. Incidentally, he will have accumulated in the easiest
+possible way a great many facts that he will retain all his life.
+
+The tales should also create a kindlier attitude toward our friends in
+fur and feathers, as well as instilling some of the stern virtues of the
+wilderness.
+
+That these tales may be suitable for bedtime reading, no animal hero is
+ever killed. The big words are explained, and the adventure of each
+chapter harks back to the preceding in a way to refresh the memory of
+the reader who only takes time for a chapter an evening.
+
+On the other hand, my readers have thus far included a large proportion
+of quite grown-up little boys.
+
+                                                          ALLEN CHAFFEE.
+
+
+
+
+                                   To
+                          HOWARD FOLSOM BROCK
+                  whose great heart had in it a corner
+                        for even the furred and
+                            feathered folk.
+
+
+
+
+                                 INDEX
+
+
+             Chapter                                    Page
+                  I. Twinkly Gets a Ducking                1
+                 II. Mother Black Bear to the Rescue       4
+                III. A Stern Lesson                        7
+                 IV. But He Learns It                     10
+                  V. Mrs. Porcupine Shows Fight           13
+                 VI. Driven from Their Pond               17
+                VII. Sink or Swim                         20
+               VIII. Writho, the Black Snake              23
+                 IX. “Whoof! Whoof!”                      26
+                  X. The Better Part of Valor             29
+                 XI. A Tip on Thunder-Storms              32
+                XII. A Wild Mother’s Love                 35
+               XIII. Twinkly Eyes Gets Even               38
+                XIV. A Different Twinkly Eyes             41
+                 XV. There’s Many a Slip                  45
+                XVI. The Bee Tree                         48
+               XVII. Twinkly Eyes and Trouble             51
+              XVIII. Twinkly Shows His Mettle             54
+                XIX. Down But Not Downed                  57
+                 XX. Twinkly Applies First Aid            60
+                XXI. Mammy Cottontail’s Secret            63
+               XXII. One of Twinkly’s Neighbors           66
+              XXIII. Introducing Bobby Lynx               69
+               XXIV. A Bunny Ball                         72
+                XXV. Twinkly Eyes Attends a Frolic        75
+               XXVI. A Joke On The Little Black Bear      78
+              XXVII. School For Bunnies                   81
+             XXVIII. A Boy and A Bear                     84
+               XXIX. The Tables Are Turned                87
+                XXX. A Climbing Match                     90
+               XXXI. The Bear Gets The Best of It         93
+              XXXII. The Little Bears Go Fishing          96
+             XXXIII. Twinkly Again Meets The Porcupine    99
+              XXXIV. A Good Sport                        102
+               XXXV. Bobby Lynx Learns A Lesson          104
+              XXXVI. Twinkly Watches Again               108
+             XXXVII. Foxy Counsel                        111
+            XXXVIII. A Jolly World                       114
+              XXXIX. Who Will be Sorriest?               117
+                 XL. Twinkly Eyes Plays Safe             121
+                XLI. Twinkly Eyes Gets a Great Surprise  124
+               XLII. Twinkly Eyes Plots Mischief         127
+              XLIII. Twinkly Teases Unk Wunk             130
+               XLIV. Twinkly Eyes Gets His               133
+                XLV. Bobby Lynx Goes Fishing             136
+               XLVI. A New Acquaintance                  139
+              XLVII. The Hired Man Drops a Match         142
+             XLVIII. The Forest Aflame                   146
+               XLIX. In the Face of a Common Peril       149
+                  L. While There is Life, There is Hope  153
+                 LI. The Boy from the Valley Farm        156
+                LII. Twinkly’s Fellow Refugees           160
+               LIII. A Way for the Squirrel Family       163
+                LIV. What Happened to Fleet Foot         166
+                 LV. Twinkly Eyes Goes House-Hunting     169
+                LVI. At the Sugar Camp                   173
+               LVII. A Feast and a Fast                  176
+              LVIII. The First Snow                      179
+                LIX. Twinkly Eyes Goes to Bed            182
+
+
+
+
+                           THE ADVENTURES OF
+
+                              Twinkly Eyes
+
+                         THE LITTLE BLACK BEAR
+
+
+
+
+                                   I
+                         TWINKLY GETS A DUCKING
+
+
+Two such roly-poly babies you never did see!
+
+Mother Black Bear had named them Woof and Twinkly Eyes.—And you never in
+all your life met two such rollicking black balls of mischief as those
+two cubs!
+
+Small wonder that Mother Black Bear needed such long black claws, long
+white teeth, and such a terrifying growl, with two such treasures to
+protect.
+
+Why, she wouldn’t even let Father Black Bear come near them when they
+were so young, for fear some time they would plague him too far and make
+him lose his temper!
+
+As the warm days of July ripened the blueberries along the slopes she
+used to lead the cubs down Mt. Olaf into the lowlands on berrying
+expeditions. And my! How they did enjoy these trips! How they stuffed
+themselves on the luscious fruit, snatching up great pawfuls of it,
+leaves and all, till their fuzzy sides rounded out like puff balls!
+
+Then, too, there were often the most delicious sour-tasting ants under
+the logs and boulders that Mother Black Bear turned over for them! Life
+was one feast, what with the abundant food provided by Mother Black Bear
+herself and that found everywhere in the woods about them! Those cubs
+hadn’t a complaint to make!
+
+True, they climbed right over one another in their eagerness to get the
+best of everything, and they growled little baby growls in imitation of
+their mother and squealed little piggish squeals of delight. But that
+was all a part of the game.
+
+When there was nothing to eat in sight—or rather when they were too full
+to hold any more—they began to yawn and stretch and curl themselves up
+together like so many sleepy kittens.
+
+Then when they had slept enough there were wrestling matches and boxing
+bouts and playing pranks on mother,—pulling her ears and clambering over
+her till she was forced to box their ears.
+
+One lazy afternoon Twinkly was just nodding off to sleep, all curled up
+in a little fuzzy ball, when Woof came up from behind and gave him a
+shove. Now, as it happened, Twinkly had been lying at the top of a steep
+incline that led down to Lone Lake, and he went down that incline like a
+rubber ball, before ever Mother Black Bear could stop him.
+Bump—slide—splash!—and he plunged beneath the surface of the icy lake.
+
+[Illustration: [Bears]]
+
+
+
+
+                                   II
+                    MOTHER BLACK BEAR TO THE RESCUE
+
+
+It is so wonderfully snug and comfy to be drowsing off on a warm
+afternoon, all curled up in a fuzzy little ball. So, at least, thought
+Twinkly Eyes, Mother Black Bear’s littlest cub.
+
+But what an awful contrast to find oneself rolling down the bank like a
+rubber ball, till one came, bump, slide, splash, to the icy water!
+
+And then to go down, down, down, gasping for breath and so horribly
+frightened that one thought the end had come!
+
+It was certainly a terrible experience for the five-months-old cub, when
+his brother Woof gave him that mischievous shove!
+
+Mother Black Bear was really frightened. Not that she was afraid of Lone
+Lake—not a good swimmer like Mother Black Bear; and not that she feared
+being unable to rescue the little fellow. But Mothers are always
+frightened when anything happens to their babies. Mother Black Bear was
+no exception.
+
+She was just like any other mother in believing that her babies were the
+brightest and the handsomest and the most wonderful little creatures
+that anyone ever had.
+
+So she didn’t even stop to think when she saw Twinkly’s little body
+rolling down the bank with its legs still wound around its nose. She
+just slid!—Afterwards there was a long trench where she had slid down
+that bank on her haunches!
+
+She reached the water the very moment he did, and it wasn’t two seconds
+before she had plunged into the blue depths and grabbed the struggling
+youngster by the nape of his neck.
+
+Dragging him straight back up the bank, she spread him out in the
+sunshine and began licking him dry, while he whimpered and coaxed for
+sympathy.
+
+“This teaches you a lesson, young man,” she told him, when she had made
+sure he wasn’t hurt and wasn’t going to catch cold. “Never sleep on the
+edge of a bank. And Woof, don’t you ever again shove anyone over the
+bank like that,—not unless it’s someone you never want to see again,”
+and she gave Woof a good cuff on the ear to help him remember.
+
+“But I’m glad, in one way, that this had to happen. Because it shows
+that you must learn to swim at once. Life is uncertain at best, in the
+woods, and you never can tell when you may need to know.”
+
+“Ow! the water is too cold!” squealed Twinkly Eyes, backing away into
+the brush.
+
+“We’ll go where it isn’t,” said Mother Black Bear firmly. “But we’re
+going this very afternoon. Come along!”
+
+[Illustration: [Bears]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  III
+                             A STERN LESSON
+
+
+“Oo! I don’t want to learn to swim!” squealed Twinkly Eyes.
+
+“Why don’t you?” asked Mother Black Bear, though she had quite made up
+her mind to give the cubs a lesson that very afternoon.
+
+When Mother Black Bear had made up her mind to a thing, that was all
+there was to be said about it, so far as the cubs were considered.
+
+Her word was law. Still, that did not prevent them from complaining at
+times. It is a certain amount of relief to complain, even when one knows
+it won’t do any good, isn’t it? At least the two cubs found it so.
+
+“The water’s so-o-o-o cold,” wailed Twinkly Eyes, whose wet fur made him
+shiver.
+
+“You won’t be cold, once you get to paddling about,” said Mother Black
+Bear. “Come on, quick! There’s a shallow place farther on where the sun
+has warmed the water.”
+
+She led the way through the bushes, Woof trotting obediently at her
+heels. Twinkly tried to run away, but he didn’t get very far. Mother
+Black Bear quickly found his hiding place.
+
+“Come!” she insisted away down deep in her throat, with that rumbly
+sound that the cubs knew meant business.
+
+Since the accident she felt it was not safe to let another day go by
+without making sure that they could at least keep from drowning.
+
+“Come here!” she growled to Twinkly in no uncertain tone. That small imp
+simply didn’t dare disobey!
+
+Woods babies generally are that way, and it is a lucky thing for them,
+let me tell you, or no telling what would happen to them!
+
+Puffing and panting as they tumbled after her, the fat cubs soon found
+their mother seated on her haunches beside a quiet pool, where the sun
+danced through the leaves till the water seemed all mottled. Tall ferns
+grew all about them and every now and again a frightened frog would say,
+“K’dunk!” and go splashing to the bottom of the pond.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  “Twinkly Eyes, are you coming?”
+
+  —Page 9
+]
+
+“Now, then, just follow me,” said Mother Black Bear, when they had
+stared at the water for a moment. She waded off till she stood shoulder
+deep.
+
+Twinkly braced himself firmly with all four feet and cocked one ear at
+the depths before him. His unexpected plunge when Woof had rolled him
+off the bank had shaken his faith in water, even for drinking purposes.
+
+“Come!” commanded Mother Black Bear, and he knew he would have to wade
+in or get a good boxing. He whimpered, wondering which would be worse.
+He was a most unhappy little bear cub, for one so roly-poly!
+
+Woof on the other hand, had waded in after his mother, and now—much to
+his own surprise—found his fat sides floating with just a stroke or two
+of his broad forepaws.
+
+“Twinkly Eyes, are you coming?” called Mother Black Bear, wading back to
+where he stood.
+
+“I don’t want to know how to swim,” wept the little black rascal,
+backing away still farther.
+
+The next instant Mother Black Bear seized him by the scruff of the neck
+and dropped him straight into the pool!
+
+
+
+
+                                   IV
+                            BUT HE LEARNS IT
+
+
+He had been badly frightened, had Twinkly Eyes, the littlest bear cub,
+when Woof shoved him into the lake.
+
+But underneath it all he had had a comfortable feeling that Mother Black
+Bear would somehow come to the rescue. There had never been a time, in
+all the five months of his existence, when she had not solved his
+troubles for him.
+
+But now! To have Mother herself drop him in! It was too much! There was
+no hope anywhere. No one to rescue him! No way ever to get out again
+unless he found a way himself!
+
+As this fact dawned on him he struck out with his broad fore paws, his
+nose turned to shore. So vigorous were his efforts that the first thing
+his untrained little body did was to go down, down, down to the very
+bottom of the pond.
+
+But he held his breath, because he remembered the time before, when he
+had swallowed so much water.
+
+Somehow, he scarcely knew just how it happened, he found himself coming
+up again, safely enough.
+
+“Wuhr! Splurf!” he gasped.
+
+“Good work,” encouraged Mother Black Bear. “You see, you couldn’t drown
+if you wanted to!”
+
+But already Twinkly Eyes had gone under water again, and this time he
+made the mistake of losing his nerve and trying to squeal for help. Of
+course that filled his nose with water, and that frightened him still
+more, till the first thing he knew, he was flapping about on the bottom
+of the pond with the most awful feeling he had ever known. His eyes he
+kept tight closed to keep the water out and not knowing where he had
+landed made it all the worse.
+
+As an actual fact he hadn’t been under a minute before Mother Black Bear
+had pulled him out again. But to the five months cub, it seemed an hour.
+“Help, Help!” he gasped, the minute his nose came above water.
+
+His mother, seeing how terrified he had become, towed him gently to the
+bank and left him there to shake himself dry in the sun while she
+finished with his brother Woof.
+
+This fat fellow had been enjoying Twinkly’s struggles as he paddled
+slowly about the pond, and his little black eyes danced with laughter.
+
+But Twinkly had not given it up. That laughter was more than he could
+stand. “I’ll get you for that,” he growled in his high-pitched little
+voice, running around the bank to the point nearest his brother. With
+one mighty leap he landed fairly on top of Woof.
+
+And Woof? Why, he simply took one deep breath and went under, and
+Twinkly went under with him. But this time he was too mad to be afraid.
+He forgot even to shut his eyes. Being able to see how near the bottom
+of the pond really was did more than you can imagine to give him
+confidence in himself.
+
+The next thing Mother Black Bear knew, both cubs were swimming with all
+the zest of small boys.
+
+But her pleasure was short lived. For rattling through the underbrush at
+that very moment came Mrs. Porcupine with three prickly babies, headed
+straight for their pond!
+
+
+
+
+                                   V
+                       MRS. PORCUPINE SHOWS FIGHT
+
+
+Yes, sir, Mother Black Bear’s pleasure was short lived. For no sooner
+had the cubs started off side by side across the pond than there was a
+curious rattling sound behind her, like the rattling of dry twigs.
+
+She turned her head like a flash. It was Mrs. Porcupine, her quills
+rattling together as she walked. She was headed straight for the little
+pond, and Mother Black Bear knew there was going to be trouble.
+
+Not that she would have cared, had she been alone. She would have given
+it up willingly enough. In fact, had she been alone, she would have
+preferred a larger pond for her swim.
+
+But Mother Black Bear was not alone. She had fat little Woof and Twinkly
+Eyes to look out for. And it certainly was too bad, now that they were
+really making headway with their swimming lesson, to have to give up
+their pond. Twinkly had at last forgotten to be afraid, but if they had
+to give up the pond to Mrs. Porcupine, he might lose his nerve again,
+and all her work would have gone for nothing.
+
+Yet learn to swim he must, before ever another accident befell him. Of
+this Mother Black Bear felt very certain.
+
+She, therefore, eyed Mrs. Porcupine a bit anxiously; the more so when
+she spied the three little porcupines creeping along behind her.
+
+Of all the folk that live in the Deep Woods, there is probably none more
+absolutely fearless than Mrs. Porcupine, and for a very good reason. She
+knows that nothing can so much as touch her without getting badly hurt
+on her barbed quills.
+
+Where everyone else darts along the forest trails alert to catch the
+slightest sight or sound or smell that might mean an enemy, she strolls
+along with the utmost calm. She knows that no one can touch even her
+babies without getting hurt. For they are just as full of quills as she
+is, and their little quills are even sharper.
+
+But if she fears no attack, neither will she harm other animals unless
+attacked. It is only when they come too near that she strikes at them
+with her barbed tail.
+
+This afternoon she was headed for the self-same little pond that Mother
+Black Bear had selected, and for the self-same reason, as we shall see.
+When she saw Mother Black Bear and the two cubs, she didn’t stop for
+even an instant. She came right on to the edge of the pond as if there
+were no one already occupying it. She looked straight past Mother Black
+Bear as if she hadn’t been there at all, and grunted to her babies to
+climb on her back.
+
+Mother Black Bear gave a growl. “We got here first,” said she, crossly.
+But Mrs. Porcupine pretended not to hear. She just went on into the
+water with her babies on her back—she had flattened down her quills for
+them—and from all the concern she showed, you would have thought she
+didn’t know the bears were there. That was her way of showing fight. She
+hadn’t a doubt in the world that they would give their places to her.
+
+“Come—quick!” Mother Black Bear called to her cubs, losing her nerve as
+the quilly creature allowed herself to float over on the side the cubs
+were on. “Quick, I tell you!—Scramble!”
+
+[Illustration: [Bears & porcupine]]
+
+
+
+
+                                   VI
+                         DRIVEN FROM THEIR POND
+
+
+Well it was for Woof and Twinkly Eyes, the fat bear cubs, that they had
+learned obedience.
+
+For had they not scrambled out of the pond the instant their mother bade
+them they would have got badly hurt.
+
+Mrs. Porcupine is not a neighbor to be treated with disrespect, as
+Mother Black Bear knew. Had one of the cubs gone an inch too near her
+prickly babies, their little tails would have gone slap, slap right in
+the faces of the cubs, leaving their barbed quills behind them.
+
+That is why, even though Mrs. Black Bear felt she had first right to the
+swimming pool, she gave it up to Mrs. Porcupine the minute that lady
+entered the water.
+
+The bear cubs didn’t in the least understand why they should be asked to
+scramble out of the pond so hastily; but they didn’t stop to ask why.
+They just scrambled!
+
+Once safely on the bank, Mother Black Bear hurried them to the shelter
+of the tall ferns and bracken. Here she posted them side by side where
+they could see the pond.
+
+“Just watch,” she whispered, “and see—what you will see!”
+
+The pair settled themselves on their awkward little haunches, eyes
+dancing with excitement. They did love a mystery!
+
+Now Mrs. Porcupine is covered thick with quills, and these are as sharp
+as needles. When she meets an enemy she can make them stand out all over
+her back till she looks like a giant pincushion. But she can also
+flatten them down as smooth as a bale of hay.
+
+Just on the edge of the pond, she flattened them all so nicely that the
+three baby porcupines were able to clamber aboard and sail out into the
+pond on her back.
+
+“Gee! that must be fun,” thought Woof.
+
+“I’ll bet they fall off,” thought Twinkly Eyes.
+
+Mother Black Bear, who knew just what was going to happen, thought to
+herself, “I might have tried that myself if only I had thought in time!”
+
+“Unk wunk, unk wunk, unk wunk!” sang Mrs. Porcupine, pulling up the
+water lily pads and munching the juicy roots.
+
+“Unk wunk, unk wunk,” mimicked the little porcupines, nibbling at the
+bits she took in her mouth to see what they were like.
+
+Lower and lower swam Mrs. Porcupine, till the babies had to climb higher
+on her back to keep from getting wet. Mother Black Bear’s eyes fairly
+twinkled at what was about to happen.
+
+Lower still sank the living raft, till it was half under. The babies
+didn’t mind, once the surprise of getting wet was over. But the raft was
+sinking lower still. Now Mrs. Porcupine just had her nose out.
+
+Then—suddenly—she dived clear under!
+
+[Illustration: [Porcupine]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  VII
+                              SINK OR SWIM
+
+
+“Ooh! They’ll drown!” squealed Twinkly Eyes, as Mrs. Porcupine went
+under water with her babies on her back.
+
+But they didn’t!
+
+It had come so gradually, for one thing, that they weren’t the least bit
+frightened. Mrs. Porcupine has simply flattened her quills down smooth
+and taken them on her back while she swam out for lily pads. They had
+nibbled the pads and thought they were having the finest kind of ride.
+
+As Mrs. Porcupine went deeper into the water and the babies got their
+feet wet, they scarcely noticed, so warm was the water in the little
+pond and so sure were they that Mother was right there.
+
+When she sank till they were all half under, they only thought it fun.
+They had no idea of what was going to happen before they reached dry
+land again. Had they known what was going to happen, they would have
+been dreadfully frightened. In fact, they wouldn’t have ventured out at
+all, even on their mother’s back.
+
+It is often that way with people. If they knew just what was going to
+happen next, they would lose their nerve entirely. Yet generally when it
+does happen, it isn’t nearly so bad as they feared. Sometimes it isn’t
+bad at all.
+
+If the baby porcupines had had any idea that their mother was going to
+dive clear under water with them, they never in this world would have
+ventured one foot from shore. But that was one of the things Mrs.
+Porcupine kept to herself. She was very good at keeping things to
+herself, was Mrs. Porcupine, and it saved her a lot of trouble.
+
+At any rate, from being in the warm pond water with their feet safely
+planted on Mother’s back, the babies suddenly found themselves in the
+water with nothing under their feet but water, and Mother coming up away
+on the other side of the pond.
+
+The two cubs, watching from the bracken, smiled from ear to ear, their
+little black eyes dancing with enjoyment.
+
+“Come!” said Mrs. Porcupine, swimming about just out of reach. And the
+three baby porcupines simply had to strike out for themselves.
+
+To their own very great surprise they found that their hollow quills
+floated them beautifully. In fact, it is easier for a porcupine to swim
+than it is for almost any other animal.
+
+“What do you think of that?” Mother Black Bear asked her cubs.
+
+“Pretty slick,” said Woof.
+
+“Gee, I wish you’d taught me that way,” said Twinkly Eyes.
+
+“I’m going to teach you something else now,” said Mother Black Bear,
+“Come!” and she started up a water maple that grew hard by.
+
+“Oo—ee! I can’t climb,” Twinkly was just beginning, when he heard a
+curious rustling in the grass behind him. Turning his head he spied
+Writho, the Black Snake, making straight toward him!
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  “He found himself staring straight at Writho the black snake.”
+
+  —Page 23
+]
+
+
+
+
+                                  VIII
+                        WRITHO, THE BLACK SNAKE
+
+
+Now Twinkly Eyes had been perfectly certain a moment before that he
+could never climb that tree after his mother.
+
+The next instant there had been a queer little rustling in the tall
+grass, and he found himself staring straight at Writho the Black Snake.
+
+He had never seen a black snake before, but he would have known just
+from the smell of him that he was some one to avoid.
+
+“Climb! Climb!” rumbled Mother Black Bear from the water maple. Had he
+needed warning, her anxious tone would have been enough.
+
+And Twinkly Eyes climbed—my, how he scrambled up that tree! He didn’t
+once stop to wonder if he might fall off. He just drove his sharp little
+claws into the bark and up he went, faster than he would ever have
+dreamed possible!
+
+Mother Black Bear smiled to herself. She had learned something from
+watching Mrs. Porcupine dive from under the little porcupines. She had
+learned that if a youngster is given his choice of sinking or swimming
+he will find a way to swim. Of course, she could have leaped to the
+rescue the instant Writho became dangerous. She wouldn’t have let him
+hurt her cub! But when she saw him wriggling through the grass she knew
+that Twinkly Eyes would need no coaxing to take to the tree. In that she
+was not mistaken.
+
+Meantime, where was Woof? He had climbed the tree on the other side of
+the trunk, quite without urging, and he now came out on a limb some
+distance from the ground.
+
+“Good boy!” said Mother Black Bear, patting him fondly.
+
+This was too much for Twinkly Eyes. Had not Woof caused all of his
+troubles that afternoon by rolling him into the water? Then, too, he
+felt that he was a good boy himself for having scrambled up the tree so
+readily. To have his brother get all the praise!
+
+Fat little Woof was just licking up a delicious big black ant when
+Twinkly crept up behind him. The next instant he received a blow in the
+ribs that fairly knocked the breath out of him.
+
+The wrestling match that followed sent both cubs spinning from their
+branch. But so fat they were, and so roly-poly, that they minded their
+fall about as much as they would have a box on the ear. They just rolled
+over and over and over in each other’s arms all over the ferns and
+bracken, still punching and biffing one another.
+
+In fact, they rolled about so fast that the first thing they knew they
+had come down on something cold and slippery that writhed out from under
+them with an angry hiss.
+
+Woof, ever the quicker of the two, was back up his tree in a twinkling,
+but poor Twinkly Eyes was for the second time staring straight into the
+angry eyes of Writho. And the snake was between him and the tree!
+
+[Illustration: [Bear & snake]]
+
+
+
+
+                                   IX
+                            “WHOOF! WHOOF!”
+
+
+“Trouble again!” thought Twinkly Eyes, as he found himself staring into
+the angry face of Writho, the Black Snake.
+
+“You rolled right on me,” scolded Writho. “Haven’t you any consideration
+for other people at all?”
+
+“I’m sorry,” pleaded the cub, “I had no idea—”
+
+“You want to look where you’re going,” scolded Writho. “I could bite you
+for what you did!”
+
+“Oh, please don’t,” squealed Twinkly Eyes, retreating toward the pond,
+as Writho wriggled closer. Then he remembered Mrs. Porcupine and her
+family, whom he could hear grunting “unk wunk” as they nibbled lily
+pads. It would never do to back up too close to those prickly creatures.
+Neither would it do to turn his back on Writho, whose red forked tongue
+hissed at him from between two of the sharpest looking fangs he had ever
+seen.
+
+“Truly, I didn’t mean to step on you, Mr. Writho,” said the little bear,
+and his voice sounded very sorry and very much afraid.
+
+But he kept backing around nearer and nearer his tree, until it was
+right behind him.
+
+“Whoof, whoof!” he suddenly roared at the snake, stamping a fore foot
+loudly.
+
+Writho was so amazed that he stood stone still, and in that instant the
+cub had raced up his tree in safety.
+
+“Why didn’t you think of that before?” laughed Mother Bear. “Writho is
+an awful bluffer. He didn’t really mean to bite at all. The trouble was,
+it hurt his pride to be stepped on.”
+
+“So was I a bluffer,” confessed Twinkly Eyes.
+
+“No, you weren’t, my son. You could have killed him with one blow on the
+back of his neck, had he really tried to bite you.”
+
+“Wish I’d known,” sighed the cub. “I certainly had a bad scare.”
+
+“Now climb up here in the sun and dry your fur,” said Mother Black Bear,
+“while I talk to you. As a rule I don’t advise bluffing. I don’t advise
+making any threat you cannot back up with tooth or claw. Because once
+people find you out, they will have no more respect for you.
+
+“But with a coward and a bluffer like Writho it often works. Most snakes
+are cowards. All they want is to be left in peace. They’ll only attack a
+big animal like you when you step on them and make them mad. They hiss
+and stick out their tongues at us just for a bluff.
+
+“I’ve never seen Writho attack any animal larger than a hare or a
+chipmunk in all my life.
+
+“But you’ll do well to keep clear out of the way of Mrs. Porcupine and
+the whole porcupine family, big and little,” and she peered back into
+the pond, where the three prickly babies were just following their
+mother out of the pond.
+
+“Hello, there! I do believe they are making for our tree!”
+
+[Illustration: [Porcupines]]
+
+
+
+
+                                   X
+                        THE BETTER PART OF VALOR
+
+
+Mother Black Bear sighed as she saw Mrs. Porcupine making for her maple
+tree.
+
+“If she wants it, I suppose she will have to have it,” she told the
+cubs. “Wisdom is the better part of valor.”
+
+“What is wisdom?” asked Woof, the larger of the fat cubs.
+
+“Wisdom,” said Mother Black Bear, “in this case is giving up our tree
+rather than having a fight with Mrs. Porcupine about it.”
+
+“But we got here first,” shrilled Twinkly Eyes, the smaller cub. “She
+has no right to it.”
+
+“That makes no difference with Mrs. Porcupine,” growled Mother Black
+Bear. “She has no sense of right and wrong. She is too well armed with
+those awful quills to value other people’s rights. She just about has
+things all her own way in the Deep Woods, because few of us care to
+fight with her. It’s lucky that all she wants is her own stubborn way.
+She is a ve-ge-tarian, you know. She eats no meat.
+
+“Just why she should decide on our maple tree—of all the trees she has
+to choose between—is more than I can see. Though, of course, it IS easy
+for the little ones to climb.”
+
+“Will they have to climb up there in the sun and dry off, too?” asked
+Twinkly Eyes.
+
+“Where else would they get any sun?” asked Woof, gazing up at the forest
+roof. In this part of the woods the trees all grew so high and so close
+together that their upper branches interlaced, so that one only got a
+patch of the sky here and there.
+
+Woof, peering through the green gloom, could see Mrs. Porcupine and the
+three little Porcupines slowly making toward their maple.
+
+“Don’t let her have it,” he begged Mother Black Bear, who loved nothing
+better than to see a scrap. “You could lick her, Mother!”
+
+“Well, no, I shouldn’t like to try it, not with you youngsters along,”
+she answered, swinging her long head from side to side uneasily, as she
+prepared to lead the way to the ground. “Your father might, but I
+shouldn’t like to try it.”
+
+“Why, the old ‘Unk Wunk!’”
+
+“First she chased us out of our pond, now out of our tree,” complained
+Twinkly Eyes. “Can’t we bluff her off, the way I did Writho, the black
+snake?”
+
+“I should say not,” said Mother Black Bear in alarm. “Nothing on this
+earth could frighten Mrs. Porcupine. Come along here,” and she reached
+up and gave each cub a spank that sent them hurrying to the ground. It
+was not a moment too soon, for as they landed on one side of the trunk
+the Porcupine family started up the other, though for all the sign they
+made, Mother Black Bear and the cubs didn’t even exist.
+
+But the latter’s peace of mind was short-lived.
+
+“We are certainly going to have a thunder-storm,” exclaimed Mother Black
+Bear, as she sniffed the air.
+
+“Are you scared, Mother?” asked Twinkly Eyes.
+
+“Well, that all depends on how fast you cubs can beat it out of these
+woods!”
+
+
+
+
+                                   XI
+                        A TIP ON THUNDER-STORMS
+
+
+“No sir-ee! I certainly don’t like the looks of things,” said Mother
+Black Bear, hurrying the cubs through the green gloom of the forest
+aisles.
+
+“Mrs. Porcupine is welcome to our maple tree! There’s going to be a
+thunder-storm, and it’s going to be a big one,” and she pointed her nose
+skyward to sniff.
+
+Out over the lake the black clouds were banking up over the sky at a
+great rate. The cubs crowded close to her sides, as the rolling and
+rumbling of clouds banging together came to their ears.
+
+The air was full of the peculiar fresh odor you always notice before a
+shower.
+
+“Are you scared, mother?” Twinkly Eyes kept asking.
+
+Mother Black Bear glanced about, this way and that.
+
+On every side, as far as she could see, there were just five or six
+kinds of trees, oaks, poplars, willows, maples, elms and ash trees, all
+growing to nearly the same height. Here and there was a blackened trunk
+standing gaunt and naked where the lightning had struck. For these
+trees, as every woodsman knows, are the very ones most likely to be
+struck.
+
+“I don’t like to get caught in these woods,” insisted Mother Black Bear,
+starting off at a brisk pace along the southern border of the lake. It
+was all the cubs could do to follow, paddling along on their chubby legs
+with panting breath and red tongues lolling from their little black
+muzzles.
+
+“I can’t keep up,” whispered Twinkly Eyes who brought up the rear.
+
+“Lightning waits for no one,” rumbled Mother Black Bear, refusing to
+slow down even a mite. A nearer crash of thunder, as the first big
+raindrops began to fall, sent her forward on the run.
+
+“Where are we going?” asked Woof, who rather enjoyed the excitement.
+
+“We’re going to find the kind of trees lightning doesn’t strike,” Mother
+Black Bear flung behind her without stopping.
+
+“Beech, birch, chestnut, basswood!” She broke into a run.
+
+“Oh, mother—those white birches over behind Pollywog pond,” gasped Woof,
+trying his best to keep up with her through the pelting rain.
+
+“Just where we are headed,” rumbled Mother Black Bear. “If only—we can
+reach them—in time!”
+
+A blinding flash of lightning darted down the trunk of a huge old oak to
+the left. This time the thunder seemed to come at the same instant.
+
+Mother Black Bear looked back over her shoulder. Woof was close
+behind,—but where was Twinkly Eyes?
+
+She turned instantly to find out.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XII
+                          A WILD MOTHER’S LOVE
+
+
+At the instant of the lightning flash that came so near, Mother Black
+Bear had been racing for dear life to get to the safe shelter of the
+birch grove.
+
+She knew that lightning is not so apt to strike in a birch grove as in
+the giant oaks where the storm had found them.
+
+But then the cubs had both been close at her heels. The instant she
+missed Twinkly Eyes she turned back to find him. He lay flat on the
+ground, his heels in the air, just where he had tumbled when the big
+crash came. He was so frightened that he could scarce regain his feet.
+His legs trembled till he could go no further.
+
+Mother Black Bear tried her best to carry him in her mouth, but he was
+so fat and roly-poly and wiggled so at every clap of thunder that she
+had to give it up.
+
+Woof, who was close at her heels every minute, was all for climbing the
+tallest tree they could find, but Mother Black Bear selected a
+comparatively open patch with no tree higher than its neighbors; and
+there she crouched beside the cubs, covering them with her own body when
+the big drops turned to hailstones.
+
+“It’s bad to be caught among the oaks in a thunder storm,” she told the
+cubs as they waited. “It’s bad to be caught under any tall tree. Better
+far, when a storm comes up, abandon your tree and wait out in the open
+where there is nothing to attract the lightning.
+
+“There are only two things in all the Deep Woods that a bear ought
+really to be afraid of, and one of those is lightning—for there’s no
+fighting back,” said Mother Black Bear.
+
+“What is the other thing you are afraid of, Mother?” asked Woof, “Mrs.
+Porcupine?”
+
+“No, I’m not afraid of Mrs. Porcupine, if I did think best to let her
+have our tree. I just believe in keeping out of her way, that’s all.”
+
+“Then what is the other thing you are afraid of?” asked Twinkly Eyes,
+whose trembling had ceased as the storm passed around to the south.
+
+“Men with guns,” said Mother Black Bear im-press-ive-ly. (When you say a
+thing im-press-ive-ly, you try to impress it on other people’s minds, so
+they will never forget.) “You can’t fight men with guns. That is once
+when a bear just simply has to run away.”
+
+“That would suit Twinkly Eyes, all right,” laughed Woof, poking his
+brother in the ribs. “Eh, there?”
+
+The smaller cub gave a growl. “Just because I didn’t want to learn to
+swim!—I’ll teach you to be afraid yourself, one of these days! You see
+if I don’t!” he growled in his baby throat, as he thought of how Woof
+had pushed him into the lake.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XIII
+                         TWINKLY EYES GETS EVEN
+
+
+He’d get even, somehow, Twinkly told himself, seizing his brother’s
+nose; and as the fat cubs clinched the storm was forgotten.
+
+Mother Black Bear gave them each a cuff, then stalked away, leaving them
+unprotected in the pelting hail.
+
+Such clawing and biting and squealing as followed you never did see!
+
+The clouds rolled away toward Mount Olaf and the hail changed to rain,
+and the rain suddenly gave way to a red glow in the West where the sun
+goes to bed. But the cubs fought on.
+
+Mother Black Bear stood and watched, feeling that they were gaining a
+training in the use of their muscles that would stand them in good stead
+later on. She would interfere only if she saw that one of them was
+really getting hurt.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  “Such clawing and biting and squealing—you never did see!”
+
+  —Page 38
+]
+
+Now just behind the circle of brushwood in which they had sought safety
+from the thunder storm there was an old root that sloped straight down a
+15-foot incline.
+
+To this Twinkly was trying his best to shove his brother, and though he
+was somewhat lighter than Woof, weighing a bare six pounds to Woof’s six
+and a half, he was also quicker on his feet, and he did finally succeed
+in backing the other up to the incline.
+
+True, there was no lake at the bottom, as there had been when Woof
+shoved him down the bank in his sleep, but at least the teaser should
+find out what it felt like to be sent rolling in a helpless ball.
+
+With a sudden wrench he sprang free, just as he had the larger cub
+humped up at the top of the slide, defending his head with all four
+paws. The result was that fat Woof rolled like a rubber ball straight
+down the incline, whirling around and around till he came up, plunk,
+against the trunk of a tree.
+
+But to Twinkly Eyes’ surprise Woof not only picked himself up with a
+laugh of enjoyment, but he raced back up the slope to try it again,
+ducking his tiny head and doubling up into a ball for the purpose.
+
+Again and again he tobogganed down that slope, Twinkly staring after him
+wide-eyed. So that was the way he had thought to get even!
+
+He was so surprised that he stood clear up on his hind legs, staring.
+Then he tried it himself!
+
+[Illustration: [Bears]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  XIV
+                        A DIFFERENT TWINKLY EYES
+
+
+Summer passed, with its lessons. And thanks to Mother Black Bear, there
+wasn’t an animal his size in all the Deep Woods that Twinkly Eyes was
+afraid of, when at last the long sleep came.
+
+Emerging in the spring from the snug den in which he and his brother had
+drowsed away the long months, snuggled close into their mother’s furs,
+he was a different Twinkly Eyes.
+
+He was both older and wiser,—and oh, so much thinner! His voice had
+deepened, too.
+
+Soon he began hunting by himself. For Mother Black Bear now had two new
+little roly-poly cubs. And sometimes he didn’t find much to eat.
+
+One morning he met Tattle-tale the Jay.
+
+Now Tattletale was not really a mean fellow: he was just mischievous. He
+loved to play pranks. His tattling was for the most part a warning to
+the smaller forest folk of the approach of their enemies, Cooper the
+Hawk and Bobby Lynx, and Mother Black Bear.
+
+When any of these were out for game, he would fly from one tree-top to
+another just ahead of them, screaming his warning at the top of his
+lungs, till there wasn’t a hare or a wood mouse anywhere that did not
+have a chance to run to hiding.
+
+Now, though, he was so furious with the Red Squirrels for smashing two
+of Mrs. Jay’s pretty eggs that he made up his mind to get even. It never
+once entered his head that he was the first offender. For if he hadn’t
+begun the quarrel by robbing Shadow Tail, of his poor little hoard of
+seeds, Mother Red Squirrel would never have harmed the eggs.
+
+If he had thought, he might have called it square, instead of making a
+bad matter worse. But Tattletale didn’t stop to think. All he could see
+was his own grievance. Besides, Mrs. Jay felt so bad about the eggs that
+he had to promise her something that would soothe her ruffled feelings.
+
+The very next morning, just as the first pink rays of the rising sun
+began glinting off the dew-wet leaves in the open places, he was
+flitting about after grasshoppers when he spied Twinkly Eyes, the little
+Black Bear, slouching along the little trail to Pollywog Pond.
+
+“Good morning, Mr. Bear,” he chirped.
+
+“Good morning,” rumbled the yearling cub, peering and blinking into the
+treetops at the flash of blue wings. Twinkly’s eyes are very poor,
+though his ears are so sharp and his nose sharper. He could hear the
+squeak of a wood mouse a long way off, and he could tell just by
+sniffing whether or not he would find those delicious sour-tasting ants
+underneath a fallen log.
+
+“How do you find the hunting these days?” asked Tattletale politely.
+
+“Oh, nothing extra—nothing extra at all,” grumbled Twinkly Eyes.
+“Haven’t had much of anything but roots and frogs so far this spring.
+Blueberries aren’t ripe yet, there won’t be any nuts till fall, to say
+nothing of green corn. And a bear of my size can’t make much of a living
+off of grubs and mice, of course. I do wish I could find a bee tree!”
+
+“I don’t suppose, now,” ventured the Jay, “that you’d be interested in a
+nest of young squirrels?”
+
+“Try me—just try me once!” chuckled the little bear.
+
+“All right; see that old oak?” directed Tattletale, flying on ahead.
+
+[Illustration: [Bear]]
+
+
+
+
+                                   XV
+                          THERE’S MANY A SLIP
+
+
+Fortunately for most of us, there is many a slip ’twixt the cup and the
+lip, which only means that many a plan is laid that doesn’t pan out just
+as it was expected to.
+
+It was so in the case of Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear. It was
+lucky for him and it was lucky for Shadow Tail, the Red Squirrel, and it
+was lucky for Tattletale, the Jay. For if Tattletale had really been the
+means of leading the little Bear to Mother Red Squirrel’s nest, she’d
+never have forgiven Tattletale, but surely would have gone back and
+broken the rest of the eggs on which he had left Mrs. Jay sitting so
+patiently.
+
+And if Twinkly Eyes had really caught the squirrel babies, as he wanted
+to, he’d have made such an enemy of every squirrel in all the woods
+around that he’d never have known peace again. For they’d have followed
+through the treetops, everywhere he went, scolding him and warning the
+mice and frogs and snakes to beware of his coming.
+
+But there was one thing Tattletale the Jay had not stopped to consider
+when he led Twinkly Eyes to the tree in which Mother Red Squirrel had
+located. He didn’t stop to realize that the squirrel babies were far too
+clever to be caught napping.
+
+No sooner did Shadow Tail and his brothers hear Twinkly’s great claws
+scrambling up the tree trunk than they promptly leaped into another
+tree, and the bear had his climb for his trouble.
+
+Sliding down the trunk like a bag of meal, he tried the next tree, on
+the Jay’s advice, but with the same success. The little squirrels raced
+from branch to branch around him, hurling taunts and laughter at him,
+till he really began to be angry. But it was Mr. Jay he was angry with!
+
+“See here,” he grumbled, “I do believe you have just been playing a
+prank on me!”
+
+“Oh, no, I assure you,” began Tattletale, flying down beside the bear.
+
+But Twinkly Eyes would have none of it. He suddenly remembered how often
+the Jay had warned his quarry away from him by flying just overhead and
+shrieking, “Look out, look out! A bear!”
+
+With this memory bitter upon him, he made a sudden slap at Tattletale
+with his great barbed paw. But the bird was too quick for him. He was
+back in the tree tops before the little Bear knew what had happened.
+
+“All right,” said Tattletale, “if you feel that way about it! You can’t
+do me any harm,” and he was off with a flash of his blue wings.
+
+For a while Twinkly wandered on, hungrily listening for the squeak of a
+shrew mouse. Then suddenly he pricked up his ears. It was—it certainly
+was the buzzing of a honey bee! It came from a little wild rose bush.
+
+Now a honey bee meant but one thing to Twinkly Eyes—a bee tree, and a
+bee tree meant honey. He would follow the sound when the bee flew home,
+and then—Um! His mouth fairly watered.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XVI
+                              THE BEE TREE
+
+
+As Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, heard that buzzing from the wild
+rose bushes, he forgot his troubles with the Jay.
+
+Indeed, he fairly danced for joy. For had he not been waiting greedily
+all spring for the sound of a honey bee?
+
+Now he would find the bee tree, and feast on honey to his heart’s
+content! For of all the good things in the great green woods—mice and
+berries and grubs, and fish and frogs, and sour-tasting little red ants,
+to say nothing of juicy roots, and the nuts of autumn—he loved nothing
+half so well as honey.
+
+He had had a taste just once, but he had never forgotten!
+
+While wrestling with his brother one day the spring before, when they
+were three months cubs, their mother had suddenly called them to follow
+and trailing straight after a bee her sharp ears had discovered, she led
+them to a hollow tree where the yellow comb lay in great fragrant
+chunks.
+
+Twinkly Eyes licked his chops at the memory. Then Mother Black Bear had
+shown them how to hide their noses and shut their eyes when the bees
+came too near these unprotected places. Otherwise the angry insects
+could try as hard as they would, and they could not reach through the
+glossy fur.
+
+Twinkly Eyes had escaped without a sting and he had decided in his
+infant mind that Mother was altogether too cautious for any use.
+
+This year Mother Black Bear had a new set of cubs to teach and train,
+and Twinkly and his brother were living in bachelor quarters.
+
+A moment Twinkly watched, and then the bee had all the honey she could
+carry. Buzzing happily, she started back through the woods toward an
+open glade on the other side of Pollywog Pond.
+
+Twinkly followed, his sharp ears guiding him where his little
+near-sighted eyes could not, till his eager sniffings brought to his
+nostrils the first faint fragrance of the bee tree.
+
+Now other bees began to join the first one, till there was quite a
+little swarm headed for a hollow pine—a great, gaunt tree that had been
+hollowed out by lightning and now stood, scarred and blackened, on the
+top of a hillock.
+
+“It’s a pretty good world, after all,” Twinkly Eyes decided, as he
+ambled up the slope.
+
+[Illustration: [Bees]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  XVII
+                        TWINKLY EYES AND TROUBLE
+
+
+“Yes, sir, it’s a pretty good world after all,” mused Twinkly Eyes, the
+little Black Bear, as he neared the bee tree.
+
+Certainly everything about him promised a blissful day.
+
+Warblers sung happily from every treetop, swallowtail butterflies danced
+above the wild rose bushes, and puffy white clouds shadowed the blue of
+the sky. There was just enough breeze to feel good as it ruffled his
+glossy fur. Then too, blueberries were nearly ripe, and the fragrance of
+wild grape vines promised delights to come.
+
+But best of all was that heavy hum of a thousand bees carrying their
+golden honey into the hollow pine tree.
+
+It was a tall old pine that had once been struck by lightning. One side
+was scored and blackened; near the top was a small dark hole, into which
+the returning bees poured steadily, while others poured steadily out
+again.
+
+And oh! The wonderful odor that came from that hole! How it made his
+mouth water! There was nothing whatever to indicate that trouble might
+be near.
+
+Now Twinkly Eyes had been in his mother’s charge the first time he had
+climbed a bee tree, and thanks to her warnings he had escaped unstung.
+It seemed to him now, as he thought of that wonderful day, that his
+mother had been altogether more cautious than there was any need of
+being.
+
+But, no sooner had his claws begun to rattle upon the trunk of the
+hollow pine than the buzzing grew louder, and it seemed to Twinkly Eyes
+that there was a new note in it, quite different from the contented hum
+he had heard before. In fact, he began to wonder if there might be
+trouble after all. Still, he was not one to give up at this point! The
+sweet comb would be worth a lot of trouble! He scrambled faster, till
+one paw clutched the edge of the hole.
+
+Instantly the bees had settled thick upon his coat, trying their best to
+ram their red-hot stings into his glossy fur, but it was too thick for
+them, and Twinkly minded not at all.
+
+Suddenly a red-hot needle struck him on the lip.
+
+“Hoof—woof!” he protested, licking the burnt place. It hurt dreadfully.
+
+Another needle pricked him, this time on the tip of his protruding
+tongue. This time Twinkly slapped so angrily that he flattened the bee,
+but it didn’t help his tongue, and his lip began to swell.
+
+But there was no time to think about that. As he reached for a better
+hold, his paw tore a strip of the rotten bark away, and he had to shut
+his eyes and cover his nose with his paw while the angry swarm darted
+about his head in a buzzing fury.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XVIII
+                        TWINKLY SHOWS HIS METTLE
+
+
+No, indeed, Twinkly Eyes was not the Bear to give up just when he had
+one paw in the honey!
+
+For the same paw that covered his nose from the angry insects, as he
+clung to the old pine, also brought to his tongue the most wonderful
+flavor he had ever known.
+
+All the smarting and burning in tongue and lip could not spoil that
+flavor. He must have more of it, and that at once! For what had he
+watched and waited these long weeks if not for this very chance? Was he
+to be driven from the feast by a little brown insect with a barb in the
+end of its tail?
+
+No indeed! No mere honey bee could make him turn back now.
+
+Struggling still nearer that dark round hole from which the fragrance
+issued he drew a long breath and plunged in.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  “My how his little black eyes danced with the delight of it!”
+
+  —Page 55
+]
+
+Another needle point, red hot, stung him, this time on the lid of his
+right eye; and if the sting on his lip had tortured him, this was
+something far, far worse. He whimpered unhappily, and rubbed the sore
+place gently against his upraised foreleg.
+
+My! how those bees did buzz and threaten him! But they couldn’t reach
+him through his fur, so long as he kept his face protected. He clung to
+his hole just the same, and by and by he dug his free paw deep into the
+honeycomb within and brought a great luscious chunk to his mouth.
+
+Now that their little store was really disappearing, despite all they
+could do the bees at once began setting to work to rescue some of their
+treasure. Still there were enough left on guard to give Twinkly cause
+for watchfulness.
+
+He grabbed another mouthful, and gulped it down, with the bees that
+still clung to it. My, how his little black eyes danced with the delight
+of it!
+
+If only that eyelid would not smart so dreadfully! It was swelling, too,
+and he could hardly see out of that eye at all.
+
+His tongue was swollen, too, on the tip end where the bee had stung him,
+till it began to feel so big he feared he wouldn’t be able to close his
+jaws in another minute.
+
+But he would not give up! Not Twinkly Eyes! Not till every last smell of
+that honey was gone! Now that he had risked it thus far, he reasoned, he
+might as well have something to sweeten his pain.
+
+The little Black Bear was nothing if not persistent, and persistence is
+a virtue that stands one in good stead in the wilderness.
+
+Then suddenly a most surprising thing happened.
+
+[Illustration: [Bear]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  XIX
+                          DOWN BUT NOT DOWNED
+
+
+A great many things can happen to a bear cub that he doesn’t expect to
+happen.
+
+It was so with Twinkly Eyes. No sooner had he made up his mind to enjoy
+his feast in the bee tree in spite of his stings when—zipp! Off came a
+great long strip of the rotten bark! And while it disclosed even more of
+the yellow comb, it also happened to be the very strip of bark to which
+the little bear was clinging with his left forepaw.
+
+Now his right paw was deep in the honey at the time, and a bear cannot
+cling in the top of a pine tree with his hind legs alone. The result was
+that there was a wild scrambling, then the sound of claws rattling
+noisily over the bark that they could not get a grip in, and finally the
+snapping of a hazel bush that stood just beneath.
+
+Twinkly Eyes had come down like a bag of meal!
+
+He gave one big grunt, then a series of whimpers. For even if you are a
+yearling cub and your bones are padded with great heavy muscles and
+thick fur, it isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world to fall
+crashing out of the top of a bee tree.
+
+Fortunately for Twinkly Eyes, he had hugged the trunk just enough, as he
+descended, to break the fall. Then, too, he landed on the hazel bush,
+which sprang under him in a way still further to soften his landing. But
+even at that, things whirled about him for a few minutes there.
+
+Then he arose, a bit groaningly, it is true—what with his swollen eyelid
+and his burning lip and tongue. And what do you suppose he did next?
+
+Most anyone would have felt that he had had enough adventure to last him
+for some time. But not so Twinkly Eyes! That was not the kind of mettle
+he was made of!
+
+Though his little near-sighted eyes could not see the crack that now
+reached for nearly his own length down the hollow trunk, his keen brown
+nose told him that the scent of honey was even stronger than before.
+And, though his black sides already stuck out, his mouth still watered
+for more.
+
+He sniffed longingly, then tried to soothe his swelling eyelid with his
+paw. He certainly felt bunged up, to say nothing of the jolting he had
+just received. He couldn’t see out of his right eye at all now, and
+there was a lump the size of a walnut on his lip.
+
+But, oh, the delicious fragrance! The honey he had waited a year to
+find! In his long winter’s sleep he had dreamed of it more than once,
+and licked his paws in vain. Throughout the lean spring, as he grubbed
+for roots, he had listened in vain for the very buzzing that now filled
+the air all about him.
+
+It was too much! He would try again!
+
+
+
+
+                                   XX
+                       TWINKLY APPLIES FIRST AID
+
+
+There was no resisting that odor of wild honey dripping from the
+comb—not to one who loved wild honey like Twinkly Eyes, the little Black
+Bear!
+
+He must have more! His eye swollen shut, his tongue stinging like fury
+with the hot flame of the bee’s sting, he pulled himself together and
+started up the tree again.
+
+The bees were working like mad to carry away at least a part of their
+store before he should devour it; but they were not too busy to try once
+more to drive him off. A fourth bee gave up his life to thrust his
+barbed and poisonous sting into his nose. But Twinkly Eyes only became
+the more stubborn in his desire to clean out the tree.
+
+Bracing himself in the crotch of a branch just beneath the opening, he
+thrust one paw in deeply and brought it back dripping with yellow liquid
+and dotted with black bees. Bees and all went into his eager mouth, and
+he crunched joyously handful after handful. Once a bee tried to come too
+near, and with one sticky sweep of his honeyed paw he imprisoned the
+insect, whose wings stuck so fast he could only buzz helplessly,
+traveling back and forth from the place where the bees wanted the honey
+to the place where Twinkly Eyes wanted to have it.
+
+Thus, in time, the treasure of the pine tree disappeared,—and my, you
+should have seen how that little bear’s sides stuck out! It was a lucky
+thing for him that the honey was all gone, I tell you!
+
+And what a sight he presented, as he slid down the trunk and ambled off
+to Pollywog Pond! His face by this time was smeared with honey from ear
+to ear. Flying leaves and little chips of bark clung to it as if they
+had been pasted there. Add to that his swollen eyelid, which by now had
+raised a great black welt, and his nose and his mouth all lumpy from the
+poisonous stings, and one would certainly have said he had been in a
+fight.
+
+But he felt so perfectly blissful with his sides rounded out with honey
+the way they were that he wasn’t the least bit sorry. Not Twinkly Eyes!
+He would have done the same thing over again the next day had he had the
+chance.
+
+He knew just what to do with his wounds, and he did it. Searching along
+the banks until he found some particularly sticky clay, he plastered it
+freely all over his tortured face until he looked, if possible, worse
+than before.
+
+But he felt a whole lot better, let me tell you. The wet clay soon began
+to draw the poison, and besides, bears get over things like that quicker
+than human beings would. So by the time he had had a nice long snooze
+and a drink and a stretch, and the round yellow moon began to rise from
+behind the firs, Twinkly Eyes was ready for almost anything.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXI
+                       MAMMY COTTONTAIL’S SECRET
+
+
+Now Twinkly Eyes had a lively bump of curiosity on that furry black head
+of his. He was much interested in other people’s affairs. And he used to
+lie hidden by the hour, just to find out what other wood-folk were up
+to. But of all the dwellers in that wilderness, none interested him so
+much as the Cottontail family. That is, none except his old enemy the
+porcupine!
+
+One day, lying under a clump of high-bush blue-berry bushes, in the
+early spring sunshine, he learned a secret.
+
+“We have a secret at our house! Truly, truly, truly,” sang Betty
+Bluebird, sitting on a fencepost with her red blouse turned to the
+warming glow of the early morning sunshine.
+
+“We have too, we have too, we have too!” trilled Robin Red-breast,
+running along the roadway with a weather eye for worms.
+
+And down in the marsh behind the barn, Conqueree, the Red Winged
+Blackbird, was shrilling at the Crows like a little soldier in red
+epaulettes: “Clear out! Or I’ll put you out! I’m Conqueree! Conqueree!
+Conqueree!”
+
+“You cawn’t, cawn’t, cawn’t!” the crows retorted, trying to drown out
+his threats with a hoarse chorus of denial, as they swirled around and
+around him, keeping just barely out of reach of his swift beak. “We have
+secrets we won’t tell! Such secrets!—Round, gray green secrets, four to
+a nest, hidden away up in the tops of the tallest pine trees! And you
+cawn’t, cawn’t, cawn’t guess what they are!—you cawn’t.”
+
+“Trust a crow to tell all he knows!” chuckled Daddy and Mammy
+Cottontail, crouched on guard before a small round hole scooped out of
+the turf and lined with bits of fur from Mammy Cottontail’s breast. “We
+could tell a pretty cunning secret ourselves, only we have better sense
+than to shout our affairs to the four winds,” and their slim ears
+waggled wisely.
+
+Sure enough, packed snugly back under a blanket of dried grass, six of
+the softest, roundest little wriggly-nosed babies that ever made a bunny
+feel like kicking his heels in the moonlight slept with their long ears
+folded close along their backs and their long hind legs doubled up under
+their fuzzy brown bodies.
+
+“Do you suppose they’ve all got the same kind of secrets?” whispered
+Mammy Cottontail delightedly.
+
+“Nothing to compare with ours,” sniffed Daddy, then stopped suddenly, as
+the little Bear snapped a twig in his effort to creep nearer.
+
+[Illustration: [Rabbits]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXII
+                       ONE OF TWINKLY’S NEIGHBORS
+
+
+Twinkly Eyes had roamed to quite another part of the woods when the
+twilight stillness was pierced by a sudden screech from up on Mount
+Olaf.
+
+Mammy Cottontail’s timid heart quailed within her. Mother Red Squirrel
+could scarce be blamed for all but dropping from her limb; and even
+Father Red Fox looked anxious at the thought of the red-brown pups in
+the rocky den on the hill-top.
+
+Far down at the Valley Farm, “Lynx!” whispered the Boy, wide-eyed, “Hope
+he isn’t coming down to make trouble for our wood folks. He’s mighty
+fond of baby bunnies.”
+
+Away up almost at the top of Mount Olaf a great cat, three times as
+heavy as barnyard Tamas, was creeping, creeping, creeping along through
+the underbrush, on great furry feet that made no sound.
+
+His broad ears bore little tufts at their tips, his jowls were squared
+off with the most ferocious-looking whiskers, and his thick tail was no
+more than a stub.
+
+“Children,” quavered Mammy Cottontail, “That was a lynx! Now, I want to
+tell you something, and I want you to listen with all your ears, because
+it is very, very serious!
+
+“Old man Lynx and his family live up on that mountain top, and while
+they don’t come down this far once in a coon’s age, we’ve got to be
+prepared! Because it would be a terrible thing if they did! Terrible for
+us, and terrible for everyone we know!
+
+“I’ll tell you why he screeched that way! It was to scare timid folks
+like us, so that we’d jump and betray our whereabouts. Yes’m, that’s
+exactly what he screeched for! To make us jump!
+
+“Because, you see, when Mother Nature invented little brown bunnies and
+grouse hens and muskrats and all the rest of us forest folk, she knew
+exactly what she was about. And she gave us our brown coats so that we’d
+match the ground, and couldn’t be seen by the big prowling creatures
+that are always trying to have rabbit and grouse for dinner. And just so
+long as we keep as still as field mice, we stand a fighting chance of
+not being seen.
+
+“But Old Man Lynx knows this as well as we do. He knows that when he
+goes hunting o’nights, none but the foolish will be stirring a hair’s
+breadth from their own warm beds. And if there are no foolish ones that
+he can sneak up on, with his great padded paws that tip-toe so silently
+through the underbrush, he screams in the hope that it will startle some
+of us so dreadfully that we will forget to keep still, and jump.”
+
+“It’s enough to make any one jump out of his skin,” said Daddy.
+
+“But that’s exactly what the Old Man figures on. And if you can’t
+control your nerves any better than to jump when he screeches, he can
+see exactly where you are! If he’s anywhere near, that is! Well, you
+children had better go to sleep now. But just you remember this: Lie
+still when you hear him scream, and ten to one he’ll never know where
+you are.”
+
+“Yes, Mammy,” whispered six timid little voices.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXIII
+                         INTRODUCING BOBBY LYNX
+
+
+It was not often that Old Man Lynx gave voice to the pangs of hunger.
+For he knew that for every grouse or hare or baby fox he startled into
+betraying its whereabouts, he scared a dozen so far away that it made
+hunting harder next time.
+
+But tonight he was teaching some one else the trick.
+
+At the very time that Father Red Fox was viewing his own red-brown pups
+with such mingled pride and amusement, and Mother Douglas was driving
+Father Douglas out of the old oak tree, lest he should step on one of
+the squirrel babies, and Mammy and Daddy Cottontail were taking turn and
+turn about guarding the six brown bunnies on the edge of the cornfield,
+Madam Lynx—away up on the top of Mt. Olaf—was just as proud as any one
+of two great, scraggly kittens, as heavy-pawed and bob-tailed and
+fierce-looking as anything that could be imagined.
+
+At first even these ferocious creatures were as blind and helpless and
+appealing as any tame kittens could have been, though without their
+grace. And as soon as they learned the use of their legs, they rolled
+and tumbled, and growled and spat, and boxed one another about, fully as
+mischievously as had Fluff, the maltese kitten at the farm, when she and
+her little brothers lived in the basket behind the kitchen stove.
+
+But Old Man Lynx was kept mighty busy, let me tell you, as soon as they
+were weaned and could eat meat; for the two youngsters were such
+ravenous creatures and they grew so fast, and the mountain air was so
+stimulating, that it just seemed as if he couldn’t bring in enough to
+keep his share of the larder filled.
+
+So it was by way of teaching young Bob Kitten and his brother how to
+hunt that old Man Lynx had screamed in such a blood-curdling manner.
+
+Decidedly Wriggly Nose and Shadow Tail, and even fat young Frisky Fox,
+were going to have a very much harder time of it making their way in the
+world, now that there was a new young lynx on the top of Mount Olaf.
+
+Twinkly Eyes was later to share a couple of interesting adventures with
+young Bobby Lynx.
+
+[Illustration: [Lynx]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXIV
+                              A BUNNY BALL
+
+
+Mammy Cottontail, the little brown hare, had been living in the Old
+Apple Orchard for several weeks now and the bunnies were half-grown.
+
+One moonlight night toward the end of June—the self-same night that
+Twinkly Eyes had found the bee tree, Mammy said:
+
+“Children, we are going on a frolic tonight. So come along, Flap Ears
+and Furtive Feet, and Wriggly Nose and Paddy Paws, and Fuzzy Wuzz and
+Hippity Skip! Daddy’s there waiting for us now!”
+
+Through the moonlight woods she led them in one long line along a little
+briar-grown rabbit path, the youngsters kicking their heels high in
+their excitement.
+
+Now they crept under a patch of huckleberry bushes, and now they hugged
+the shadow of a grapevine. Straight across the blueberry burn, they
+galloped,—under the fruit-laden bushes, then across a corner of wild
+meadow where the daisies gleamed high above their heads, and all about
+them was the aroma of sweet fern.
+
+Their path ran zig-zag, this way and that, here circling back upon
+itself, there darting off at right angles, till anyone trying to follow
+it would have had an interesting time, to say the least.
+
+But after various turnings and twistings through the woods, and
+doublings around the rocky hilltop behind Pollywog Pond, they found
+themselves away back on the border of a little glade, an opening in the
+trees where the grass was short and fine like that in a fairy ring. And
+the moon streamed down, making it all as light as day.
+
+Here on every side were outposts, and the mere crunching of a dead leaf
+by any creature larger than a rabbit would be the signal for the warning
+tap-tap of the long hind feet of those on guard.
+
+Within the circle of the moonlit glade a dozen hares were already
+assembled, and more were coming in from every side.
+
+Mammy Cottontail drew up in the shadow of a tree trunk, that the
+youngsters might get their courage up before joining those in the open.
+Soon there were half a hundred bunnies, young and old, together,
+scampering about and having a glorious good time. They pranced and they
+danced and they raced one another. They leapt back and forth across a
+log and they leap-frogged over one another, kicking their heels to the
+moon. There was never a sound to break the stillness save the chirping
+of crickets away back in the meadow they had left.
+
+Then, so suddenly that Mammy’s heart gave an extra beat, there came the
+warning thump! thump! thump! just behind them!
+
+[Illustration: [Rabbit]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXV
+                    TWINKLY EYES ATTENDS THE FROLIC
+
+
+Now Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, had no idea when he awoke of
+all that was going on so near him.
+
+But ambling down to Pollywog Pond for a drink after his feast of honey,
+the sound of his crunching over a dead twig was enough to warn the sharp
+ears that ringed about the rabbit frolic; and from first one outpost and
+then another came the thump, thump, thump, of a half hundred padded feet
+on the forest floor.
+
+In an instant every one of the bunnies which a moment before had been
+capering madly in the moonlight had sought cover.
+
+Mammy Cottontail and her little brood, watching from the shadow of their
+tree trunk, were already hidden, hearts beating bumpety-bump in their
+anxiety.
+
+For perhaps ten minutes they listened, their hearts sounding like trip
+hammers in the breathing stillness of the forest night, in which no
+creature larger than an insect moved, save the silent-winged bats and
+owls.
+
+At least, that was what the listening bunnies thought! But Twinkly Eyes,
+the sly one!—had heard the thump, thump of the outposts; and he knew
+just what it meant. Although his little sides were already rounded from
+his feast of honey, a bear is always hungry. And Twinkly Eyes decided to
+attend the frolic.
+
+If Mammy Cottontail, anxious little mother that she was, had known all
+that was being plotted in the head of the little Bear, she would have
+started her brood for home on the fastest gallop.
+
+But Twinkly Eyes, for all his weight, had paws padded so softly that he
+can, when he wants to, steal through the underbrush without a sound to
+warn his quarry of his coming.
+
+Yes, sir, that little rascal can slip through the woods as still as a
+mouse, and you could sit straining your ears but you would never hear so
+much as the crunching of a leaf beneath his foot. When he really wants
+to, he can move like a shadow.
+
+Now he had decided to attend the frolic, but not to join in the play!
+Mammy Cottontail, never dreaming of the sleek black form that crept so
+silently to the edge of the clearing, led her six out among the
+merry-makers. Soon Wriggly Nose and Paddy Paws, and Flap Ears and
+Furtive Feet, and Fuzzy Wuzz and Hippity Skip were leaping and dancing
+as gaily as the best of them.
+
+The full moon, shining down on the little glade, showed their furry
+forms so plainly that even Twinkly with his near-sighted little eyes,
+could see them kick their heels in air.
+
+Crouched in the shadow of the very log where a little while before Mammy
+and her six had hidden, he watched and waited.
+
+[Illustration: [Rabbits]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXVI
+                    A JOKE ON THE LITTLE BLACK BEAR
+
+
+Twinkly Eyes had his mind all made up, as he hid there in the shadow of
+the tree trunk, to add a rabbit to his feast of honey.
+
+He therefore crouched with his great steel paw ready to give the one
+crushing blow that would be necessary the moment the first brown bunny
+was so foolish as to pass within his reach.
+
+He watched gleefully as he saw their sleek brown forms dancing so
+care-free in the moonlight. “Hippity skip and away we go!” their soft
+feet seemed to sing, as they galloped back and forth across a fallen
+log.
+
+Saucy fellows, he told himself, as they flapped their long brown ears or
+leaped high in the air.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  “Leaping high in the moonlight”
+
+  —Page 79
+]
+
+Oddly enough, so silently had the little Bear approached that not one of
+the outposts was aware of his presence. The wind was blowing directly
+toward him, so that they did not even get his scent.
+
+Only Mammy Cottontail, prancing gaily around to the right, thought for
+just an instant that she had caught an alien odor. Leaping high in the
+moonlight, she struck her long hind feet three times upon the ground, to
+see if she could startle whatever it was into betraying its whereabouts.
+
+At her danger signal, every bunny in the glade stopped stone still to
+stare and listen; but Twinkly Eyes was not to be thus betrayed. He was
+too big to be startled by her stamping, and too wise to come out into
+the open, where every rabbit, once warned, could easily outrun him.
+
+Not he! Twinkly Eyes just bided his time, huddled down as still as any
+frightened field mouse. He sat so long in one position that his legs got
+cramped and he began to feel distinctly drowsy. Why on earth didn’t one
+of those fat bunnies come just a wee bit closer? How weird they looked,
+now chasing one another, now pausing to nibble a few grasses, but always
+well within the open glade where the moon would have shown them the
+first instant an intruder thrust a paw within the charm-ed circle.
+
+After a while, though, the wind died down, and with the bear scent that
+now suddenly came to the merrymakers, there was a series of frightened
+squeaks, and in less time than the twinkle of a moonbeam, every last
+bunny of them had darted under the ferns or into the deep shadows, and
+the little glade was as empty as if they had never been there.
+
+Then Wriggly Nose, more daring than the others, crept very, very
+silently toward that dreadful odor. He peered amazed at what he saw.
+
+Twinkly Eyes had fallen fast asleep.
+
+[Illustration: [Bear & rabbit]]
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXVII
+                           SCHOOL FOR BUNNIES
+
+
+Yes, sir, there was Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, fast asleep!
+
+How Wriggly Nose and Paddy Paws and the rest did wiggle their long brown
+ears at the sight!
+
+“So he had been spying on our frolic!” whispered Flap Ears with a
+giggle.
+
+“Yes, he thought he’d have hare for supper. Why do you suppose he didn’t
+catch one of us, when he came so near?” asked Wriggly Nose, his eyes
+a-twinkle.
+
+“Huh, he knew we could run the faster,” and Paddy Paws threw his chest
+out.
+
+“He was waiting to knock you down the instant you came near enough,”
+said Mammy Cottontail, suddenly appearing in the midst of her little
+brood. “Don’t go too near! He might wake up at any minute!”
+
+“Aw, come on,” urged Flap Ears to the younger bunnies. “I’ll bet you
+can’t jump as high as I can,” and he vaulted fully five feet into the
+air.
+
+“Bravo,” said Mammy Cottontail. “That is as good as I could do myself!”
+
+“I can leap farther,” boasted Wriggly Nose, and shooting like a coiled
+spring from the ground, he landed a good ten feet away.
+
+“They’ll soon be able to take care of themselves,” chuckled Daddy
+Cottontail, hopping over beside Mammy at this moment. “We must have more
+of these drills.”
+
+“Yes,” whispered Mammy, “but don’t let ’em know it’s a part of their
+schooling. Let ’em think it’s only play, or they won’t take any pleasure
+in it.”
+
+“Right!” agreed Daddy Cottontail. “The great secret of training the
+young is to make it play for them. Now when I was a youngster—”
+
+He stopped to prick up his ears.
+
+“What is it?” whispered Mammy, with an anxious eye on the little
+bunnies, who were now playing leap-frog with the hares from the other
+side of Pollywog Pond.
+
+“Didn’t you get a sniff of something, just then, when the wind changed?”
+asked Daddy. “I could have sworn—there! A fox! A fox!” he signaled with
+that tap—tap—tap of his long hind legs that sounded so much like
+drumming on a hollow log.
+
+Instantly every bunny in the glade had dashed to cover, and gone
+scuttling for home along the crookedest little rabbit road it could
+find.
+
+For a Fox has sharper eyes than a bear, a keener nose and better ears,
+and on top of everything else, he can run as fast as the fastest hare
+that ever grew. At least, a large fox could, and even young Frisky Fox
+had grown into a foe worth keeping at a distance.
+
+For the taint on the wind was that of Frisky Fox, out on a little spree
+of his own.
+
+[Illustration: [Fox]]
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXVIII
+                            A BOY AND A BEAR
+
+
+Human ears are never so sharp as those of the wood folk who have to live
+by their wits. So when the Boy from the Valley Farm heard nothing, and
+saw nothing, he concluded there was nothing there.
+
+But Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, was following him none the
+less, half fearful and half curious to see what this two-legged creature
+might be up to in his woods.
+
+It was a pleasant afternoon, with just enough of a haze to subdue the
+sunlight. The rain had left the earth fresh and green in the open
+patches, and the air was sweet with the perfume of Steeple Bush and Joe
+Pye Weed and pink Sweet Clover. From away down by the meadow back of the
+Farm came the tinkle of a cowbell, the only sound to break the
+stillness, save the faint lapping of the river against a boulder.
+
+The Boy stopped beside a pool half-shadowed by an overhanging log. His
+sharp eyes could just make out a big fat trout that lay headed
+up-stream, lazily fanning the water with his fins, to keep himself in
+position.
+
+Now Twinkly Eyes, who had concealed himself in a clump of bushes a
+little downstream, began to see the meaning of the long black pole with
+the line dangling from the end of it.
+
+First the Boy took a tin can from his pocket, a can with holes punched
+in the top. Selecting a fat white angle worm, of a sort that the little
+Black Bear well knew grew in the wet places, he fastened it on his hook
+and dangled it before the trout. But to no avail! That canny fellow knew
+perfectly that no such worms of soft fat whiteness were ever found in
+his stream. The kind of worms he sometimes found when there was a
+cave-in from the bank were strong, slim black ones.—He refused even to
+nibble.
+
+The Boy next tried a cricket, then a grasshopper, and finally a fat
+white grub—but with the same result. Then, quite by chance, he chose a
+black worm.
+
+But before he cast it, he saw a shining green turtle about as big around
+as a good-sized crab-apple floating about, just a little upstream. And
+carefully laying his pole along the bank, he made a grab for the fellow.
+That roiled the water, and although he didn’t get the turtle, it was one
+of the luckiest things he could have done. For when he cast his worm
+into the pool again, the water was so muddy that the old trout thought,
+of course, the bank had caved in above there, and he made for that black
+bank-worm as if he had fasted for a week.
+
+A tweak at the line, and the boy was so excited that he swung his fish
+fully two rods through the air, landing him in the very bush behind
+which Twinkly Eyes was hiding!
+
+The little Black Bear gave a start of surprise, and for just one instant
+his head was exposed to the boy’s startled gaze.
+
+[Illustration: [Fishing]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXIX
+                         THE TABLES ARE TURNED
+
+
+The Boy from the Valley Farm held his head high with pride.
+
+For had he not—on the self-same day—landed a big fat trout and seen a
+bear cub!
+
+That would certainly be something to tell at home, even for a backwoods
+boy! His mouth watered as he thought of the way his mother would broil
+his fish.
+
+But alas, for the best laid plans of mice and men! When he found the
+place where he had landed his catch, there was no fish there. Could it
+be that he had only dreamed he caught it? But no, here was its tail on
+the trampled ground. Someone had stolen it. But who? That was the
+question!
+
+Why, of course, the little Black Bear whom he had startled out of the
+underbrush!
+
+“The rascal!” exclaimed the Boy, half amused, half crest-fallen. Well, I
+only hope he needed it more than I did.
+
+“Now I suppose they will never believe me at home when I tell of my big
+catch.” He started whistling ruefully, as he set about mending his
+broken horsehair line, which had got badly tangled in the bushes.
+
+Then his eye fell on something that made him pause, wide-eyed. Being a
+backwoods boy, he was almost as keen at reading the signs about him as
+were the wood folk themselves—that is, so far as he was able! Of course
+his nose and ears were very much less sharp than theirs, but he had even
+better eyes than most of them.
+
+Here was evidence his eyes could not deny, though he reached out and
+felt of it to be sure. One fin of his stolen trout lay caught in the
+very top of a hazel bush.
+
+“Now, how on earth did that get there?” he asked himself. People who are
+much alone are very apt to talk to themselves. “If that cub ate the fish
+down here, where the ground is trampled, how did he come to drop the fin
+in a bush higher than his head?”
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  “Oh you rascal!” shouted the boy, in delight
+
+  —Page 89
+]
+
+Then a bright idea popped into his mind. “Why, of course, it must have
+dropped from above. A sly fellow like that wouldn’t have stopped to eat
+his fish down here. He’s carried it up in the top of some tree where he
+could feast in peace. I’ll bet it was this very tree I’m standing
+under—for how else could the fin have fallen on top of the bush?” He
+raised his eyes to peer into the green shadows of the tree-top.
+
+There, sure enough—so high that the Boy’s sharp eyes could barely make
+him out against the tree trunk, sat Twinkly Eyes astride a limb, and
+between his clever forepaws he held what must have been the last of the
+trout.
+
+“Oh, you rascal!” shouted the boy, in delight. “I’ll get you for that!”
+
+[Illustration: [Bear]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXX
+                            A CLIMBING MATCH
+
+
+“You Scalawag!” the Boy kept laughing, as he stared at Twinkly Eyes, the
+little Black Bear, in the top of the beech tree.
+
+“So it was you who stole my fish?”
+
+But Twinkly Eyes said never a word. He just sat still, like a bump on a
+log, in the hope that the Boy might yet be deceived into thinking him
+only a blackened limb.
+
+But the Boy from the Valley Farm was not to be deceived. He, and his
+father before him, had lived all their lives in the north woods where
+footprints are very clear—and the little Bear’s footprints led straight
+to the tree.
+
+Moreover, he had long been wishing he might catch a cub for a pet.
+Therefore, he started to climb the tree.
+
+Twinkly Eyes, who did not know the kindness of the Boy’s intentions—and
+who certainly would not have wanted to be caught if he had—decided it
+was time to show fight.
+
+“Whoof! Whoof!” he growled, slapping his heavy paws on the tree trunk.
+
+“You can’t scare me!” laughed the Boy. “You’re nothing but a yearling
+cub. And I’m the best wrestler at the Cross-roads School!” And on he
+came regardless.
+
+Now here was where ignorance was bliss. For while it was true that cubs
+have been caught and tamed, the Boy from the Valley Farm had much to
+learn about how it is done. And there was one thing he did not know.
+
+He did not know that if it came to a wrestling match with Twinkly Eyes,
+the Boy would be the one to get very much the worst of it all. The cub
+was so small and cunning, so like an over-grown Newfoundland puppy, that
+the Boy would not have believed, had you told him, what a scrapper he
+could be.
+
+Grown bears the Boy feared, but this little fellow didn’t look the least
+bit dangerous as he clung to his tree-top. And the Boy was only
+fourteen. That is to say, he held the firm belief that he could lick his
+weight in wildcats—to say nothing of bear cubs.
+
+It was well for the Boy from the Valley Farm that Twinkly Eyes had no
+mind to let him try it.
+
+Yes, sir, it was lucky for that Boy!
+
+As it was, no sooner had he scrambled painfully half way up the trunk
+than Twinkly Eyes climbed to the very topmost branch; and as the Boy
+still came after him, he crept so near the tip that it swayed beneath
+his weight. Here he felt sure the Boy could not follow, and his courage
+returning with a bound, he turned to “Whoof!” at his pursuer.
+
+“Ho! ho!” laughed the Boy from the Valley Farm. “I can shake you off,
+you rascal, if that’s your game.” For you see his natural kindness was
+forgotten in the thrill of the chase, and he was bound and determined
+now to have that bear.
+
+[Illustration: [Bear & boy]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXXI
+                      THE BEAR GETS THE BEST OF IT
+
+
+Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, had crept to the end of the
+drooping limb with an air of—
+
+“Now catch me if you can!”
+
+“You funny little rascal,” laughed the Boy from the Valley Farm, as he
+hitched himself astride the other end of the limb.
+
+“I’m going to wait right here till you get tired of it. So you might as
+well make up your mind to getting caught. You won’t mind in the least,
+though, once you find out what it’s like to be tame. I’ll bring you all
+the fish you can eat. Sweet corn, too! And every time you learn to do a
+trick I’ll give you a lump of maple sugar. How’ll you like that, sir?”
+And the Boy fished a lump of his favorite sweet from his overalls pocket
+and held it out to the cub.
+
+But he received no response from the other end of the limb.
+
+Indeed, had the cub really understood what the Boy was saying, the
+result would have been no different. For freedom means more to a
+wilderness creature than life itself. Better a dinner of bark and his
+freedom than a banquet of honey served at the end of a rope, Twinkly
+Eyes could have told him.
+
+Then an idea came to him. He began shaking the limb to which clung the
+cub. He shook and shook, till he was tired—but the harder he swung the
+limb, the tighter clung the little Black Bear to the swaying tip.
+
+The lump of maple sugar dropped from the Boy’s busy fingers. The cub
+gazed after it with a hungry sniff, then—as easily as a bag of meal—he
+dropped to the ground, grabbed the sugar, and made off with it between
+his jaws.
+
+The Boy stared in surprise, then let himself slide down the trunk. But
+fast as he came, the little bear was faster, and all he found for his
+afternoon’s adventure were the boy-like tracks of the padded feet, with
+their doglike claws, as they galloped away down the wet river bank.
+
+“Well, I declare!” said the Boy. “If you haven’t got the best of me
+again, you clever rascal!”
+
+But he didn’t give up the chase. Not for an instant. The cowbell found
+him deaf, and for once the supper hour was forgotten. For now he wanted
+nothing on earth so much as to catch that cub.
+
+Following the broad footprints till they turned off among the thick pine
+needles, he fell to his knees to study the ground for signs of the
+little bear’s trail.
+
+[Illustration: [Boy]]
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXXII
+                      THE LITTLE BEARS GO FISHING
+
+
+Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, galloped across the pine needles as
+noiselessly as a shadow.
+
+His drop from the tree-top had taken only a second, while the Boy had
+used up fully half a minute sliding down the trunk. So that, by the time
+the Boy began looking for footprints, the bear was away up stream in the
+top of another tree, peacefully licking up the ants from the bark.
+
+Meantime the Boy from the Valley Farm was running into a danger of which
+he little dreamed.
+
+Being a backwoods boy, he knew that a mother bear with cubs is a person
+to avoid. But he did not know that Mother Black Bear had brought her two
+new cubs to the very stream along which he was searching for footprints.
+
+True, they were on the other side of the river. And the wind was blowing
+in quite the wrong direction, so that Mother Black Bear’s nose could not
+warn her of his approach. Thus, if he kept on the way he was headed, he
+was due to stumble upon the little family very soon, and give both them
+and himself an unpleasant surprise.
+
+For Mother Black Bear was mighty touchy where her cubs were concerned.
+She was in a mood these days for clawing anyone who so much as looked at
+them, so precious were the two fat babies to her.
+
+The last red glow of the setting sun was glinting off the river between
+the shadows of the trees. And Mother Black Bear was catching fish. The
+two fat, roly-poly cubs, Twinkly’s baby sisters, sat on the bank and
+watched gravely, while their mother waded in up to her neck, paddling so
+carefully downstream that she scarcely made a ripple in the mirror that
+it made. A trout might well have taken her for a log floating gently
+with the current.
+
+Her arms she held well down to her sides with claws spread. Suddenly she
+felt a smooth form glide against her side! With one swift clutch of her
+curved iron claws she had her fish, and was flinging it ashore to the
+babies.
+
+The next fish she carried ashore in her jaws for her own supper. Then
+back she led the cubs up-stream to where the riffles glittered in the
+sunset red. Here, standing perfectly still in the shallow water, she
+waited till a trout came by, when with one sharp blow on the head she
+finished his career.
+
+Meantime, where was the Boy from the Valley Farm?
+
+Deciding at length that it was getting too dark to see foot-prints, he
+became aware that the cow-bell was again tinkling and remembered with a
+guilty pang that his father was probably waiting for the cows that
+minute.
+
+[Illustration: [Bear]]
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXXIII
+                   TWINKLY AGAIN MEETS THE PORCUPINE
+
+
+Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, cocked first one ear and then
+another.
+
+There was certainly a buzzing somewhere that sounded mighty like the
+sound that honey bees made. The memory of his feast at the bee tree made
+him lick his chops in delight.
+
+He followed the sound to the tree around which it centered, clambered up
+the trunk, and was soon following the particular limb on the end of
+which most of the “bees” were clustered.
+
+Twinkly, after all, had had but one experience with bees, and it is not
+surprising that these insects should have fooled him.
+
+True, he had not expected to find the honey out at the end of the branch
+inside a round gray ball. The time he had had that feast, the honey had
+been in a great mass of comb inside the hollow trunk.
+
+But then, one never could tell. His ears told him that there were bees,
+and he always trusted more to his ears than his eyes.
+
+But then, he trusted more to his nose than either of them,—at least
+generally.
+
+At any other time he would have listened to the warning of his nose.
+This time he wondered why he could not smell the honey as he had before.
+But perhaps he didn’t want to be warned. He hoped so dreadfully that
+there was honey that he tried to persuade himself it was there, even if
+he couldn’t smell it.
+
+So on he went, straight to the end of the swaying limb! Then he sat down
+to think it over.
+
+It was certainly very peculiar, that huge gray ball into which the
+“bees” were pouring. For while a few tried to sting the intruder and
+only got as far as his fur, so quiet had been his approach that most of
+them were going inside as if he had not been there. There is no animal
+in all the Deep Woods that can move as noiselessly as a little Black
+Bear when he wants to.
+
+Finally, when every “bee” had gone into the gray ball through a little
+round hole, he cautiously put out one paw and tried to reach after them.
+But it was too small for him; he only succeeded in closing it so the
+“bees” couldn’t get out. An angry buzz answered this move on his part.
+
+Unk Wunk, the yearling porcupine, who had been watching from the tree
+across the way, gave a grunt of amusement.
+
+“Those aren’t bees,” he jeered. “Those are wasps. So you won’t find any
+honey. I’d hate to be in your place when you take your paw off that
+hole!”
+
+“Hello, there,” grinned Twinkly Eyes. “I’m not afraid!”
+
+He really thought Unk Wunk was trying to drive him away from his find in
+order to enjoy it himself. He didn’t believe for an instant that it was
+really a nest full of angry wasps he had imprisoned.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXXIV
+                              A GOOD SPORT
+
+
+“No, sir, I’m not afraid,” said Twinkly Eyes, the Little Black Bear.
+
+He suspicioned that Unk Wunk the porcupine had been trying to drive him
+away from his find, as he had from Lone Lake, in order to enjoy it
+himself. For Twinkly Eyes really believed that he was in a bee tree.
+
+What else could these buzzing insects be, he asked? And where bees were,
+there was honey. His mouth watered at the thought.
+
+The only peculiar thing about it was that the bees should have gone into
+this huge gray ball that hung from the end of the limb. Twinkly held his
+paw over the opening, keeping his “bees” prisoners, while he thought it
+over.
+
+If it should prove to be wasps—whatever THEY were—how Unk Wunk would
+jeer at him! He wished the little porcupine would go away instead of
+sitting there watching with that spiteful gleam in his little black
+eyes.
+
+But Unk Wunk had no intention of going away. While he did not care to go
+to the trouble of taking the impudent scamp down a peg, he told himself
+he would just as soon the wasps did it for him. So he settled himself
+comfortably on his limb to watch what would happen when Twinkly took his
+paw off the hole in the wasp’s nest.
+
+“I suppose that pin-cushiony fellow is just aching to see me get hurt,”
+Twinkly told himself. “But I shan’t let him know, if I do.
+
+“So far as I can figure it out, there are about six chances to half a
+dozen that this is wild honey, and I’m going to take one of the six on
+it!”
+
+With an extra screw to his courage and a great show of enjoyment for Unk
+Wunk’s benefit, the little Black Bear tore open the wasps’ nest.
+
+Out poured the angry insects by the hundreds!
+
+But Twinkly took his medicine without a yelp to betray to Unk Wunk that
+he minded.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XXXV
+                       BOBBY LYNX LEARNS A LESSON
+
+
+Now Bob Kitten, Madam Lynx’s young hopeful, was due to have an
+experience that he would not forget in a hurry.
+
+Never yet had he so much as crossed the trail of any creature he could
+not get the best of with tooth and nail, if he did not paralyze it with
+his terrifying howl. He therefore assumed that there was no one anywhere
+that he need fear.
+
+But one night when the moon rose round and yellow from behind the firs,
+Bob Kitten heard that curious gnawing again, and this time it came from
+right above his head, in a birch tree. Not only that, but he got a whiff
+of the most tantalizing scent! It simply made his mouth water!
+
+He peered into the tree-top, his round eyes gleaming through the shadow
+in which he stood. There was a dark ball swaying far out on a slender
+bough, and it did not look the least bit for-mid-able.
+
+Bob let out his blood-curdling yowl, hoping that the thing might be so
+scared it would drop right down at his feet, and save him the trouble of
+climbing; but the dark ball never moved a muscle. It simply hung there
+gnawing the bark as if it hadn’t a care in the world.
+
+This angered Bob, and he was up in that birch tree, and out on the
+swaying branch, without even stopping to think. One blow of his heavy
+paw, and the creature would be felled to earth!
+
+But still the round ball did not even glance up from its gnawing. The
+impudence of it, thought Bob! Didn’t the creature even know enough to be
+afraid? He crept nearer. Now he could see the rather mild-looking face
+and the fat, hairy body ending in a stubby, pointed tail. Its hair was
+certainly coarse looking, gleaming lighter on the ends in the moonlight.
+He had never seen fur like that before.
+
+Suddenly there was rattle as of so many dry twigs clacking together, and
+the round ball suddenly fluffed itself out to twice its size,
+confronting Bob with every quill erect. For it was a young porcupine Bob
+had trapped in this awkward position, and he simply tucked his face down
+between his paws till he was all bristles, and waited.
+
+And Twinkly Eyes, the yearling cub, also waited, in the shelter of a
+neighboring ironwood tree. For this was Unk Wunk, his old enemy of the
+swimming hole.
+
+This would have been an excellent time for Bob to have revised his plan
+of action. But ignorance was bliss,—and with a yell of defiance, he
+struck out at his adversary.
+
+The next instant he gave voice to a howl of pain, for his sensitive paw
+struck a handful of quills,—and it was exactly like slapping at the
+points of so many needles. Nay, worse, as Bob was to find,—for each
+punishing quill was barbed at the end.
+
+Bob’s reaction came with the swiftness of unreasoning instinct. With one
+lunge he was down on the branch below, and traveling earthward as fast
+as three sets of powerful claws would let him.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  “He gave voice to a howl of pain”
+
+  —Page 106
+]
+
+Bob certainly felt as if he had been shot, as he scuttled back to earth
+with paw smarting from the slap he had given the little brown ball in
+the tree-top. And for days to come, he was to nurse a foot that was so
+sore he went on three legs, and picked out the soft spots.
+
+He needed no further teaching to keep his distance, when he saw a
+harmless black ball gnawing a supper of birch bark, or lying all humped
+up like a mammoth chestnut burr. No, decidedly, Unk Wunk had nothing
+further to fear from Bob.
+
+It was from quite another quarter that he had to be on guard.
+
+[Illustration: [Lynx]]
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXXVI
+                         TWINKLY WATCHES AGAIN
+
+
+The little Black Bear was non-plussed. Surely it would be rash to try to
+punish Unk Wunk. But young Frisky Fox was like many another youngster.
+He wanted to find out for himself. Therefore, one night when Mother Red
+Fox had taken the pups all out for a hunt, Frisky had caught a whiff of
+that tan-ta-liz-ing smell that had made Bob’s mouth water.
+
+“Hurry! There’s our supper now!” he had yipped joyously.
+
+“Sh!—Do you want to scare everything within earshot?” Mother Red Fox had
+whispered, as she nipped his ear. “Besides, that’s nothing we can eat at
+this time of year.”
+
+“Why not?” insisted Frisky, though under his breath, for his mother was
+still within nipping distance. “It smells perfectly great!”
+
+“It tastes great, too! But we can’t catch porcupines at this time of
+year, I tell you; it takes deep snow to catch them.”
+
+This satisfied him for the moment. But as they came nearer and nearer to
+the tempting odor, he sniffed and sniffed till he could hardly stand it.
+Then suddenly he saw where it came from, just a little dark lump on the
+ground—that’s all it was! It didn’t look in the least like a creature
+that could run away.
+
+“Why, I could catch that fellow myself, just as easily as not!” he told
+himself. “I wonder why on earth mother thought I couldn’t? I’d just like
+to show her, anyway!” And he felt strongly tempted to slip on ahead and
+try it.
+
+He did, in fact, tiptoe along behind a fallen log, till he came to a
+little clump of bushes right beside the porcupine. And there he stood
+watching and listening, and wondering for all he was worth why he
+couldn’t leap right on the creature and set his teeth in his throat. And
+the little Bear watched too!
+
+But Unk Wunk was also listening, and no sooner had he detected the faint
+snap of a tiny twig down the hillside than he tucked his head under his
+paws and doubled up under his prickles, and there wasn’t so much as an
+inch of him that anyone could get at.
+
+Frisky stared and stared at the strange creature. Here was that
+delicious-smelling supper right at his very feet, but—could Mother Red
+Fox have been right after all?
+
+[Illustration: [Fox & porcupine]]
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXXVII
+                              FOXY COUNSEL
+
+
+                      “He who fights and runs away
+                      Lives to fight another day.”
+
+But young Frisky Fox didn’t even fight. He just ran away!
+
+Yes, sir, there was something about that prickly ball, about the way the
+quills rattled as he curled up tighter, that sounded ominous.
+
+It was just this habit of looking the situation over before he leaped
+that was to make Frisky so much wiser than some of his neighbors.
+
+“ALWAYS LEAVE PORCUPINES STRICTLY ALONE,” his mother scolded, as he went
+trotting back after her, crestfallen and shamefaced.
+
+“At the first touch, that fellow would have snapped his tail in your
+face, and you’d have got a handful of quills in your mouth or some place
+where it would have been a mighty serious matter.
+
+“Yes, sir-ee! It would have been a mighty serious matter!
+
+“You couldn’t have rubbed them out, for every move you made would only
+have driven them deeper, what with their barbed tips, till you’d be
+lucky if they didn’t finish you once and for all.”
+
+“My!” gasped the Red Fox pup.
+
+“Next time,” Mother Red Fox continued, rather rubbing it in, “you’d do
+well to take your mother’s word for a thing.
+
+“There, now!—Listen to that!”
+
+Frisky pricked up his ears. From back up the slope of Mount Olaf, where
+he had come so near making a fatal mistake, there sounded a rattling as
+of dry twigs. It was Unk Wunk shaking his quills.
+
+“Unk Wunk! Unk Wunk! Unk Wunk!” he was muttering over and over to
+himself. “I just guess people had better leave me alone, if they know
+what’s good for them!”
+
+And through the moonlit woods, still in their April nakedness, the Fox
+family could plainly see a dark, round form slowly and deliberately
+climbing into a birch tree, where it resumed its gnawing.
+
+“Whew! He’s not afraid of anything! Guess I’ll keep away from his part
+of the woods!” breathed Frisky Fox a bit unsteadily. For he could not
+help imagining how it would be to have his face full of quills. “But
+who’d ever think to look at him he could be so dangerous?”
+
+“He’s dangerous only when you attack him,” explained Mother Red Fox,
+seating herself with the youngsters in a half circle before her.
+
+“He wouldn’t touch you if you didn’t come too near. He never goes out of
+his way an inch to make trouble. He’s far too fat and lazy. He just
+simply goes his way in peace unless someone tries to molest him.
+
+“Even then he just waits, all curled up like a burr, knowing there isn’t
+the least bit of danger so far as he himself is concerned. That is,
+except when there is deep snow on the ground, and a fellow can sneak up
+underneath him, and grab where there are no quills.
+
+“Otherwise he knows there isn’t a creature in all these woods but would
+get the worst of it—with the exception, possibly, of Twinkly Eyes, the
+bear.”
+
+
+
+
+                                XXXVIII
+                             A JOLLY WORLD
+
+
+Now there wasn’t a creature in all the Deep Woods that wouldn’t have had
+the worst of it in an encounter with Unk Wunk, the porcupine—unless
+possibly Twinkly Eyes.
+
+And even Twinkly would be hurt as badly as anyone, were he to get a
+handful of quills slapped into his face with Unk Wunk’s punishing tail.
+But Twinkly Eyes had a way of managing an encounter that was all his
+own.
+
+In the first place, he had always found the world such a jolly place to
+live in that his little black eyes twinkled at whatever they looked at.
+It was such fun to climb trees and see what was going on round about
+him, as he nibbled buds or shook down beech nuts.
+
+He never had one bit of trouble getting down, because when he was ready
+he just let go and slid, landing like a rubber ball. That was the way he
+took life generally!
+
+Then there were other delightful things to do. For one thing, there was
+fishing in Pollywog Pond. It was full of frogs at this time of year,
+while as for fish!—Um! There was nothing to beat them. Not even the
+delicious sour ants that he sometimes found beneath loose bark.
+
+The Deep Woods were simply full of enticing things to do, and Twinkly
+Eyes had the happiest kind of time all day long. Nor was he all
+appetite. There was much that interested him that had nothing whatever
+to do with getting a square meal. In fact, he had a lively bump of
+curiosity, had Twinkly Eyes.
+
+But while curiosity is a great thing to have, if you want to learn what
+is going on around you, it is also rather dangerous at times, as we
+shall see. On this particular evening, no sooner had the great red sun
+began to disappear behind the fir trees than Twinkly sauntered forth to
+take the air and see what the prospects were for supper. Sleeping nearly
+all day as he did, up there in his den on Mount Olaf, he seldom came out
+much before dusk, and it was even later that Twinkly suddenly stopped in
+his tracks to sniff.
+
+There was certainly a tantalizing odor in the air,—for those that have
+noses as sharp as have the Forest Folk.
+
+What could it be?
+
+He climbed a log and sniffed again. It seemed to come from the top of
+that old beech tree! He stood on his hind legs and peered through the
+budding branches.
+
+Then suddenly he heard a low, monotonous grunting. “Unk, Wunk! Unk
+Wunk!” that came from a dark hump as round and fat and care-free as if
+winter had never been,—for the porcupine does not sleep in winter, but
+climbs the trees as the snow mounts higher, and eats his fill of their
+bark.
+
+Peering far up into the beech tree, Twinkly Eyes could see a
+surly-looking fellow that rattled his quills as he moved, with a sound
+like dry twigs crackling one against another.
+
+The fellow was the same who had laughed when the little Bear got into
+the wasps’ nest. He was the same young porcupine, what is more, who had
+driven Twinkly Eyes from the Lone Lake swimming hole the summer before,
+when Unk Wunk had had his mother to help him!
+
+
+
+
+                                 XXXIX
+                          WHO WILL BE SORRIEST
+
+
+                      “Never trouble trouble
+                      Till trouble troubles you.”
+
+At least that is a mighty good plan where porcupines are concerned.
+
+And Twinkly Eyes knew that as well as he knew how to climb. But that
+odor was so terribly inviting, and Twinkly had such a score to settle
+that he could hardly resist poking his nose in where he knew he had no
+business.
+
+Sometimes young folks will do that way. They just can’t help it; and
+they always come out of the experience wiser than they were
+before,—provided, of course, that they come out of it at all.
+
+“He’s certainly fat enough, if it IS the spring of the year!” thought
+Twinkly Eyes, hungrily, as he watched Unk Wunk away up in the beech
+tree, chiseling off the rough outer bark to nibble the juicy inner
+layer. “He can make a meal off of anything.”
+
+“I wonder—” and Twinkly’s eyes began to dance more mischievously than
+ever, “I just wonder, now, if I could shake that saucy fellow off! It
+certainly would be a peck of fun to see him come tumbling down like a
+chestnut burr right on his own quills!”
+
+And the little Black Bear fairly rolled off the log in his excitement.
+Picking himself up as softly as he could and tiptoeing over till he
+stood just beneath the gnawing one, huddled up there in the moonlight
+with a glint on the tip of every quill, Twinkly Eyes began, oh, ever so
+cautiously, to climb the beech tree.
+
+He would climb just as high as he possibly could without getting in
+reach of Unk Wunk’s terrible barbed tail, and then he would shake the
+tree, and perhaps the prickly one would lose his hold and go pelting to
+the ground—like a great chestnut burr!
+
+Now, as always when one’s nerves are at a tension, Twinkly Eyes was
+conscious of all the little sounds and odors about him. It certainly was
+a jolly world to be taking such a risk in. From away down the
+mountainside in Pollywog Pond, his sharp ears could just make out the
+croak-croak, croak-croak of the frogs as they called to one another or
+gossiped back and forth through the April night. And from farther
+still—from the Valley Farm, perhaps, came the faint fragrance of wood
+smoke where the pasture lot had been burned over a bit recklessly.
+
+“Unk Wunk, Unk Wunk!” said the dark form above him, but without really
+being aware of any one but himself. So confident was the little
+porcupine that no one in all that wilderness could harm him, no matter
+how they tried, that he didn’t even take the trouble to look beneath
+him.
+
+Twinkly Eyes drew a long breath and began to shake the tree. Unk Wunk
+went on gnawing, quite as if it had been no more than a passing breeze
+that had swayed him. Twinkly drew another breath and shook the harder,
+then dodged back to the opposite side of the trunk from Unk Wunk,
+prepared to watch the fall.
+
+But still nothing happened. The self-confident one simply kept on
+clinging with his long nails that had held him safe through many a
+wind-storm, even, sometimes, when their owner slept.
+
+Suddenly he turned his head. His narrow little eyes looked Twinkly over
+coolly, even indifferently. There was a bit of tender-looking bark just
+below him, and he began slowly descending.
+
+Twinkly’s heart beat faster. What should he do?
+
+[Illustration: [Bear & porcupine]]
+
+
+
+
+                                   XL
+                        TWINKLY EYES PLAYS SAFE
+
+
+Twinkly Eyes was certainly put to it to know what to do.
+
+He had planned simply to shake the beech tree till Unk Wunk should fall
+off. Then one of two things would happen. Either he would crack like a
+chestnut burr, and supper would be an easy matter, or else it would be a
+fight on level ground, where Twinkly knew a trick or two.
+
+But to have Unk Wunk turning on him in this fashion! It was not at all
+the situation that he had counted on. For Unk Wunk wouldn’t for an
+instant stop going wherever he wanted to go. Certainly not for a little
+black bear whose face he could slap with a tailful of barbed quills if
+said bear got too fresh.
+
+Up to this moment Twinkly Eyes had never dreamed that a porcupine would
+actually turn on any one that hadn’t even touched him yet.
+
+As an actual fact, the prickly one had no intention of striking Twinkly
+Eyes. He had simply been un-a-ware of his presence up to that very
+moment, and unless the little Bear made a hostile move, he certainly
+wouldn’t be the first one to attack.
+
+Should Twinkly make a sudden move in his direction, though, he’d turn
+his back like lightning and slap, slap his armored tail, driving
+whatever might be in its way full of quills. One slap would be more than
+enough.
+
+However that may be, Twinkly made a sudden resolution, and it didn’t
+take him as long to carry it out as it does to read about it. He just
+let go and came down! Yes, sir, Twinkly just let go and slid! No careful
+searching for a foot hold, not even hand-over-hand work—nothing but
+ker-biff! And the little Black Bear had bounced down on his own fat self
+like a rubber ball, and out from under that beech tree, as fast as if
+Unk Wunk were going to try to drop on him—Yes, sir, he was somewhere
+else before you could have said Jack Robinson! Something deep inside him
+had suddenly decided there was more fun in playing safe.
+
+Twinkly always came down that way, falling perfectly limp, like a fat
+butter ball, and it never hurt him any more than it would to roll off a
+log.
+
+And it wasn’t till he was half way down the mountain-side that he
+remembered he was hungry.
+
+“Hoo-wuff!” he sighed as he slowed down for breath, once more catching
+the croak-croak from Pollywog Pond. “That was a most amazing fellow! I’m
+not surprised that people keep their distance. I’d rather starve than
+try that again, anyway,—at least I think I would.
+
+“I wonder, though—how I wonder what he would do if I were to find him
+some day just plodding along the ground, and I were to flip a clod of
+earth at him? I really am curious to see what would happen, the old
+slow-poke! By ginger, I’ve half a mind to try it!”
+
+
+
+
+                                  XLI
+                   TWINKLY EYES GETS A GREAT SURPRISE
+
+
+Twinkly Eyes was certainly as full of curiosity as a pond is of frogs.
+And though he went on and caught himself a nice dinner in Pollywog Pond,
+he wondered all the way why Unk Wunk was such a curious fellow, and what
+he would do if he were provoked.
+
+The idea of his going on gnawing as if nothing had happened, with
+Twinkly shaking the tree for all he was worth! And then to stare down at
+his tormentor with that cold in-dif-fer-ence! It was too much for
+Twinkly Eyes.
+
+No sooner had he filled his tummy comfortably full than his courage all
+came back to him, and he determined to go back and get a rise out of
+that old grizzly grouch.
+
+These things he turned over and over in his curious mind, as he padded
+noiselessly back along the furtive trail, his eyes twinkling at a little
+plan that began forming in the back of his head. It would be worth
+trying, just to see what would happen.
+
+Suddenly swish, thump, thumpety-thumpety-bump, came something straight
+down the side of a ledge!
+
+Twinkly’s first thought was that it must be a man, for certainly no
+Forest Folk would make such an out-ra-geous racket. Even a bear could
+pad along through the underbrush without more than cracking a twig,
+while as for foxes and rabbits and owls, and even lynxes, if they made
+that much noise just once, they’d deserve to have all their enemies come
+on the run!
+
+No, assuredly, it must be some creature that had no place in the
+wilderness; and as it was coming altogether too near his line of march,
+he decided to climb the nearest tree and wait till he saw what the
+excitement was all about.
+
+Bang, bump, thump, came the sounds again. Then something struck a clump
+of high-bush blueberry bushes in a way that crushed them flat, and a
+great ragged ball of dry oak leaves emerged, with a sound of scraping
+and crackling that was quite unlike anything Twinkly Eyes had ever heard
+before.
+
+It went on a little farther, then brought up against a boulder. Eyes
+fairly popping with curiosity, Twinkly slid down his tree-trunk,
+bounding off into a covert of low bushes, from which he might peer at
+the astounding mass at the foot of the boulder.
+
+After a time it began unrolling, and gradually out of the turmoil
+appeared none other than Unk Wunk, the porcupine, who proceeded to
+stretch his legs and yawn, quite as if nothing had happened.
+
+“If that is his usual method of traveling,” thought Twinkly Eyes, “I’d
+rather not meet him, that’s sure. Wonder who was after him that time.
+I’ll bet he never intended to do all that rolling. Or is that just one
+of his queer ways?”
+
+[Illustration: [Bear]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  XLII
+                      TWINKLY EYES PLOTS MISCHIEF
+
+
+“A rolling stone gathers no moss.”
+
+But Unk Wunk was just the opposite. In his roll down hill he had
+gathered several pecks of moss and leaves on the points of his quills.
+
+Porcupines always do go by contraries.
+
+And Twinkly Eyes, the Bear, was no sooner convinced that that great
+jagged mass of dry leaves was his foe of the swimming hole experience
+than his little black eyes began twinkling more merrily than ever. For
+here was opportunity knocking at his very door.
+
+Now Twinkly Eyes was different to this extent from most of the folk that
+lived in the deep woods. He had a sense of humor.
+
+To Mammy Cottontail and her brood, life was one perpetual effort to
+escape the jaws and claws and beaks and bills of the enemies on every
+side. The mere matter of finding enough to eat had its dangers.
+
+While young Frisky Fox occasionally smiled at his own cleverness, it
+took the fat little bear to find amusement in everything that happened.
+In the first place, he was thus far afraid of nothing under all the wide
+blue sky. He was so much stronger and better-armed than almost any other
+creature in the wilderness!
+
+True, he wasn’t as well armed as Bobby Lynx, but then, Bobby had no
+desire to dine off of any one that could fight like Twinkly Eyes. So,
+being unafraid, Twinkly could enjoy life. And being happily able to eat
+almost anything that came his way with relish, he had time to spare for
+play.
+
+Just now, as he approached that bristling ball of oak leaves that had
+come so near to rolling square upon him, his little black eyes danced
+with mischief. Twinkly had a plan whereby he meant to have some fun at
+the prickly one’s expense!
+
+He waited till Unk Wunk, indifferent to his presence, had stretched his
+legs and begun lazily gnawing the tree trunk that was nearest to his
+nose. “Unk Wunk, Unk Wunk!” he began to sing in his two monotonous
+notes. “Here I am again, right side up with care, and I don’t care the
+flip of my tail who sees me, nor what they try to do with me. Because
+I’m dead sure they’ll get the worst of it every time.”
+
+“Woo-huff!” snorted Twinkly Eyes, sitting up on his haunches. “Sure and
+I’m going to find that out for myself! I’ll bet I know a trick that will
+take you down a peg, you old grouch, you! I saw my mother do it once
+last year, and I’ve never had so much fun since.”
+
+With this, to which the porcupine paid not the slightest attention,
+Twinkly arose and began padding cautiously forward. For a few minutes he
+stood directly over the gnawer, but Unk Wunk accorded him not even the
+glance of an eye.
+
+[Illustration: [Porcupine]]
+
+
+
+
+                                 XLIII
+                        TWINKLY TEASES UNK WUNK
+
+
+Little did Unk Wunk dream of the trick that was being plotted against
+him, as he sat there lazily gnawing at the root of the handiest tree.
+
+To be sure he knew that Twinkly Eyes was there. He was not that stupid.
+Only he felt so thoroughly entrenched beneath his quills that he never
+even dreamed that the little Black Bear would dare to attack him.
+
+Indeed, if worst came to worst, could he not remove himself with the
+same speed with which he had just rolled down hill? That had been pure
+accident. Curling up at the approach of some prowler of the night,—he
+had not troubled to find out who,—he had suddenly lost his balance, and
+gone hurtling down the slope in the manner that had so startled Twinkly
+Eyes. It just made one more trick in his bag! For his bones were fatly
+padded, and he simply found himself in another place as good as the one
+he had left.
+
+So once more he began creaking contentedly in his nasal voice his never
+ending chorus “Unk Wunk, Unk Wunk, Unk Wunk!”
+
+Life certainly looked good from the porcupine standpoint, now that the
+trees were full of sap, and the great round yellow moon shown softly
+through the budding branches, lighting up every cranny of the forest
+floor.
+
+The hylas in the marsh below chirped as musically as distant sleigh
+bells, reminding one that grass was lush and green, and there would be
+no more cold and snow,—nothing but one grand feast, more months than he
+could look ahead.
+
+Beyond that, all he had to do was to keep quills out, and none could
+interfere with his pleasure.
+
+But underneath, on the side where there were no quills,—as Twinkly Eyes
+suspected,—the little porcupine was as soft and vul-ner-able as any of
+the forest folk,—and it was this very fact that Twinkly meant to make
+the most of.
+
+He therefore opened his offensive by flipping a clod of earth at the
+armored one. That had no visible effect, so he flipped a second. The
+third one struck the porcupine square on his unprotected nose, and Unk
+Wunk gave a grunt of annoyance, and started to transfer his person to a
+more distant tree.
+
+Swift as thought, the little Bear thrust a cautious paw clear beneath
+one of the quilled sides, and with one blow hurled Unk Wunk against the
+tree trunk.
+
+[Illustration: [Frogs]]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  “Hurled Unk Wunk against the tree trunk”
+
+  —Page 132
+]
+
+
+
+
+                                  XLIV
+                         TWINKLY EYES GETS HIS
+
+
+If Twinkly Eyes had thought for a moment that the matter was ended, he
+had reckoned without his host.
+
+He might well have called it off with Unk Wunk’s prob-able amaze-ment.
+But the little porcupine, though somewhat bruised, was still so set in
+his self-esteem that he could not imagine its happening a second time.
+And, feeling the need of an im-me-di-ate stim-u-lant, he once more
+uncurled from the ball he had doubled himself into in mid-air, and
+resumed his gnawing.
+
+Imagine Twinkly Eyes’ astonishment, as he turned, his shoulder all but
+dislocated from the force of the thrust, to find the enemy still
+in-dif-fer-ent to his presence!
+
+Hot-headed now with the thrill of battle, he padded across to Unk Wunk,
+who happened quite by chance to be nearly en-trenched between his tree
+and a hollow log. Then, being nothing but a yearling cub, he quite
+forgot the caution with which he had once seen Mother Black Bear manage
+the ma-nœuv-re. Whereupon he flipped his clod again, hoping to drive the
+porcupine from behind his log, and with a neat success, for the clod
+landed plop on the pacifist’s nose again!
+
+With a squeak of righteous indignation, the quilled one thrust his
+unprotected face into the hollow log, and there he waited! Even now he
+felt no fear, only a desire to punish, to fight for peace.
+
+And Twinkly Eyes—rash fellow—lumbered closer, and once more thrust his
+paw beneath the porcupine. But this time he allowed himself to come too
+close.
+
+Quick as lightning, slap, slap! Unk Wunk snapped his barbed tail back
+and forth, and Twinkly gave a howl of pain.
+
+A handful of the torturing quills had im-paled the tormentor’s scalp!
+
+But for one chance this would have been the finish of the little Black
+Bear. It so happened that his head was down, and the quills struck
+directly over the hard bone of the skull. Into this they could not
+pen-e-trate. He was simply a bear with a mighty sore head. It was sore
+for long afterward, though with his good blood and the life of the open,
+it did finally heal, leaving him just a little scarred and more than a
+little chastened.
+
+Henceforth Unk Wunk would be given a wide berth by one more of his
+neighbors.
+
+[Illustration: [Bear]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  XLV
+                        BOBBY LYNX GOES FISHING
+
+
+Now Twinkly’s neighbor Bobby was a sadder but a wiser young lynx kitten
+before ever Whoo Lee the owl had finished with him. For Bobby had
+climbed to the nest in the pine tree, rash fellow!
+
+It but put the finishing touches on his lesson when the bark to which he
+was clinging with his one free paw gave way beneath his weight and sent
+him tumbling.
+
+Not that Bobby minded, after the first shock of falling. Like all
+members of the cat family, large and small, he managed to double into a
+somersault in mid-air and so came down right side up, more hurt in his
+feelings than anywhere else. Indeed, he twice broke his fall by catching
+at passing limbs, and he need not have come to the ground at all, save
+that he preferred not to occupy the same tree as Whoo Lee.
+
+In fact, no sooner had Bobby reached all fours in safety than he went
+slinking off through the shadows, as fast as ever his heavy feet could
+carry him.
+
+After a time he sat down to wash his face and lick the places where the
+owl had clawed him. Then he realized that he was very, very thirsty, and
+hungry to boot, and he made his way to Pollywog Pond.
+
+Here, unfortunately, he found Mother Red Fox and Frisky Fox and the
+other four Fox youngsters just finishing a lesson in catching frogs, and
+he was in no mood for meeting any one of that family.
+
+So on and on he crept, through the ravine and on down to Rapid River.
+Here his mother had once brought him to teach him to catch trout, and
+here, after drinking deep of the chill waters, he crouched along a
+boulder to await the dawn.
+
+At the first faint flush of pink along the sky, the first lightening of
+the shadows of the forest, and the first wee notes of awakening
+warblers, Bobby stretched one paw out over the water’s edge, claws set
+for a sudden swoop,—and waited silently.
+
+For so long that Bobby all but went to sleep, his half-shut eyes could
+see no gleam of speckled scales in the silver water,—not, at least,
+within the reach of the waiting paw,—though that paw hung over the rim
+of one of the deepest pools, where trout were likeliest. The fish had to
+come pretty near the surface for him to strike successfully.
+
+Then suddenly his mouth began to water, for a great fat beauty was
+swimming straight towards him. Bob’s eyes gleamed hungrily, his whiskers
+twitched with nervousness, and the green muscles tensed along his ready
+forearm.
+
+Then a quick dart of his barbed paw, a flash of silver, and Bob had
+squared himself with a growl to as juicy a breakfast as anyone could
+ask.
+
+Great ravenous bites he took, growling as he crunched, to warn all
+comers that a hungry lynx is not the person from whom it would be wise
+to try to steal.
+
+The next instant there was a resounding splash in the stream behind him,
+and Bob in his surprise jumped full three feet in the air, landing on a
+limb of the nearest tree.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XLVI
+                           A NEW ACQUAINTANCE
+
+
+It is always annoying to be disturbed in the midst of one’s
+breakfast,—the more so if one has just had a painful scrimmage with a
+great barred owl whose nest one was trying to rob.
+
+It is therefore not surprising that Bobby Lynx looked murderously about
+him from the limb to which he had leaped at the sound of the splash.
+
+It must have been a large animal, he reasoned, to make so much noise;
+and Bob was after all but a kitten, whose life had thus far been one
+long adventure from the day he had had it out with Unk Wunk, the
+porcupine, to his recent falling out with the angry owl.
+
+Someone, he felt sure, meant to rob him of his trout, and,
+unfortunately, in his surprise he had left it on the boulder beside the
+River.
+
+The trouble with Bob, and, indeed, the entire Lynx family, was that,
+although they are so strong and their claws and teeth so sharp, their
+eyes are little good to them. In the woods, where nearly every creature
+is colored like the tree trunks, they cannot see anything unless it
+moves.
+
+Otherwise it would be too easy for a lynx to make his kill, and the
+grouse and the hares and the toads and the meadow mice would have no
+chance at all in the game of life.
+
+Not only were Bobby’s eyes not good, but his nose wasn’t half as keen as
+the noses of most wood-folks. He would walk right past a grouse hen
+without getting a smell of her.
+
+That is why Bobby was always so alarmed when a sudden sound came from
+behind. He never knew what it might be until he saw the creature move.
+
+This time he had not long to wait. A glossy form came ambling by, and
+Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, sat down on his haunches not ten
+feet away, to devour his catch. For he, too, had been fishing, and the
+splash that had startled Bobby was the sound of his great paw slapping
+through the water at his trout.
+
+Bobby watched craftily from under a canopy of leaves, his gray-brown
+body flattened along the limb. Then convinced that Twinkly Eyes had no
+design on his person, he began to wonder if the intruder would try to
+make off with his fish.
+
+But the little Bear knew the law of the wilderness as well as any one.
+He knew that to steal another’s catch would mean a fight if the owner
+caught him. Though he could not see the hidden claimant of the
+half-eaten trout, his nose was keen enough to tell that another’s scent
+clung to the rock on which it lay, and he had no mind for calling that
+other’s wrath upon his head.
+
+He was just slouching past, pretending he did not see it, in order to
+fish farther up the stream, when there was a snarl and a splutter, as
+Bobby leaped, spitting and clawing back to his fish.
+
+Twinkly stared at the strange creature, his little black eyes showing
+red lights, as he squared himself for the scrap that he feared would
+follow.
+
+What had he done, anyway, to call forth such an exhibition of bad
+temper, he asked crossly with a growl deep down in his throat.
+
+Then, too, Twinkly Eyes had never seen a lynx before, and the unknown is
+always to be distrusted.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XLVII
+                      THE HIRED MAN DROPS A MATCH
+
+
+What Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, could not know as he stared at
+Bobby Lynx crouched beside his fish was that Bobby was quite as much
+afraid as he was.
+
+In fact, if the truth were known, Bobby Lynx was more afraid of Twinkly
+Eyes than Twinkly was of Bobby.
+
+But, of course, it never does to show one’s fear. So the two only glared
+at each other, green eyes staring into black, the bear cub poised on his
+hind legs ready for a wrestling match, the lynx kitten ready to spring
+should the other make a hostile move.
+
+Then Twinkly Eyes began backing away, ever so gradually, while Bobby
+watched through half closed lids, a growl deep down in his throat and
+his bob tail lashing from side to side.
+
+“What is the use?” Twinkly had asked himself. “I don’t want his old
+fish, and I don’t want to fight. This isn’t my idea of going fishing at
+all! Though, of course, if no one had been there to claim that trout, I
+certainly shouldn’t have let it go to waste.”
+
+Then suddenly both youngsters turned to sniff, as a new odor stole
+through the forest on the breath of the wind,—an odor so acrid and
+alarming that their fear of each other was forgotten in the face of a
+common peril.
+
+With the smell came a soft gray cloud floating through the aisles of
+trees from Pollywog Pond.
+
+Here the timber was chiefly hardwood, though an occasional birch reached
+white arms up against the green, and a tangle of high-bush blueberries
+and wild blackberry vines grew densely to as high as Twinkly Eyes could
+see from on tiptoe.
+
+It had been a dry spring in the region around Mount Olaf. For weeks
+there had been no rain, and though Rapid River still ran broad and full
+from the thaw, the hot sun had drunk up every drop of moisture it could
+draw from the forest floor of dead leaves and fallen branches.
+
+On the very night that the Red Fox family had gone frogging at Pollywog
+Pond, and Unk Wunk the Porcupine had amused himself by rolling down
+hill, and Bobby Lynx had met Twinkly Eyes on a fishing trip, the Hired
+Man at the Farm had set forth an hour before cock-crow to set a line of
+skunk traps.
+
+Following the Old Logging Road toward Pollywog Pond, he had paused on a
+fallen log to tie his shoe-string and light his pipe, and as he rose he
+had given his match a shake and thrown it away.
+
+Now of course the Hired Man meant to put his match out before he dropped
+it, but he didn’t look behind him to make sure. No sooner was his back
+turned than a thin flame sprung up in the dead leaves beside the fallen
+log, and soon a healthy bon-fire was snapping and curling around the
+log.
+
+A white birch, with its paper bark, had caught a spark and started a red
+snake of flame that crept along the ground with the wind, first back
+towards the Farm, then around to the River. And before ever the Hired
+Man could race back home for help, the fire had gained such headway that
+the whole area between the pond and the river was ablaze and the
+underbrush going like kindling.
+
+It was the smoke of this red ruin that had so terrified both bear and
+lynx that they forgot their feud.
+
+[Illustration: [Bear & lynx]]
+
+
+
+
+                                 XLVIII
+                           THE FOREST AFLAME
+
+
+It takes a common peril to make people forget their hard feelings toward
+one another.
+
+Bobby Lynx was quite as willing as Twinkly Eyes to overlook the little
+matter of the fish, once they had sniffed the acrid smoke that now came
+creeping between the aisles of trees.
+
+It was not big as forest fires go, and the trees were mostly hardwood,
+which go slowly. But the fire lay between Bobby and home. It was to the
+Lynx kitten a peril new to his experience.
+
+His first thought was concealment, and he leaped into a tall pine and
+clambered to the topmost branches that would hold him.
+
+Twinkly Eyes, mere curiosity once the first shock of his alarm was past,
+went shambling through the underbrush to see whence came that pungent
+cloud.
+
+What Bobby saw from his outlook was a wall of fire. This advanced
+rapidly on the freshening wind. It devoured the underbrush that covered
+the forest floor, and it all but outsped the creatures he dimly saw were
+fleeing before it.
+
+Here leaping flames climbed to the very tree-tops on the arms of the
+paper birches, and even the hard pines gave up their deadwood and
+smaller branches.
+
+Long arms of scarlet raced through the open patches, devouring the dead
+pine needles and dry oak leaves. Their snapping and crackling widened
+Bobby’s eyes with terror as he flattened himself along his limb.
+
+Soon, as Twinkly Eyes discovered before he had gone very far, the
+thickening smoke cloud was becoming uncomfortably hot. Its breath stung
+his nostrils and closed his eyes, and he gasped and stumbled, and
+finally turned back in one mad dash of terror.
+
+Bobby turned to peer longingly across the river, which here stretched
+wider than he dared to swim.
+
+He feared the water almost more than these unknown creatures of fire and
+smoke that seemed to be circling in on him now from every other side.
+
+He crept stealthily down his pine tree on the side opposite the flames,
+and on to another that all but overhung the water, and there he lay,
+green eyes dilating nervously as he peered down at the scene around him.
+
+Twinkly Eyes dashed first up-stream, then down, in his anxiety to get
+back to his den on Mount Olaf. For added to all his other troubles it
+was by now broad daylight, and he wanted to hide himself away and sleep
+till the shelter of the dark came round again. But there was no way out,
+and he took his stand at the edge of the water, eying the swift current,
+loath to venture the long swim to the other shore unless compelled to.
+
+[Illustration: [Flames]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  XLIX
+                     IN THE FACE OF A COMMON PERIL
+
+
+As the morning wore on, the wind grew stronger, blowing the leaping
+flames straight toward the river bank, where Bob and Twinkly Eyes
+huddled side by side in terror.
+
+It was not a big fire, but it swept through the dry underbrush of the
+hardwood grove from Pollywog Pond to the plowed fields at the Valley
+Farm, and from the Old Logging road to the river.
+
+Had the trees not been of hardwood, a fire might have started that would
+have eaten its way over miles of woodland. As it was, everyone at the
+farm turned out with wet gunny sacks to beat back every flame that
+leaped across the road as it wound from the pond on around at right
+angles to the river. It should at least be kept within those natural
+boundaries.
+
+But to the Forest Folk whose homes were in the burned area, the fire
+seemed the most terrible thing that had ever happened to them. To those
+who crouched, waiting, on the bank of the river, the approaching flames
+and the long swim across the current to the opposite bank seemed equally
+impossible to face. Bobby Lynx, coughing and blinking in the acrid
+smoke, as he clung to the limb of his pine tree, felt, catlike, that it
+would scarce be worse to stay where he was than to plunge into the
+water.
+
+Twinkly Eyes, sitting like a black stump beneath, stared with amazement
+as a band of hares, cousins of Mammy Cottontail, came galloping madly
+before the racing flames. They were gasping for breath, their round eyes
+bulging in terror and their hearts beating like trip-hammers in their
+furry chests.
+
+One scatter-brained brown bunny so far lost his wits as to circle around
+and go dashing straight back into the advancing fire, while another
+sought shelter fairly between Twinkly’s black feet. But the little Bear
+was far too interested in the crackle of the flames to notice.
+
+Almost on the heels of the hares loped Red Fox and his family, whom a
+sudden shift of the wind had cut off from safety. But they likewise gave
+the hares no more than a passing glance, but sat down opposite them at
+the river’s brink to watch, and cough, and blink their smoke-stung eyes.
+
+Next came Mother Red Squirrel and others of her kin, leaping from branch
+to branch above the smoking ground till they had taken up their places
+directly above the stream’s edge.
+
+Here, too, came Betty Bluebird and Conqueree the Blackbird, and Mother
+Grouse Hen, hurrying her fledglings along as best she could. Jim Crow
+and his black brothers, frightened from their nest in the top of the
+Pine, had gone soaring high above the smoke line, and so off to a point
+from which they could watch in safety.
+
+There were other creatures, too, who sought haven along the River Bank.
+There was Writho the Black Snake, and Timothy Field Mouse, and Fleet
+Foot, the Spotted Fawn who had strayed too far from her mother. The
+little deer huddled with the hares as far from Twinkly Eyes and Red Fox
+as they could crowd, without actually leaping off the bank.
+
+The Red Squirrel family hid out of sight of both Bobby Lynx and Red Fox,
+and Timothy Field Mouse and his deadliest enemy, the Black Snake, both
+tried to hide in the same hole under the very nose of Red Fox, without
+any one of the three having a thought beyond their common peril.
+
+[Illustration: [Fleeing]]
+
+
+
+
+                                   L
+                   WHILE THERE IS LIFE THERE IS HOPE
+
+
+Yes, Sir, “while there is life there is hope!” But things certainly
+looked bad for Bobby Lynx and Twinkly Eyes and Red Fox and his family as
+the flames licked nearer and nearer through the circling trees.
+
+The heat fairly seared their eyeballs, the smoke set them gasping every
+time the wind turned their way, and the huge sparks that now began to
+drop on their fur added pain to their terror.
+
+Yet there was no way out, save the River which here ran wide and deep.
+
+But if the larger animals were terror-stricken, imagine the feelings of
+Mother Red Squirrel’s family, and the brown bunnies, and Fleet Foot the
+Fawn, and Writho the Black Snake, and Timothy Field Mouse! For would
+they not escape the red flames and the cutting smoke but to furnish
+luncheon for their enemies, at whose very feet they crouched?
+
+Of a sudden, as a blazing brand fell hissing beside Red Fox, he took a
+good grip on his resolution and plunged into the stream, and yelped to
+his family to follow. It was, after all, the only thing to do, as he had
+known for some time. His hesitation had lain in the fact of the puppies’
+inexperience in the water. But after all, the youngsters of the
+wilderness could nearly always swim, once they were forced to it. And
+there was Mother Red Fox and himself to help the pups along, should they
+become too tired to make the entire distance.
+
+Young Frisky Fox splashed in like any healthy puppy, his fat legs
+paddling so energetically that he had little difficulty in keeping up
+with his father. There did come a moment, however, when he felt as if he
+would have to rest or sink, and with one of these sudden bright ideas
+that make the foxes the cleverest creatures in all the wilderness, he
+grabbed the tip of his father’s plumy tail in his teeth and clung. The
+wiry fellow, from whom Frisky had inherited both strength and cunning,
+cut across the current and towed him to the shallow waters of the
+opposite bank.
+
+Seeing Frisky, Mother Red Fox gave a sharp command to the youngest pup,
+while she towed him the same way. Then both parents swam back to aid the
+remaining youngsters, one by a timely word of encouragement, another by
+holding to his ear, and the third as they had aided the first two.
+
+Seeing the Fox family making so valiantly for safety, Twinkly Eyes flung
+himself into their wake, and began gasping and snorting in his fight
+with the current. Bobby Lynx, half blinded by the smoke, peered vaguely
+at the sounds beneath his tree, then, with the courage of desperation,
+leaped far out into the unknown element.
+
+But so ill do the great cats take to water that his head went under, and
+he felt that now surely it must be all up with him. Then, suddenly, he
+clutched at the little Bear’s haunches and was half towed to shore.—Thus
+ended their quarrel!
+
+
+
+
+                                   LI
+                      THE BOY FROM THE VALLEY FARM
+
+
+Landed on the other shore, Twinkly hid in a tree-top to see what else he
+might see.
+
+Now it often looks darkest just before daylight.
+
+That was the way in this case. The little group of refugees on the shore
+were all but ready to leap into the river, preferring death by drowning,
+as the flames swept nearer through the underbrush, snapping and
+crackling and spitting red sparks.
+
+The wind had veered upstream, driving the smoke with it, but the heat
+was fast becoming unbearable.
+
+The brown bunnies, huddling close together in their terror, were not
+built to swim at all. Fleet Foot, the spotted fawn, was yet too young
+for the water, having indeed acquired the art of walking but a few days
+before. While Mother Grouse Hen could have flown across, her chicks
+could not, and she of course would not leave them.
+
+All these stared with wide, hopeless eyes as the flames ate their way
+toward them. Their throats were parched and their hearts beat visibly.
+
+Mother Douglas Squirrel and her family were perched on the very tipmost
+branch of the tree nearest the water, and there they raged and scolded.
+Shadow Tail measured the distance to the nearest tree of the opposite
+shore, half tempted to try the leap at the risk of landing in
+mid-stream, but Mother Douglas was too wise to attempt it, for any
+squirrel with half an eye could have seen it was impossible.
+
+Then, suddenly, up the stream came creaking a broad, flat-bottomed
+row-boat, and at its oar locks sat the Boy from the Valley Farm and his
+sister,—the Little Girl on one side of the broad seat, he on the other.
+
+The two children being too small to aid the men with the fire-fighting,
+back along the Old Logging Road, had ventured up here on their own
+account, to see if any sparks had leaped across the river to the dry
+timber on the other side. Once they had seen a flying brand which the
+Boy had gone ashore to quench with mud from the river’s bank.
+
+Now they rounded the bend just in time to see Twinkly Eyes, the little
+Black Bear, and his passenger, Bobby Lynx, climb up the farther bank and
+dart off to hiding.
+
+“Oh, see!” cried the Girl, pityingly, as she saw the group on the river
+bank.
+
+“Let’s get ’em!” proposed the Boy.
+
+“Let’s!” agreed the Girl, and the pair rowed swiftly up the doomed right
+bank and began grabbing the trembling hares by their long brown ears,
+dropping them into the bottom of the boat.
+
+Once the leaders were aboard, some sign seemed to go the rounds, and the
+rest of the bunnies did not wait for assistance, but went scuttling over
+the side of the boat so fast that the children could scarce find a place
+to put their feet.
+
+At that instant a flaming branch fell hissing almost into the boat.
+
+“Pull out, quick!” gasped the Boy, swinging the boat around.
+
+“Oh, but the Fawn!” wailed the Girl. “We can’t leave the Fawn!”
+
+“We’ve got to!” commanded the boy, sternly, “or that whole tree will be
+down on us!”
+
+[Illustration: [Fleeing]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  LII
+                       TWINKLY’S FELLOW REFUGEES
+
+
+The Boy’s judgment told him it was not safe for them to linger a moment
+longer so near the racing flames. Any moment the wind might shift and
+blind them with its yellow smoke cloud, and it was hard enough at best
+for the children to handle the heavy row-boat.
+
+But there stood Fleet Foot, her broad ears turned inquiringly at the
+newcomers, whom she was too young to fear, her great velvet eyes round
+with terror and her pink nose twitching nervously.
+
+She was tinier than a three weeks’ calf, and nothing could have been
+lovelier than her white-spotted red-brown coat shading into light tan on
+throat and chest.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  “He lifted her bodily into the boat”
+
+  —Page 161
+]
+
+The Boy dropped his oar again and stepped ashore, while his sister held
+the boat, with its cargo of brown bunnies, in position, by reaching out
+and clinging to an overhanging bush.
+
+In all her three weeks of life the Fawn had never laid eyes on human
+kind, nor, indeed, on any creature larger than herself save her mother,
+the Doe. She therefore raised trusting eyes to the Boy, licking his palm
+as he rubbed her nose, and she made no protest when he lifted her bodily
+into the boat, shoving the hares aside till he had found a place for her
+at the Little Girl’s feet.
+
+Just at that moment they caught sight of the Squirrels. Mother Red
+Squirrel and Shadow Tail and his brothers clung to a branch almost above
+their heads, and their cries grew shrill as a creeping flame began
+ascending the very tree they were on.
+
+“Oh, please see if you can’t get them!” begged the Girl, calling and
+coaxing to make them come down. The Boy tried, too, but in vain. Poor
+Mother Red Squirrel didn’t understand, and she feared the children quite
+as much as she feared the flames.
+
+In vain, too, the Boy pursued the Grouse chicks, while the sparks began
+showering all around them.
+
+“Pull out, quick!” he cried. The Girl’s eyes filled as she thought of
+Shadow Tail, the squirrel baby she had once held in her hand.
+
+Mother Grouse Hen had clucked her chicks beneath her wings and now
+crouched despairingly on the wet mud of the jutting bank. She would
+protect them with her own body till the last possible moment.
+
+“I have it!” exclaimed the Boy, bending to one strong oar while his
+sister took the other. “Let’s get across quick, and then I’ll show you!”
+
+[Illustration: [Hen]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  LIII
+                     A WAY FOR THE SQUIRREL FAMILY
+
+
+For the space of four minutes the children bent to their oars, while the
+breath of the flames on the shore behind them scorched their cheeks and
+parched their nostrils, and the fire ate its way through the brush to
+the very water’s edge.
+
+The bunnies fairly stood on top of one another till they filled the
+rowboat with brown billows of soft fur. And Fleet Foot, the little
+spotted Fawn, crouched with soft eyes fastened appealingly on the
+children’s faces. In all the wilderness there is no creature so innocent
+and so helpless and so altogether lovely as a spotted fawn. So at least
+the children thought.
+
+“Poor, poor bunnies!” sighed the Girl, as one was all but crowded over
+the edge of the boat.
+
+“Aw, they’ll be all right once they’re on the other side,” said the Boy.
+“Get in there, you!” and he shoved the hare back from the edge with his
+foot. His voice was just gruff enough to hide the pity in it.
+
+But once drawn up on the opposite bank, he paused not even to help lift
+the bunnies out, but grabbed the belt axe that a backwoods boy always
+carries, and went hacking away at a slender sapling just opposite the
+tree the squirrels were on.
+
+He made quick work of it, I can tell you, for there wasn’t a moment to
+lose. Notching it first on the side toward the river, he took care that
+it fell so that its slender top reached into the far-hanging branch on
+which the little family had taken its last stand.
+
+As the sapling landed, Mother Red Squirrel’s black eyes snapped with a
+sudden hope. I can assure you she needed no second invitation to use the
+bridge thus mir-a-cu-lous-ly thrown across to her. With a glad bark to
+the youngsters to follow, she raced down the sapling across the stream,
+Shadow Tail at her heels. They didn’t even stop to draw breath till they
+had scrambled up a pine tree set well back from the sight and the smell
+of the fire across the stream.
+
+The Boy’s eyes shone. “It didn’t take them long to make up their minds,”
+he chuckled.
+
+“Now, get out of here,” and he lifted the last of the bunnies out of the
+boat, to go bounding off into the depths of the green woods beyond,—far
+too fast for either Bob or Twinkly, I can assure you.
+
+For the truce of their common peril was over, and the hares well knew if
+they didn’t get into hiding before Bobby Lynx got sight of them, he’d
+celebrate his escape on one of his fellow-refugees.
+
+Back on the wet mud of the bank they had left, Mother Grouse Hen seemed
+in a fair way to pull through after all, for the fire had stopped at the
+River’s brink, and there was now but one great vista of charred and
+smoking tree trunks for as far as the eye could reach.
+
+[Illustration: [Squirrels]]
+
+
+
+
+                                  LIV
+                      WHAT HAPPENED TO FLEET FOOT
+
+
+“What worries me,” said the Boy, with an amused glance after the fleeing
+hares, “is what we are going to do with the Fawn. She’s far too young to
+look out for herself,” nodding toward the green depths into which bear
+and lynx had disappeared.—Twinkly wondered too.
+
+“She is certainly too young to get along without her mother,” agreed the
+Girl, as the children from the Valley Farm studied the last of the
+refugees, who gazed into her face with her great trusting eyes.
+
+“The trouble is,” said the Boy, “she probably has a mother somewhere,
+and then she’s a wild thing. She’d never be really happy with the cows.
+I suppose the doe just managed to save the other fawn. Aren’t there
+always two?”
+
+“You think her mother got away then?” asked the Girl.
+
+“Well I don’t know,” returned the Boy, gazing searchingly across the
+River through the charred tree trunks. Here the ground still smoked
+yellowly as the fire ate into the damp leaves of the nether layer of the
+forest floor. Red embers glowed where the flames had raged through the
+underbrush.
+
+Now, as it happened, the Doe was searching despairingly that very moment
+for her Fawn. She had made her escape in good season with the larger
+fawn, but Fleet Foot she had missed from her side when it was too late
+to return, and a wall of flame had risen between her and her little one.
+
+The lost Fawn had raced, with the other Wood Folk, on before the flames
+to the River’s brink, where the children had found her.
+
+Meantime her mother had circled clear around the fire with her remaining
+little one, trotting up-stream until she came to a narrow part where her
+fawn could cross, peering and searching everywhere for Fleet Foot.
+
+Now suddenly the children heard a dainty stamp and a shrill whistled
+“H-e-e-e-yew, he-u!” And over a copse of hazel bushes peered a red-brown
+doe, who instantly turned and leaped out of sight, tail raised like a
+little white flag behind to show the fawn which way to follow.
+
+And “He-w!” said Fleet Foot, with a tiny stamp, and followed.
+
+And Twinkly Eyes, the bear cub, took it all in, from the hiding of his
+tree-top.
+
+[Illustration: [Bear]]
+
+
+
+
+                                   LV
+                    TWINKLY EYES GOES HOUSE-HUNTING
+
+
+Betty Bluebird, like most of the other feathered folk, was beginning to
+think of starting south. For the wild ducks honking overhead told her it
+was going to be a cold winter and advised her to start without delay.
+
+Twinkly Eyes also heard the warning. And it set him restlessly searching
+about for a snug den in which to pass the winter. For Twinkly Eyes was
+going to hi-ber-nate. With the first snow-fall he would cuddle up in the
+depth of some cave and pull the dead leaves after him, and tuck himself
+in bed for a sleep that would last until spring.
+
+Every day now he rose with the dawn to begin his search. And every night
+he kept up till black darkness made it im-pos-sible to see.
+
+But with all his searching, Twinkly Eyes never once ceased to eat
+everything good he came to.
+
+No, indeed, Twinkly Eyes was not the bear to stop eating just because he
+was busy house-hunting.
+
+Not a bit of it! In fact, if anything he ate more. Though he cut himself
+down to one meal, that one meal lasted from the moment he awoke in the
+morning to the moment he dropped to sleep in the chill of the autumn
+night.
+
+One effect of so much eating was, of course, to make him as fat as a
+ball of butter. Another was to make his fur as thick and warm and glossy
+as the finest sleeping bag that ever was invented.
+
+But search as he would, Twinkly Eyes could not find just the right place
+in which to den up for the winter. Of course, the first place he had
+visited was the den where he had been born. But his mother was there
+with this year’s cubs, and she had made it quite plain that there would
+not be room for him too.
+
+Then he thought of the pine woods on the slope of Mount Olaf, on the
+side toward the Valley Farm. And one chill October morning, when a fine
+drizzle reminded him that up north here winter was not far away, he
+decided to explore these woods.
+
+The dried pine needles lay like a velvet carpet over the forest floor,
+and everywhere was the fragrance of wet pine. Through the thick gloom he
+could make out countless mushrooms growing at his feet, and each one he
+had sniffed, eating such as he knew would not poison him.
+
+For his mother had taught him as a cub to know mushrooms.
+
+The ground here slanted up a rocky knoll, and here and there were
+boulders, and here and there a fallen tree trunk.
+
+But nowhere could Twinkly find a cave. And besides, he smelled lynx
+tracks everywhere, and it would never do to go to sleep for the winter
+in a place where Old Man Lynx could find him.
+
+No, decidedly, the pine woods would not do.—Where, then, should he
+search?
+
+Cutting down through a mixed wood that led to a tiny lake, Twinkly soon
+found himself neck-high in blueberry shrub. Only now the berries were
+all gone. He had been here many times before, only never with a den in
+mind. So now he went over the ground again and through the brush around
+the lake, and back up the slippery hillside.
+
+Suddenly a strange, sweet odor smote his nostrils. He was approaching an
+old deserted shack, with roof tumbling in and door hanging on one hinge.
+It had once been a sugar camp, had Twinkly Eyes but known. And the
+knowledge would have hastened his clumsy foot-steps. For that new smell
+was the fragrance of maple sugar, the one thing in the world that bears
+consider even better than honey.
+
+There was no thought of danger as Twinkly Eyes approached the shack.
+Though had he not been too sleepy to reason it out, he might have known
+that anything so delicious as maple sugar would never be left like that.
+Not if the bees could get at it! And then how was it that his mother had
+never taken a chance on anything so tempting?
+
+
+
+
+                                  LVI
+                           AT THE SUGAR CAMP
+
+
+Twinkly sniffed and sniffed.
+
+From the tumble-down shack on the mountain-side came the most wonderful
+odor! It fairly made his mouth water.
+
+But still his natural cunning bade him sniff all about the place before
+he ventured within. Though there were hobnailed footprints everywhere,
+the man-scent had long since disappeared.
+
+That twisting thunder-storm last July was doubtless to blame for the
+charred and crumbling appearance of the side the door was on. There was
+nothing to keep him from walking straight inside.
+
+There were a number of iron kettles in the shack, and into each of these
+Twinkly sniffed with interest. But they were clean and empty. Where,
+then, did that sugary odor come from? Ah, over in one corner, where it
+had fallen, lay a wooden cask. This, Twinkly’s wriggling nose told him,
+was the place. Inside this cask was the delicious something that made
+his mouth water so. Successive wettings, as rain and wind had pummeled
+through the side of the shack, had wet the contents till they were
+oozing liquidly through the cracks.
+
+Twinkly Eyes put out his tongue and licked the sides, then set joyously
+to work with his curved claws to tear an opening into the thing.
+
+So suddenly that it struck him square in the face, the half of one stave
+came off. Then he broke off another, and after that a third. The keg had
+not been full, and the part he had torn an opening into was the empty
+part. But Twinkly didn’t care. He simply thrust his head in and licked,
+and licked, and licked at the sugary cake.
+
+He could just reach it with the red tip of that greedy tongue. There was
+nothing he could reach with his jaws. And presently he began to twist
+and wiggle in the effort to get more.
+
+By dint of much shoving he finally got his head clear inside the cask.
+Then he was happy. My, how that bear enjoyed the next half-hour! By
+stretching his neck farther and farther through the narrow opening he
+could just scrape the delicious contents with his teeth.
+
+His jaws dripped with the combined delights of an-tic-i-pa-tion and
+real-i-za-tion. That the feast would continue till the last crumb was
+gone he had no doubt whatever. Not Twinkly Eyes!
+
+By and by, however, stretch as he might, he could thrust his head no
+farther, and he could reach no more. Then what a time there was, as the
+little Bear tried to pull himself out of the barrel.
+
+And as he jerked and banged about in growing alarm, his heels sent
+everything in the cabin spinning about his shanks.
+
+When finally his head came free quite suddenly, he sat down with such
+violence that he went sliding across the floor with the huge iron kettle
+over-turned on top of him. And, of course, being unable to see what it
+was that had imprisoned him, he struck out still more viciously.
+
+
+
+
+                                  LVII
+                           A FEAST AND A FAST
+
+
+Twinkly Eyes was a most un-com-fort-able bear.
+
+True, he had freed his head from the sugar cask. But in his blind fury
+at the thing that held his head imprisoned he had thrashed about till
+all the furniture in the camp had been sent spinning about his heels.
+Then at last the huge iron kettle had landed squarely on top of him!
+
+He finally backed out of the thing and hastened from the cabin, sitting
+up on his haunches to nurse his bruised head. All the same, this maple
+sugar was mighty good stuff! Was he going to leave it? Not Twinkly Eyes!
+Not the little Black Bear who had once robbed the bee tree in spite of
+the worst its owners could do with their stings! He would go straight
+back there, give that kettle a good, vigorous cuff for its impudence,
+and then knock the sugar cask to bits.
+
+So they thought they could frighten him away, did they? Cautiously he
+tiptoed back into the shack. This time he felt sure he had caught the
+keg at a dis-ad-van-tage, for with one powerful blow of his great, furry
+fist, he sent it whirling into the corner. Then grappling it with his
+long steel claws, he wrenched at the syrup-soaked wood.
+
+For once it did not grab at his head. For he had torn such a hole in the
+side that there was room and to spare. Next moment the fat cub had
+settled himself at that giant lump of maple sugar with the cask held
+tight between his black knees.
+
+If Twinkly Eyes had been a small boy, he wouldn’t have wanted anything
+more to eat for a week. And it is more than likely that he would hate
+the smell of maple sugar for the rest of his life.
+
+But bears are not built that way. And Twinkly Eyes, with that same greed
+with which he had gobbled the honey comb, now put that maple sugar
+inside till there wasn’t so much as a crumb of it left.
+
+After that he slept awhile with his little black tummy rounded out till
+he could hardly move. For that is what makes a bear feel happiest, when
+he is eating his last meal for five months.
+
+Next day he once more started on his lumbering tramp over the slopes of
+Mount Olaf to find his winter’s resting place.
+
+Winter would set in early this year, the wild ducks had shouted as they
+honked their way southward that fall.
+
+And already the last leaves were falling in yellow swirls that crackled
+under-foot. In the pine forest it was still. But everywhere else the
+winds swept around the mountain in a way to chill through even Twinkly
+Eyes’ thick coat.
+
+Then one morning he awoke to find a world of white! And still he had
+found no cave to shelter him.
+
+[Illustration: [Bear]]
+
+
+
+
+                                 LVIII
+                             THE FIRST SNOW
+
+
+Yes, sir, Twinkly Eyes awoke to find it snowing!
+
+A more surprised young bear you never saw in all your life, for as yet
+he had found no cave in which to pass his winter’s sleep. And the winds
+that tore around Mount Olaf made goose-flesh underneath his furs.
+
+He stared about him dazedly. Great soft flakes as big as feathers were
+falling, falling, falling through the naked tree-tops. He had never
+heard the world so still. And off across the valley the air looked thick
+and gray like a blanket.
+
+And indeed, it was a blanket—was this whirling white stuff that kept
+covering over the dead leaves that carpeted the forest floor. It filled
+in all the niches, and shut out all the wind.
+
+It was a blanket for next year’s flowers, and for little young trees and
+shrubs too tender yet to meet the winter’s cold.
+
+It was a blanket for the field mice and the white-footed wood mice, in
+their homes under-ground or inside old hollow stumps. It would be a
+sheltering blanket for Fatty Chuck in his cave under the barn-yard
+fence, down at the Valley Farm. For it would sift down into his entrance
+hole and over the earth above until frost could not reach him curled up
+in a ball there sound asleep.
+
+But all this did not help Twinkly Eyes, staring at the falling flakes
+while he longed with his whole soul for sleep. If in all his rambles
+over the mountainside he had not found even a crevice in the rocks in
+which he might den up for the winter, was it likely that further search
+would reveal one? He yawned, for he was oh, so dreadfully sleepy! He
+longed to curl up right where he was—but he knew if he did, he’d never
+wake. He’d just freeze solid, and that would be the end of him!
+
+His last meal of dried bark and pine needles,—the meal that was to keep
+his stomach from feeling empty until spring, just because it wouldn’t
+digest,—sat heavy within him now, and he longed to begin his
+hi-ber-na-tion.
+
+Animals that hibernate, you know, sleep away the cold months when food
+is hard to find. And when they wake up in the spring, they look very
+different from the fat creatures they were in the fall. They are then as
+thin as they were plump before.
+
+But of course, with the season of plenty, they soon make up all they
+have lost. Meantime, they have kept safe and warm all through the bitter
+winter. For they first close up the entrance to their dens with leaves
+and mosses, and then curl up into warm furry balls, with their toes and
+their noses inside. Then the snow falls so deep that it keeps the high
+winds from finding their way to the sleepers, and there is nothing to
+disturb their dreams.
+
+Fatty Chuck hibernates, too. But Fatty had gone into winter quarters
+long before, and was now snoozing away as snug and comfy as anything you
+can imagine.
+
+If only the winter had been as easy a problem for Twinkly Eyes! What was
+he to do?
+
+
+
+
+                                  LIX
+                        TWINKLY EYES GOES TO BED
+
+
+What should he do, asked Twinkly Eyes as he stared about at the falling
+snow-flakes?
+
+He had been driven from the den in which he had slept away his first
+winter in the Great North Woods, because his mother’s littlest cubs now
+took up all the room.
+
+His father had a cave, too, somewhere, he supposed. But Twinkly Eyes
+would not have dared to enter that, much less to lie himself down to
+sleep beside that great, growling monster. Like most cubs, Twinkly was
+wholesomely afraid of his father.
+
+As he stood swaying sleepily, winking the snow-flakes from his heavy
+eyelids, Twinkly Eyes had a sudden bright idea. He would simply curl up
+under a stump!
+
+There was an old overturned pine stump not far away, and to its roots
+had clung such a mass of earth that he could easily cuddle beneath it.
+In fact, the dried leaves with which he would have made his bed, had he
+found a cave to stow them in, were already drifted high there. And all
+he had to do was to crawl in and wait for the snow to cover his shelter
+completely over.
+
+That was it! The snow would drift over leaves and stump and all,
+shutting out the winds and the frost, and hiding him while he slept.
+
+An hour later, any one passing that way would have seen a huge round
+ball of black fur just showing beneath a blanket of leaves under the
+stump. And by nightfall they would have found nothing but a deep white
+bank with a root sticking out at the top.
+
+Just enough air would filter through the snow to keep his lungs
+supplied, and that was all he needed now for a long time to come.
+
+Twinkly Eyes, cuddled up snug in his strange feather bed, gave one last
+blissful sigh, and was off into a dreamland where honey filled every
+hollow tree trunk and blueberries grew everywhere as thick as grass.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+
+
+ Page           Changed from                      Changed to
+
+  182 have dared to enter that, much   have dared to enter that, much
+      less to lie him                  less to lie himself
+
+ ● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
+ ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77049 ***
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77049 ***</div>
+
+<div class='tnotes covernote'>
+
+<p class='c000'><strong>Transcriber’s Note:</strong></p>
+
+<p class='c000'>New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_001.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>“Bump—Slide—Splash!—and he plunged beneath the surface of the icy lake.”<br>  <br>  <span class='right'>—Page <a href='#Page_3'>3</a></span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='titlepage double'>
+
+<div>
+  <h1 class='c001'><span class='large'>THE ADVENTURES OF</span><br> Twinkly Eyes<br> <span class='large'>THE LITTLE BLACK BEAR</span></h1>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c002'>
+    <div><span class='xlarge'>By ALLEN CHAFFEE</span></div>
+    <div class='c003'><span class='small'>Author of TALES OF THE TIMID, Little Stories of</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>the Lives and Habits of the Wild, Told for</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>Children and Their Elders.</span></div>
+    <div class='c003'><span class='small'>Illustrated by PETER DARU</span></div>
+    <div class='c003'>1919</div>
+    <div>MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY</div>
+    <div>SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c004'>
+    <div><span class='small'><i>Copyright 1919</i></span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>By MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>Springfield, Massachusetts</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'><i>All Rights Reserved</i></span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='lg-container-l c002'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>Bradley Quality Books</div>
+      <div class='line in4'><span class='small'><i>for</i> Children</span></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c005'>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>These little stories, which are intended both
+for children and their elders, are really true
+to natural science.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Disguised in fiction form, the reader gets a
+taste of biology, botany, zoology, and meteorology.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Such a taste may or may not lead the child
+to further study along those lines, but it will
+certainly give him a heightened appreciation
+of out-door life. Incidentally, he will have
+accumulated in the easiest possible way a
+great many facts that he will retain all his life.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The tales should also create a kindlier attitude
+toward our friends in fur and feathers,
+as well as instilling some of the stern virtues
+of the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That these tales may be suitable for bedtime
+reading, no animal hero is ever killed.
+The big words are explained, and the adventure
+of each chapter harks back to the preceding
+in a way to refresh the memory of the
+reader who only takes time for a chapter an
+evening.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the other hand, my readers have thus
+far included a large proportion of quite grown-up
+little boys.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Allen Chaffee.</span></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c004'>
+    <div>To</div>
+    <div>HOWARD FOLSOM BROCK</div>
+    <div>whose great heart had in it a corner</div>
+    <div>for even the furred and</div>
+    <div>feathered folk.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c005'>INDEX</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table class='table0'>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c008'>Chapter</th>
+    <th class='c009'>&#160;</th>
+    <th class='c010'>Page</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>I.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Gets a Ducking</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>II.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Mother Black Bear to the Rescue</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_4'>4</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>III.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>A Stern Lesson</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_7'>7</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>IV.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>But He Learns It</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_10'>10</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>V.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Mrs. Porcupine Shows Fight</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_13'>13</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>VI.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Driven from Their Pond</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_17'>17</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>VII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Sink or Swim</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_20'>20</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>VIII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Writho, the Black Snake</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_23'>23</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>IX.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>“Whoof! Whoof!”</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_26'>26</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>X.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>The Better Part of Valor</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_29'>29</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XI.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>A Tip on Thunder-Storms</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_32'>32</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>A Wild Mother’s Love</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_35'>35</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XIII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Eyes Gets Even</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_38'>38</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XIV.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>A Different Twinkly Eyes</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_41'>41</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XV.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>There’s Many a Slip</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_45'>45</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XVI.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>The Bee Tree</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_48'>48</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XVII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Eyes and Trouble</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_51'>51</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XVIII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Shows His Mettle</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_54'>54</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XIX.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Down But Not Downed</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_57'>57</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XX.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Applies First Aid</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_60'>60</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXI.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Mammy Cottontail’s Secret</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_63'>63</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>One of Twinkly’s Neighbors</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_66'>66</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXIII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Introducing Bobby Lynx</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_69'>69</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXIV.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>A Bunny Ball</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_72'>72</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXV.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Eyes Attends a Frolic</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_75'>75</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXVI.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>A Joke On The Little Black Bear</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_78'>78</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXVII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>School For Bunnies</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_81'>81</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXVIII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>A Boy and A Bear</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_84'>84</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXIX.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>The Tables Are Turned</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_87'>87</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXX.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>A Climbing Match</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_90'>90</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXXI.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>The Bear Gets The Best of It</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_93'>93</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXXII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>The Little Bears Go Fishing</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_96'>96</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXXIII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Again Meets The Porcupine</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_99'>99</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXXIV.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>A Good Sport</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_102'>102</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXXV.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Bobby Lynx Learns A Lesson</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_104'>104</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXXVI.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Watches Again</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_108'>108</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXXVII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Foxy Counsel</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_111'>111</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXXVIII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>A Jolly World</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_114'>114</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XXXIX.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Who Will be Sorriest?</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_117'>117</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XL.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Eyes Plays Safe</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_121'>121</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XLI.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Eyes Gets a Great Surprise</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_124'>124</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XLII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Eyes Plots Mischief</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_127'>127</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XLIII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Teases Unk Wunk</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_130'>130</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XLIV.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Eyes Gets His</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_133'>133</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XLV.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Bobby Lynx Goes Fishing</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_136'>136</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XLVI.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>A New Acquaintance</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_139'>139</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XLVII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>The Hired Man Drops a Match</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_142'>142</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XLVIII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>The Forest Aflame</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_146'>146</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>XLIX.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>In the Face of a Common Peril</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_149'>149</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>L.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>While There is Life, There is Hope</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_153'>153</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>LI.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>The Boy from the Valley Farm</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_156'>156</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>LII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly’s Fellow Refugees</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_160'>160</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>LIII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>A Way for the Squirrel Family</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_163'>163</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>LIV.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>What Happened to Fleet Foot</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_166'>166</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>LV.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Eyes Goes House-Hunting</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_169'>169</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>LVI.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>At the Sugar Camp</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_173'>173</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>LVII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>A Feast and a Fast</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_176'>176</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>LVIII.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>The First Snow</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_179'>179</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'>LIX.</td>
+    <td class='c009'>Twinkly Eyes Goes to Bed</td>
+    <td class='c010'><a href='#Page_182'>182</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class='chapter ph1'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c004'>
+    <div><span class='large'>THE ADVENTURES OF</span></div>
+    <div class='c003'>Twinkly Eyes</div>
+    <div class='c003'><span class='large'>THE LITTLE BLACK BEAR</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_1'>1</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>I</span><br> TWINKLY GETS A DUCKING</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Two such roly-poly babies you never did
+see!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mother Black Bear had named them Woof
+and Twinkly Eyes.—And you never in all
+your life met two such rollicking black balls
+of mischief as those two cubs!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Small wonder that Mother Black Bear
+needed such long black claws, long white
+teeth, and such a terrifying growl, with two
+such treasures to protect.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Why, she wouldn’t even let Father Black
+Bear come near them when they were so
+young, for fear some time they would plague
+him too far and make him lose his temper!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As the warm days of July ripened the blueberries
+along the slopes she used to lead the
+cubs down Mt. Olaf into the lowlands on
+berrying expeditions. And my! How they
+did enjoy these trips! How they stuffed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_2'>2</span>themselves on the luscious fruit, snatching
+up great pawfuls of it, leaves and all, till
+their fuzzy sides rounded out like puff balls!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then, too, there were often the most
+delicious sour-tasting ants under the logs
+and boulders that Mother Black Bear turned
+over for them! Life was one feast, what with
+the abundant food provided by Mother Black
+Bear herself and that found everywhere in the
+woods about them! Those cubs hadn’t a
+complaint to make!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>True, they climbed right over one another
+in their eagerness to get the best of everything,
+and they growled little baby growls
+in imitation of their mother and squealed
+little piggish squeals of delight. But that was
+all a part of the game.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>When there was nothing to eat in sight—or
+rather when they were too full to hold any
+more—they began to yawn and stretch and
+curl themselves up together like so many
+sleepy kittens.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then when they had slept enough there
+were wrestling matches and boxing bouts and
+playing pranks on mother,—pulling her ears
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>and clambering over her till she was forced
+to box their ears.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One lazy afternoon Twinkly was just nodding
+off to sleep, all curled up in a little fuzzy
+ball, when Woof came up from behind and
+gave him a shove. Now, as it happened,
+Twinkly had been lying at the top of a steep
+incline that led down to Lone Lake, and he
+went down that incline like a rubber ball,
+before ever Mother Black Bear could stop
+him. Bump—slide—splash!—and he plunged
+beneath the surface of the icy lake.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_012.jpg' alt='[Bears]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_4'>4</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>II</span><br> MOTHER BLACK BEAR TO THE RESCUE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>It is so wonderfully snug and comfy to be
+drowsing off on a warm afternoon, all curled
+up in a fuzzy little ball. So, at least, thought
+Twinkly Eyes, Mother Black Bear’s littlest
+cub.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But what an awful contrast to find oneself
+rolling down the bank like a rubber ball, till
+one came, bump, slide, splash, to the icy
+water!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And then to go down, down, down, gasping
+for breath and so horribly frightened that one
+thought the end had come!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was certainly a terrible experience for the
+five-months-old cub, when his brother Woof
+gave him that mischievous shove!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mother Black Bear was really frightened.
+Not that she was afraid of Lone Lake—not a
+good swimmer like Mother Black Bear; and
+not that she feared being unable to rescue
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>the little fellow. But Mothers are always
+frightened when anything happens to their
+babies. Mother Black Bear was no exception.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>She was just like any other mother in believing
+that her babies were the brightest
+and the handsomest and the most wonderful
+little creatures that anyone ever had.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So she didn’t even stop to think when she
+saw Twinkly’s little body rolling down the
+bank with its legs still wound around its nose.
+She just slid!—Afterwards there was a long
+trench where she had slid down that bank
+on her haunches!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>She reached the water the very moment
+he did, and it wasn’t two seconds before she
+had plunged into the blue depths and grabbed
+the struggling youngster by the nape of his
+neck.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Dragging him straight back up the bank,
+she spread him out in the sunshine and began
+licking him dry, while he whimpered and
+coaxed for sympathy.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“This teaches you a lesson, young man,”
+she told him, when she had made sure he
+wasn’t hurt and wasn’t going to catch cold.
+“Never sleep on the edge of a bank. And
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>Woof, don’t you ever again shove anyone over
+the bank like that,—not unless it’s someone
+you never want to see again,” and she gave
+Woof a good cuff on the ear to help him
+remember.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“But I’m glad, in one way, that this had to
+happen. Because it shows that you must
+learn to swim at once. Life is uncertain at
+best, in the woods, and you never can tell
+when you may need to know.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Ow! the water is too cold!” squealed
+Twinkly Eyes, backing away into the brush.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“We’ll go where it isn’t,” said Mother
+Black Bear firmly. “But we’re going this
+very afternoon. Come along!”</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_015.jpg' alt='[Bears]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>III</span><br> A STERN LESSON</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>“Oo! I don’t want to learn to swim!”
+squealed Twinkly Eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Why don’t you?” asked Mother Black
+Bear, though she had quite made up her mind
+to give the cubs a lesson that very afternoon.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>When Mother Black Bear had made up
+her mind to a thing, that was all there was to
+be said about it, so far as the cubs were
+considered.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Her word was law. Still, that did not
+prevent them from complaining at times. It
+is a certain amount of relief to complain, even
+when one knows it won’t do any good, isn’t
+it? At least the two cubs found it so.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“The water’s so-o-o-o cold,” wailed
+Twinkly Eyes, whose wet fur made him shiver.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“You won’t be cold, once you get to paddling
+about,” said Mother Black Bear.
+“Come on, quick! There’s a shallow place
+farther on where the sun has warmed the
+water.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>She led the way through the bushes, Woof
+trotting obediently at her heels. Twinkly
+tried to run away, but he didn’t get very far.
+Mother Black Bear quickly found his hiding
+place.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Come!” she insisted away down deep in
+her throat, with that rumbly sound that the
+cubs knew meant business.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Since the accident she felt it was not safe
+to let another day go by without making sure
+that they could at least keep from drowning.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Come here!” she growled to Twinkly in
+no uncertain tone. That small imp simply
+didn’t dare disobey!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Woods babies generally are that way, and
+it is a lucky thing for them, let me tell you, or
+no telling what would happen to them!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Puffing and panting as they tumbled after
+her, the fat cubs soon found their mother
+seated on her haunches beside a quiet pool,
+where the sun danced through the leaves till the
+water seemed all mottled. Tall ferns grew all
+about them and every now and again a frightened
+frog would say, “K’dunk!” and go
+splashing to the bottom of the pond.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_018.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>“Twinkly Eyes, are you coming?”<br>  <br>  <span class='right'>—Page <a href='#Page_9'>9</a></span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>“Now, then, just follow me,” said Mother
+Black Bear, when they had stared at the
+water for a moment. She waded off till she
+stood shoulder deep.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly braced himself firmly with all four
+feet and cocked one ear at the depths before
+him. His unexpected plunge when Woof had
+rolled him off the bank had shaken his faith in
+water, even for drinking purposes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Come!” commanded Mother Black Bear,
+and he knew he would have to wade in or get
+a good boxing. He whimpered, wondering
+which would be worse. He was a most unhappy
+little bear cub, for one so roly-poly!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Woof on the other hand, had waded in
+after his mother, and now—much to his own
+surprise—found his fat sides floating with just
+a stroke or two of his broad forepaws.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Twinkly Eyes, are you coming?” called
+Mother Black Bear, wading back to where he
+stood.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I don’t want to know how to swim,” wept
+the little black rascal, backing away still farther.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next instant Mother Black Bear seized
+him by the scruff of the neck and dropped him
+straight into the pool!</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>IV</span><br> BUT HE LEARNS IT</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>He had been badly frightened, had Twinkly
+Eyes, the littlest bear cub, when Woof shoved
+him into the lake.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But underneath it all he had had a comfortable
+feeling that Mother Black Bear
+would somehow come to the rescue. There
+had never been a time, in all the five months
+of his existence, when she had not solved his
+troubles for him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But now! To have Mother herself drop
+him in! It was too much! There was no hope
+anywhere. No one to rescue him! No way
+ever to get out again unless he found a way
+himself!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As this fact dawned on him he struck out
+with his broad fore paws, his nose turned to
+shore. So vigorous were his efforts that the
+first thing his untrained little body did was
+to go down, down, down to the very bottom
+of the pond.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>But he held his breath, because he remembered
+the time before, when he had swallowed
+so much water.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Somehow, he scarcely knew just how it
+happened, he found himself coming up again,
+safely enough.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Wuhr! Splurf!” he gasped.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Good work,” encouraged Mother Black
+Bear. “You see, you couldn’t drown if you
+wanted to!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But already Twinkly Eyes had gone under
+water again, and this time he made the
+mistake of losing his nerve and trying to
+squeal for help. Of course that filled his nose
+with water, and that frightened him still more,
+till the first thing he knew, he was flapping
+about on the bottom of the pond with the
+most awful feeling he had ever known. His
+eyes he kept tight closed to keep the water
+out and not knowing where he had landed
+made it all the worse.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As an actual fact he hadn’t been under a
+minute before Mother Black Bear had pulled
+him out again. But to the five months cub,
+it seemed an hour. “Help, Help!” he gasped,
+the minute his nose came above water.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>His mother, seeing how terrified he had
+become, towed him gently to the bank and
+left him there to shake himself dry in the sun
+while she finished with his brother Woof.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This fat fellow had been enjoying Twinkly’s
+struggles as he paddled slowly about the pond,
+and his little black eyes danced with laughter.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But Twinkly had not given it up. That
+laughter was more than he could stand. “I’ll
+get you for that,” he growled in his high-pitched
+little voice, running around the bank
+to the point nearest his brother. With one
+mighty leap he landed fairly on top of Woof.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And Woof? Why, he simply took one deep
+breath and went under, and Twinkly went
+under with him. But this time he was too
+mad to be afraid. He forgot even to shut his
+eyes. Being able to see how near the bottom
+of the pond really was did more than you can
+imagine to give him confidence in himself.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next thing Mother Black Bear knew,
+both cubs were swimming with all the zest of
+small boys.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But her pleasure was short lived. For rattling
+through the underbrush at that very
+moment came Mrs. Porcupine with three
+prickly babies, headed straight for their pond!</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>V</span><br> MRS. PORCUPINE SHOWS FIGHT</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Yes, sir, Mother Black Bear’s pleasure was
+short lived. For no sooner had the cubs
+started off side by side across the pond than
+there was a curious rattling sound behind
+her, like the rattling of dry twigs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>She turned her head like a flash. It was
+Mrs. Porcupine, her quills rattling together
+as she walked. She was headed straight for
+the little pond, and Mother Black Bear knew
+there was going to be trouble.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Not that she would have cared, had she
+been alone. She would have given it up willingly
+enough. In fact, had she been alone,
+she would have preferred a larger pond for
+her swim.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But Mother Black Bear was not alone.
+She had fat little Woof and Twinkly Eyes to
+look out for. And it certainly was too bad,
+now that they were really making headway
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>with their swimming lesson, to have to give
+up their pond. Twinkly had at last forgotten
+to be afraid, but if they had to give up the
+pond to Mrs. Porcupine, he might lose his
+nerve again, and all her work would have gone
+for nothing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Yet learn to swim he must, before ever
+another accident befell him. Of this Mother
+Black Bear felt very certain.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>She, therefore, eyed Mrs. Porcupine a bit
+anxiously; the more so when she spied the
+three little porcupines creeping along behind
+her.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Of all the folk that live in the Deep Woods,
+there is probably none more absolutely fearless
+than Mrs. Porcupine, and for a very good
+reason. She knows that nothing can so much
+as touch her without getting badly hurt on
+her barbed quills.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Where everyone else darts along the forest
+trails alert to catch the slightest sight or sound
+or smell that might mean an enemy, she strolls
+along with the utmost calm. She knows that
+no one can touch even her babies without
+getting hurt. For they are just as full of quills
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>as she is, and their little quills are even
+sharper.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But if she fears no attack, neither will she
+harm other animals unless attacked. It is
+only when they come too near that she strikes
+at them with her barbed tail.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This afternoon she was headed for the self-same
+little pond that Mother Black Bear had
+selected, and for the self-same reason, as we
+shall see. When she saw Mother Black Bear
+and the two cubs, she didn’t stop for even an
+instant. She came right on to the edge of the
+pond as if there were no one already occupying
+it. She looked straight past Mother Black
+Bear as if she hadn’t been there at all, and
+grunted to her babies to climb on her back.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mother Black Bear gave a growl. “We
+got here first,” said she, crossly. But Mrs.
+Porcupine pretended not to hear. She just
+went on into the water with her babies on her
+back—she had flattened down her quills for
+them—and from all the concern she showed,
+you would have thought she didn’t know the
+bears were there. That was her way of showing
+fight. She hadn’t a doubt in the world
+that they would give their places to her.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>“Come—quick!” Mother Black Bear called
+to her cubs, losing her nerve as the quilly
+creature allowed herself to float over on the
+side the cubs were on. “Quick, I tell you!—Scramble!”</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_027.jpg' alt='[Bears &#38; porcupine]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>VI</span><br> DRIVEN FROM THEIR POND</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Well it was for Woof and Twinkly Eyes, the
+fat bear cubs, that they had learned obedience.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For had they not scrambled out of the pond
+the instant their mother bade them they would
+have got badly hurt.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mrs. Porcupine is not a neighbor to be
+treated with disrespect, as Mother Black Bear
+knew. Had one of the cubs gone an inch too
+near her prickly babies, their little tails would
+have gone slap, slap right in the faces of the
+cubs, leaving their barbed quills behind them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That is why, even though Mrs. Black Bear
+felt she had first right to the swimming pool,
+she gave it up to Mrs. Porcupine the minute
+that lady entered the water.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The bear cubs didn’t in the least understand
+why they should be asked to scramble out of
+the pond so hastily; but they didn’t stop to
+ask why. They just scrambled!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>Once safely on the bank, Mother Black
+Bear hurried them to the shelter of the tall
+ferns and bracken. Here she posted them
+side by side where they could see the pond.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Just watch,” she whispered, “and see—what
+you will see!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The pair settled themselves on their awkward
+little haunches, eyes dancing with
+excitement. They did love a mystery!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now Mrs. Porcupine is covered thick with
+quills, and these are as sharp as needles. When
+she meets an enemy she can make them stand
+out all over her back till she looks like a giant
+pincushion. But she can also flatten them
+down as smooth as a bale of hay.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Just on the edge of the pond, she flattened
+them all so nicely that the three baby porcupines
+were able to clamber aboard and sail
+out into the pond on her back.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Gee! that must be fun,” thought Woof.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I’ll bet they fall off,” thought Twinkly
+Eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mother Black Bear, who knew just what
+was going to happen, thought to herself, “I
+might have tried that myself if only I had
+thought in time!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>“Unk wunk, unk wunk, unk wunk!”
+sang Mrs. Porcupine, pulling up the water
+lily pads and munching the juicy roots.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Unk wunk, unk wunk,” mimicked the
+little porcupines, nibbling at the bits she took
+in her mouth to see what they were like.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Lower and lower swam Mrs. Porcupine,
+till the babies had to climb higher on her back
+to keep from getting wet. Mother Black
+Bear’s eyes fairly twinkled at what was about
+to happen.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Lower still sank the living raft, till it was
+half under. The babies didn’t mind, once the
+surprise of getting wet was over. But the
+raft was sinking lower still. Now Mrs. Porcupine
+just had her nose out.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then—suddenly—she dived clear under!</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_030.jpg' alt='[Porcupine]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>VII</span><br> SINK OR SWIM</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>“Ooh! They’ll drown!” squealed Twinkly
+Eyes, as Mrs. Porcupine went under water
+with her babies on her back.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But they didn’t!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It had come so gradually, for one thing,
+that they weren’t the least bit frightened.
+Mrs. Porcupine has simply flattened her quills
+down smooth and taken them on her back
+while she swam out for lily pads. They had
+nibbled the pads and thought they were having
+the finest kind of ride.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As Mrs. Porcupine went deeper into the
+water and the babies got their feet wet, they
+scarcely noticed, so warm was the water in
+the little pond and so sure were they that
+Mother was right there.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>When she sank till they were all half under,
+they only thought it fun. They had no idea
+of what was going to happen before they
+reached dry land again. Had they known
+what was going to happen, they would have
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>been dreadfully frightened. In fact, they
+wouldn’t have ventured out at all, even on
+their mother’s back.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is often that way with people. If they
+knew just what was going to happen next, they
+would lose their nerve entirely. Yet generally
+when it does happen, it isn’t nearly so bad as
+they feared. Sometimes it isn’t bad at all.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>If the baby porcupines had had any idea
+that their mother was going to dive clear
+under water with them, they never in this
+world would have ventured one foot from
+shore. But that was one of the things Mrs.
+Porcupine kept to herself. She was very good
+at keeping things to herself, was Mrs. Porcupine,
+and it saved her a lot of trouble.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At any rate, from being in the warm pond
+water with their feet safely planted on
+Mother’s back, the babies suddenly found
+themselves in the water with nothing under
+their feet but water, and Mother coming up
+away on the other side of the pond.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The two cubs, watching from the bracken,
+smiled from ear to ear, their little black eyes
+dancing with enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>“Come!” said Mrs. Porcupine, swimming
+about just out of reach. And the three baby
+porcupines simply had to strike out for themselves.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>To their own very great surprise they found
+that their hollow quills floated them beautifully.
+In fact, it is easier for a porcupine to
+swim than it is for almost any other animal.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“What do you think of that?” Mother
+Black Bear asked her cubs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Pretty slick,” said Woof.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Gee, I wish you’d taught me that way,”
+said Twinkly Eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I’m going to teach you something else
+now,” said Mother Black Bear, “Come!”
+and she started up a water maple that grew
+hard by.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Oo—ee! I can’t climb,” Twinkly was
+just beginning, when he heard a curious rustling
+in the grass behind him. Turning his
+head he spied Writho, the Black Snake, making
+straight toward him!</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_034.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>“He found himself staring straight at Writho the black snake.”<br>  <br>  <span class='right'>—Page <a href='#Page_23'>23</a></span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>VIII</span><br> WRITHO, THE BLACK SNAKE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Now Twinkly Eyes had been perfectly
+certain a moment before that he could never
+climb that tree after his mother.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next instant there had been a queer
+little rustling in the tall grass, and he found
+himself staring straight at Writho the Black
+Snake.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He had never seen a black snake before,
+but he would have known just from the smell
+of him that he was some one to avoid.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Climb! Climb!” rumbled Mother Black
+Bear from the water maple. Had he needed
+warning, her anxious tone would have been
+enough.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And Twinkly Eyes climbed—my, how he
+scrambled up that tree! He didn’t once stop
+to wonder if he might fall off. He just drove
+his sharp little claws into the bark and up he
+went, faster than he would ever have dreamed
+possible!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>Mother Black Bear smiled to herself. She
+had learned something from watching Mrs.
+Porcupine dive from under the little porcupines.
+She had learned that if a youngster is
+given his choice of sinking or swimming he
+will find a way to swim. Of course, she could
+have leaped to the rescue the instant Writho
+became dangerous. She wouldn’t have let
+him hurt her cub! But when she saw him
+wriggling through the grass she knew that
+Twinkly Eyes would need no coaxing to take
+to the tree. In that she was not mistaken.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Meantime, where was Woof? He had
+climbed the tree on the other side of the trunk,
+quite without urging, and he now came out
+on a limb some distance from the ground.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Good boy!” said Mother Black Bear, patting
+him fondly.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This was too much for Twinkly Eyes. Had
+not Woof caused all of his troubles that afternoon
+by rolling him into the water? Then,
+too, he felt that he was a good boy himself for
+having scrambled up the tree so readily. To
+have his brother get all the praise!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Fat little Woof was just licking up a delicious
+big black ant when Twinkly crept up
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>behind him. The next instant he received a
+blow in the ribs that fairly knocked the breath
+out of him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The wrestling match that followed sent
+both cubs spinning from their branch. But
+so fat they were, and so roly-poly, that they
+minded their fall about as much as they
+would have a box on the ear. They just rolled
+over and over and over in each other’s arms
+all over the ferns and bracken, still punching
+and biffing one another.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In fact, they rolled about so fast that the
+first thing they knew they had come down
+on something cold and slippery that writhed
+out from under them with an angry hiss.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Woof, ever the quicker of the two, was back
+up his tree in a twinkling, but poor Twinkly
+Eyes was for the second time staring straight
+into the angry eyes of Writho. And the snake
+was between him and the tree!</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_038.jpg' alt='[Bear &#38; snake]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>IX</span><br> “WHOOF! WHOOF!”</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>“Trouble again!” thought Twinkly Eyes,
+as he found himself staring into the angry face
+of Writho, the Black Snake.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“You rolled right on me,” scolded Writho.
+“Haven’t you any consideration for other
+people at all?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I’m sorry,” pleaded the cub, “I had no
+idea—”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“You want to look where you’re going,”
+scolded Writho. “I could bite you for what
+you did!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Oh, please don’t,” squealed Twinkly Eyes,
+retreating toward the pond, as Writho wriggled
+closer. Then he remembered Mrs. Porcupine
+and her family, whom he could hear
+grunting “unk wunk” as they nibbled lily
+pads. It would never do to back up too close to
+those prickly creatures. Neither would it do
+to turn his back on Writho, whose red forked
+tongue hissed at him from between two of the
+sharpest looking fangs he had ever seen.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>“Truly, I didn’t mean to step on you, Mr.
+Writho,” said the little bear, and his voice
+sounded very sorry and very much afraid.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But he kept backing around nearer and
+nearer his tree, until it was right behind him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Whoof, whoof!” he suddenly roared at
+the snake, stamping a fore foot loudly.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Writho was so amazed that he stood stone
+still, and in that instant the cub had raced up
+his tree in safety.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Why didn’t you think of that before?”
+laughed Mother Bear. “Writho is an awful
+bluffer. He didn’t really mean to bite at all.
+The trouble was, it hurt his pride to be stepped
+on.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“So was I a bluffer,” confessed Twinkly
+Eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“No, you weren’t, my son. You could have
+killed him with one blow on the back of his
+neck, had he really tried to bite you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Wish I’d known,” sighed the cub. “I
+certainly had a bad scare.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Now climb up here in the sun and dry
+your fur,” said Mother Black Bear, “while
+I talk to you. As a rule I don’t advise bluffing.
+I don’t advise making any threat you cannot
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>back up with tooth or claw. Because once
+people find you out, they will have no more
+respect for you.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“But with a coward and a bluffer like
+Writho it often works. Most snakes are
+cowards. All they want is to be left in peace.
+They’ll only attack a big animal like you when
+you step on them and make them mad. They
+hiss and stick out their tongues at us just for a
+bluff.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I’ve never seen Writho attack any animal
+larger than a hare or a chipmunk in all my life.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“But you’ll do well to keep clear out of the
+way of Mrs. Porcupine and the whole porcupine
+family, big and little,” and she peered
+back into the pond, where the three prickly
+babies were just following their mother out
+of the pond.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Hello, there! I do believe they are making
+for our tree!”</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_041.jpg' alt='[Porcupines]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>X</span><br> THE BETTER PART OF VALOR</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Mother Black Bear sighed as she saw Mrs.
+Porcupine making for her maple tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“If she wants it, I suppose she will have to
+have it,” she told the cubs. “Wisdom is the
+better part of valor.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“What is wisdom?” asked Woof, the larger
+of the fat cubs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Wisdom,” said Mother Black Bear, “in
+this case is giving up our tree rather than
+having a fight with Mrs. Porcupine about it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“But we got here first,” shrilled Twinkly
+Eyes, the smaller cub. “She has no right to
+it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“That makes no difference with Mrs. Porcupine,”
+growled Mother Black Bear. “She
+has no sense of right and wrong. She is too
+well armed with those awful quills to value
+other people’s rights. She just about has
+things all her own way in the Deep Woods,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>because few of us care to fight with her. It’s
+lucky that all she wants is her own stubborn
+way. She is a ve-ge-tarian, you know. She
+eats no meat.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Just why she should decide on our maple
+tree—of all the trees she has to choose between—is
+more than I can see. Though, of
+course, it IS easy for the little ones to climb.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Will they have to climb up there in the sun
+and dry off, too?” asked Twinkly Eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Where else would they get any sun?”
+asked Woof, gazing up at the forest roof. In
+this part of the woods the trees all grew so high
+and so close together that their upper
+branches interlaced, so that one only got a
+patch of the sky here and there.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Woof, peering through the green gloom,
+could see Mrs. Porcupine and the three little
+Porcupines slowly making toward their maple.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Don’t let her have it,” he begged Mother
+Black Bear, who loved nothing better than to
+see a scrap. “You could lick her, Mother!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Well, no, I shouldn’t like to try it, not
+with you youngsters along,” she answered,
+swinging her long head from side to side
+uneasily, as she prepared to lead the way
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>to the ground. “Your father might, but I
+shouldn’t like to try it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Why, the old ‘Unk Wunk!’”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“First she chased us out of our pond, now
+out of our tree,” complained Twinkly Eyes.
+“Can’t we bluff her off, the way I did Writho,
+the black snake?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I should say not,” said Mother Black
+Bear in alarm. “Nothing on this earth could
+frighten Mrs. Porcupine. Come along here,”
+and she reached up and gave each cub a spank
+that sent them hurrying to the ground. It
+was not a moment too soon, for as they landed
+on one side of the trunk the Porcupine family
+started up the other, though for all the sign
+they made, Mother Black Bear and the cubs
+didn’t even exist.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But the latter’s peace of mind was short-lived.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“We are certainly going to have a thunder-storm,”
+exclaimed Mother Black Bear, as she
+sniffed the air.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Are you scared, Mother?” asked Twinkly
+Eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Well, that all depends on how fast you
+cubs can beat it out of these woods!”</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XI</span><br> A TIP ON THUNDER-STORMS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>“No sir-ee! I certainly don’t like the looks
+of things,” said Mother Black Bear, hurrying
+the cubs through the green gloom of the forest
+aisles.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Mrs. Porcupine is welcome to our maple
+tree! There’s going to be a thunder-storm, and
+it’s going to be a big one,” and she pointed
+her nose skyward to sniff.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Out over the lake the black clouds were
+banking up over the sky at a great rate. The
+cubs crowded close to her sides, as the rolling
+and rumbling of clouds banging together
+came to their ears.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The air was full of the peculiar fresh odor
+you always notice before a shower.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Are you scared, mother?” Twinkly Eyes
+kept asking.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mother Black Bear glanced about, this way
+and that.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>On every side, as far as she could see, there
+were just five or six kinds of trees, oaks,
+poplars, willows, maples, elms and ash trees,
+all growing to nearly the same height. Here
+and there was a blackened trunk standing
+gaunt and naked where the lightning had
+struck. For these trees, as every woodsman
+knows, are the very ones most likely to be
+struck.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I don’t like to get caught in these woods,”
+insisted Mother Black Bear, starting off at a
+brisk pace along the southern border of the
+lake. It was all the cubs could do to follow,
+paddling along on their chubby legs with
+panting breath and red tongues lolling from
+their little black muzzles.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I can’t keep up,” whispered Twinkly Eyes
+who brought up the rear.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Lightning waits for no one,” rumbled
+Mother Black Bear, refusing to slow down
+even a mite. A nearer crash of thunder, as
+the first big raindrops began to fall, sent her
+forward on the run.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Where are we going?” asked Woof, who
+rather enjoyed the excitement.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>“We’re going to find the kind of trees
+lightning doesn’t strike,” Mother Black Bear
+flung behind her without stopping.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Beech, birch, chestnut, basswood!” She
+broke into a run.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Oh, mother—those white birches over
+behind Pollywog pond,” gasped Woof, trying
+his best to keep up with her through the pelting
+rain.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Just where we are headed,” rumbled
+Mother Black Bear. “If only—we can reach
+them—in time!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A blinding flash of lightning darted down
+the trunk of a huge old oak to the left. This
+time the thunder seemed to come at the same
+instant.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mother Black Bear looked back over her
+shoulder. Woof was close behind,—but where
+was Twinkly Eyes?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>She turned instantly to find out.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XII</span><br> A WILD MOTHER’S LOVE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>At the instant of the lightning flash that
+came so near, Mother Black Bear had been
+racing for dear life to get to the safe shelter of
+the birch grove.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>She knew that lightning is not so apt to
+strike in a birch grove as in the giant oaks
+where the storm had found them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But then the cubs had both been close at
+her heels. The instant she missed Twinkly
+Eyes she turned back to find him. He lay
+flat on the ground, his heels in the air, just
+where he had tumbled when the big crash
+came. He was so frightened that he could
+scarce regain his feet. His legs trembled till
+he could go no further.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mother Black Bear tried her best to carry
+him in her mouth, but he was so fat and roly-poly
+and wiggled so at every clap of thunder
+that she had to give it up.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>Woof, who was close at her heels every
+minute, was all for climbing the tallest tree
+they could find, but Mother Black Bear
+selected a comparatively open patch with
+no tree higher than its neighbors; and there
+she crouched beside the cubs, covering them
+with her own body when the big drops turned
+to hailstones.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“It’s bad to be caught among the oaks in a
+thunder storm,” she told the cubs as they
+waited. “It’s bad to be caught under any
+tall tree. Better far, when a storm comes up,
+abandon your tree and wait out in the open
+where there is nothing to attract the lightning.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“There are only two things in all the Deep
+Woods that a bear ought really to be afraid of,
+and one of those is lightning—for there’s no
+fighting back,” said Mother Black Bear.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“What is the other thing you are afraid of,
+Mother?” asked Woof, “Mrs. Porcupine?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“No, I’m not afraid of Mrs. Porcupine, if
+I did think best to let her have our tree. I
+just believe in keeping out of her way, that’s
+all.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Then what is the other thing you are
+afraid of?” asked Twinkly Eyes, whose
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>trembling had ceased as the storm passed
+around to the south.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Men with guns,” said Mother Black Bear
+im-press-ive-ly. (When you say a thing im-press-ive-ly,
+you try to impress it on other
+people’s minds, so they will never forget.)
+“You can’t fight men with guns. That is
+once when a bear just simply has to run
+away.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“That would suit Twinkly Eyes, all right,”
+laughed Woof, poking his brother in the ribs.
+“Eh, there?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The smaller cub gave a growl. “Just
+because I didn’t want to learn to swim!—I’ll
+teach you to be afraid yourself, one of these
+days! You see if I don’t!” he growled in his
+baby throat, as he thought of how Woof had
+pushed him into the lake.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XIII</span><br> TWINKLY EYES GETS EVEN</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>He’d get even, somehow, Twinkly told himself,
+seizing his brother’s nose; and as the fat
+cubs clinched the storm was forgotten.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mother Black Bear gave them each a cuff,
+then stalked away, leaving them unprotected
+in the pelting hail.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Such clawing and biting and squealing as
+followed you never did see!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The clouds rolled away toward Mount
+Olaf and the hail changed to rain, and the
+rain suddenly gave way to a red glow in the
+West where the sun goes to bed. But the
+cubs fought on.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mother Black Bear stood and watched,
+feeling that they were gaining a training in
+the use of their muscles that would stand
+them in good stead later on. She would interfere
+only if she saw that one of them was really
+getting hurt.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_052.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>“Such clawing and biting and squealing—you never did see!”<br>  <br>  <span class='right'>—Page <a href='#Page_38'>38</a></span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>Now just behind the circle of brushwood in
+which they had sought safety from the thunder
+storm there was an old root that sloped
+straight down a 15-foot incline.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>To this Twinkly was trying his best to
+shove his brother, and though he was somewhat
+lighter than Woof, weighing a bare six
+pounds to Woof’s six and a half, he was also
+quicker on his feet, and he did finally succeed
+in backing the other up to the incline.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>True, there was no lake at the bottom, as
+there had been when Woof shoved him down
+the bank in his sleep, but at least the teaser
+should find out what it felt like to be sent
+rolling in a helpless ball.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>With a sudden wrench he sprang free, just
+as he had the larger cub humped up at the top
+of the slide, defending his head with all four
+paws. The result was that fat Woof rolled
+like a rubber ball straight down the incline,
+whirling around and around till he came up,
+plunk, against the trunk of a tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But to Twinkly Eyes’ surprise Woof not
+only picked himself up with a laugh of enjoyment,
+but he raced back up the slope to try
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>it again, ducking his tiny head and doubling
+up into a ball for the purpose.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Again and again he tobogganed down that
+slope, Twinkly staring after him wide-eyed.
+So that was the way he had thought to get
+even!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He was so surprised that he stood clear up
+on his hind legs, staring. Then he tried it
+himself!</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_055.jpg' alt='[Bears]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XIV</span><br> A DIFFERENT TWINKLY EYES</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Summer passed, with its lessons. And
+thanks to Mother Black Bear, there wasn’t
+an animal his size in all the Deep Woods that
+Twinkly Eyes was afraid of, when at last the
+long sleep came.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Emerging in the spring from the snug den
+in which he and his brother had drowsed
+away the long months, snuggled close into
+their mother’s furs, he was a different Twinkly
+Eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He was both older and wiser,—and oh, so
+much thinner! His voice had deepened, too.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Soon he began hunting by himself. For
+Mother Black Bear now had two new little
+roly-poly cubs. And sometimes he didn’t
+find much to eat.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One morning he met Tattle-tale the Jay.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now Tattletale was not really a mean fellow:
+he was just mischievous. He loved to play
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>pranks. His tattling was for the most part
+a warning to the smaller forest folk of the
+approach of their enemies, Cooper the Hawk
+and Bobby Lynx, and Mother Black Bear.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>When any of these were out for game, he
+would fly from one tree-top to another just ahead
+of them, screaming his warning at the top
+of his lungs, till there wasn’t a hare or a wood
+mouse anywhere that did not have a chance to
+run to hiding.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now, though, he was so furious with the
+Red Squirrels for smashing two of Mrs. Jay’s
+pretty eggs that he made up his mind to get
+even. It never once entered his head that he
+was the first offender. For if he hadn’t begun
+the quarrel by robbing Shadow Tail, of his
+poor little hoard of seeds, Mother Red Squirrel
+would never have harmed the eggs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>If he had thought, he might have called it
+square, instead of making a bad matter worse.
+But Tattletale didn’t stop to think. All he
+could see was his own grievance. Besides,
+Mrs. Jay felt so bad about the eggs that he
+had to promise her something that would
+soothe her ruffled feelings.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>The very next morning, just as the first
+pink rays of the rising sun began glinting off
+the dew-wet leaves in the open places, he was
+flitting about after grasshoppers when he
+spied Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear,
+slouching along the little trail to Pollywog
+Pond.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Good morning, Mr. Bear,” he chirped.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Good morning,” rumbled the yearling
+cub, peering and blinking into the treetops
+at the flash of blue wings. Twinkly’s eyes are
+very poor, though his ears are so sharp and
+his nose sharper. He could hear the squeak
+of a wood mouse a long way off, and he could
+tell just by sniffing whether or not he would
+find those delicious sour-tasting ants underneath
+a fallen log.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“How do you find the hunting these days?”
+asked Tattletale politely.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Oh, nothing extra—nothing extra at all,”
+grumbled Twinkly Eyes. “Haven’t had
+much of anything but roots and frogs so far
+this spring. Blueberries aren’t ripe yet, there
+won’t be any nuts till fall, to say nothing of
+green corn. And a bear of my size can’t make
+much of a living off of grubs and mice, of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>course. I do wish I could find a bee tree!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I don’t suppose, now,” ventured the Jay,
+“that you’d be interested in a nest of young
+squirrels?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Try me—just try me once!” chuckled
+the little bear.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“All right; see that old oak?” directed
+Tattletale, flying on ahead.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_059.jpg' alt='[Bear]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XV</span><br> THERE’S MANY A SLIP</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Fortunately for most of us, there is many
+a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, which only
+means that many a plan is laid that doesn’t
+pan out just as it was expected to.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was so in the case of Twinkly Eyes, the
+little Black Bear. It was lucky for him and it
+was lucky for Shadow Tail, the Red Squirrel,
+and it was lucky for Tattletale, the Jay. For
+if Tattletale had really been the means
+of leading the little Bear to Mother Red
+Squirrel’s nest, she’d never have forgiven
+Tattletale, but surely would have gone back
+and broken the rest of the eggs on which he
+had left Mrs. Jay sitting so patiently.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And if Twinkly Eyes had really caught
+the squirrel babies, as he wanted to, he’d
+have made such an enemy of every squirrel in
+all the woods around that he’d never have
+known peace again. For they’d have followed
+through the treetops, everywhere he went,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>scolding him and warning the mice and frogs
+and snakes to beware of his coming.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But there was one thing Tattletale the Jay
+had not stopped to consider when he led
+Twinkly Eyes to the tree in which Mother
+Red Squirrel had located. He didn’t stop to
+realize that the squirrel babies were far too
+clever to be caught napping.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>No sooner did Shadow Tail and his brothers
+hear Twinkly’s great claws scrambling up the
+tree trunk than they promptly leaped into
+another tree, and the bear had his climb for
+his trouble.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Sliding down the trunk like a bag of meal,
+he tried the next tree, on the Jay’s advice,
+but with the same success. The little squirrels
+raced from branch to branch around him,
+hurling taunts and laughter at him, till he
+really began to be angry. But it was Mr. Jay
+he was angry with!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“See here,” he grumbled, “I do believe
+you have just been playing a prank on me!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Oh, no, I assure you,” began Tattletale,
+flying down beside the bear.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But Twinkly Eyes would have none of it.
+He suddenly remembered how often the Jay
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>had warned his quarry away from him by flying
+just overhead and shrieking, “Look out,
+look out! A bear!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>With this memory bitter upon him, he
+made a sudden slap at Tattletale with his
+great barbed paw. But the bird was too quick
+for him. He was back in the tree tops before
+the little Bear knew what had happened.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“All right,” said Tattletale, “if you feel
+that way about it! You can’t do me any
+harm,” and he was off with a flash of his blue
+wings.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For a while Twinkly wandered on, hungrily
+listening for the squeak of a shrew mouse.
+Then suddenly he pricked up his ears. It
+was—it certainly was the buzzing of a honey
+bee! It came from a little wild rose bush.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now a honey bee meant but one thing to
+Twinkly Eyes—a bee tree, and a bee tree
+meant honey. He would follow the sound
+when the bee flew home, and then—Um!
+His mouth fairly watered.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XVI</span><br> THE BEE TREE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>As Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear,
+heard that buzzing from the wild rose bushes,
+he forgot his troubles with the Jay.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Indeed, he fairly danced for joy. For
+had he not been waiting greedily all spring
+for the sound of a honey bee?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now he would find the bee tree, and feast
+on honey to his heart’s content! For of all
+the good things in the great green woods—mice
+and berries and grubs, and fish and frogs,
+and sour-tasting little red ants, to say nothing
+of juicy roots, and the nuts of autumn—he
+loved nothing half so well as honey.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He had had a taste just once, but he had
+never forgotten!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>While wrestling with his brother one day
+the spring before, when they were three
+months cubs, their mother had suddenly called
+them to follow and trailing straight after a bee
+her sharp ears had discovered, she led them
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>to a hollow tree where the yellow comb lay
+in great fragrant chunks.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly Eyes licked his chops at the
+memory. Then Mother Black Bear had
+shown them how to hide their noses and shut
+their eyes when the bees came too near these
+unprotected places. Otherwise the angry
+insects could try as hard as they would, and
+they could not reach through the glossy fur.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly Eyes had escaped without a sting
+and he had decided in his infant mind that
+Mother was altogether too cautious for any
+use.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This year Mother Black Bear had a new
+set of cubs to teach and train, and Twinkly
+and his brother were living in bachelor
+quarters.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A moment Twinkly watched, and then the
+bee had all the honey she could carry. Buzzing
+happily, she started back through the
+woods toward an open glade on the other side
+of Pollywog Pond.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly followed, his sharp ears guiding
+him where his little near-sighted eyes could
+not, till his eager sniffings brought to his
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>nostrils the first faint fragrance of the bee
+tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now other bees began to join the first one,
+till there was quite a little swarm headed for
+a hollow pine—a great, gaunt tree that had
+been hollowed out by lightning and now
+stood, scarred and blackened, on the top of a
+hillock.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“It’s a pretty good world, after all,”
+Twinkly Eyes decided, as he ambled up the
+slope.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_065.jpg' alt='[Bees]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XVII</span><br> TWINKLY EYES AND TROUBLE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>“Yes, sir, it’s a pretty good world after
+all,” mused Twinkly Eyes, the little Black
+Bear, as he neared the bee tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Certainly everything about him promised
+a blissful day.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Warblers sung happily from every treetop,
+swallowtail butterflies danced above the wild
+rose bushes, and puffy white clouds shadowed
+the blue of the sky. There was just enough
+breeze to feel good as it ruffled his glossy fur.
+Then too, blueberries were nearly ripe, and
+the fragrance of wild grape vines promised
+delights to come.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But best of all was that heavy hum of a
+thousand bees carrying their golden honey
+into the hollow pine tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was a tall old pine that had once been
+struck by lightning. One side was scored and
+blackened; near the top was a small dark
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>hole, into which the returning bees poured
+steadily, while others poured steadily out
+again.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And oh! The wonderful odor that came
+from that hole! How it made his mouth
+water! There was nothing whatever to indicate
+that trouble might be near.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now Twinkly Eyes had been in his mother’s
+charge the first time he had climbed a bee
+tree, and thanks to her warnings he had
+escaped unstung. It seemed to him now, as
+he thought of that wonderful day, that his
+mother had been altogether more cautious
+than there was any need of being.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But, no sooner had his claws begun to rattle
+upon the trunk of the hollow pine than the
+buzzing grew louder, and it seemed to Twinkly
+Eyes that there was a new note in it, quite
+different from the contented hum he had
+heard before. In fact, he began to wonder if
+there might be trouble after all. Still, he was
+not one to give up at this point! The sweet
+comb would be worth a lot of trouble! He
+scrambled faster, till one paw clutched the
+edge of the hole.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>Instantly the bees had settled thick upon
+his coat, trying their best to ram their red-hot
+stings into his glossy fur, but it was too
+thick for them, and Twinkly minded not at
+all.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Suddenly a red-hot needle struck him on
+the lip.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Hoof—woof!” he protested, licking the
+burnt place. It hurt dreadfully.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Another needle pricked him, this time on
+the tip of his protruding tongue. This time
+Twinkly slapped so angrily that he flattened
+the bee, but it didn’t help his tongue, and his
+lip began to swell.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But there was no time to think about that.
+As he reached for a better hold, his paw tore
+a strip of the rotten bark away, and he had
+to shut his eyes and cover his nose with his
+paw while the angry swarm darted about his
+head in a buzzing fury.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XVIII</span><br> TWINKLY SHOWS HIS METTLE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>No, indeed, Twinkly Eyes was not the Bear
+to give up just when he had one paw in the
+honey!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For the same paw that covered his nose
+from the angry insects, as he clung to the old
+pine, also brought to his tongue the most
+wonderful flavor he had ever known.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All the smarting and burning in tongue
+and lip could not spoil that flavor. He must
+have more of it, and that at once! For what
+had he watched and waited these long weeks
+if not for this very chance? Was he to be
+driven from the feast by a little brown insect
+with a barb in the end of its tail?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>No indeed! No mere honey bee could make
+him turn back now.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Struggling still nearer that dark round hole
+from which the fragrance issued he drew a
+long breath and plunged in.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_070.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>“My how his little black eyes danced with the delight of it!”<br>  <br>  <span class='right'>—Page <a href='#Page_55'>55</a></span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>Another needle point, red hot, stung him,
+this time on the lid of his right eye; and if the
+sting on his lip had tortured him, this was
+something far, far worse. He whimpered
+unhappily, and rubbed the sore place gently
+against his upraised foreleg.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>My! how those bees did buzz and threaten
+him! But they couldn’t reach him through
+his fur, so long as he kept his face protected.
+He clung to his hole just the same, and by and
+by he dug his free paw deep into the honeycomb
+within and brought a great luscious
+chunk to his mouth.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now that their little store was really disappearing,
+despite all they could do the bees at
+once began setting to work to rescue some of
+their treasure. Still there were enough left
+on guard to give Twinkly cause for watchfulness.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He grabbed another mouthful, and gulped
+it down, with the bees that still clung to it.
+My, how his little black eyes danced with the
+delight of it!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>If only that eyelid would not smart so
+dreadfully! It was swelling, too, and he
+could hardly see out of that eye at all.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>His tongue was swollen, too, on the tip
+end where the bee had stung him, till it began
+to feel so big he feared he wouldn’t be able to
+close his jaws in another minute.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But he would not give up! Not Twinkly
+Eyes! Not till every last smell of that honey
+was gone! Now that he had risked it thus
+far, he reasoned, he might as well have something
+to sweeten his pain.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The little Black Bear was nothing if not
+persistent, and persistence is a virtue that
+stands one in good stead in the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then suddenly a most surprising thing
+happened.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_073.jpg' alt='[Bear]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XIX</span><br> DOWN BUT NOT DOWNED</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>A great many things can happen to a bear
+cub that he doesn’t expect to happen.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was so with Twinkly Eyes. No sooner
+had he made up his mind to enjoy his feast in
+the bee tree in spite of his stings when—zipp!
+Off came a great long strip of the rotten
+bark! And while it disclosed even more of the
+yellow comb, it also happened to be the very
+strip of bark to which the little bear was
+clinging with his left forepaw.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now his right paw was deep in the honey
+at the time, and a bear cannot cling in the top
+of a pine tree with his hind legs alone. The
+result was that there was a wild scrambling,
+then the sound of claws rattling noisily over
+the bark that they could not get a grip in,
+and finally the snapping of a hazel bush that
+stood just beneath.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>Twinkly Eyes had come down like a bag of
+meal!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He gave one big grunt, then a series of
+whimpers. For even if you are a yearling cub
+and your bones are padded with great heavy
+muscles and thick fur, it isn’t the most comfortable
+thing in the world to fall crashing
+out of the top of a bee tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Fortunately for Twinkly Eyes, he had
+hugged the trunk just enough, as he descended,
+to break the fall. Then, too, he
+landed on the hazel bush, which sprang under
+him in a way still further to soften his landing.
+But even at that, things whirled about him
+for a few minutes there.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then he arose, a bit groaningly, it is true—what
+with his swollen eyelid and his burning
+lip and tongue. And what do you suppose he
+did next?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Most anyone would have felt that he had
+had enough adventure to last him for some
+time. But not so Twinkly Eyes! That was
+not the kind of mettle he was made of!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Though his little near-sighted eyes could
+not see the crack that now reached for nearly
+his own length down the hollow trunk, his
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>keen brown nose told him that the scent of
+honey was even stronger than before. And,
+though his black sides already stuck out, his
+mouth still watered for more.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He sniffed longingly, then tried to soothe
+his swelling eyelid with his paw. He certainly
+felt bunged up, to say nothing of the jolting
+he had just received. He couldn’t see out of
+his right eye at all now, and there was a lump
+the size of a walnut on his lip.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But, oh, the delicious fragrance! The
+honey he had waited a year to find! In
+his long winter’s sleep he had dreamed of it
+more than once, and licked his paws in vain.
+Throughout the lean spring, as he grubbed for
+roots, he had listened in vain for the very
+buzzing that now filled the air all about him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was too much! He would try again!</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XX</span><br> TWINKLY APPLIES FIRST AID</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>There was no resisting that odor of wild
+honey dripping from the comb—not to one
+who loved wild honey like Twinkly Eyes, the
+little Black Bear!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He must have more! His eye swollen shut,
+his tongue stinging like fury with the hot
+flame of the bee’s sting, he pulled himself
+together and started up the tree again.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The bees were working like mad to carry
+away at least a part of their store before he
+should devour it; but they were not too busy
+to try once more to drive him off. A fourth
+bee gave up his life to thrust his barbed and
+poisonous sting into his nose. But Twinkly
+Eyes only became the more stubborn in his
+desire to clean out the tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Bracing himself in the crotch of a branch
+just beneath the opening, he thrust one paw
+in deeply and brought it back dripping with
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>yellow liquid and dotted with black bees.
+Bees and all went into his eager mouth, and he
+crunched joyously handful after handful.
+Once a bee tried to come too near, and with
+one sticky sweep of his honeyed paw he
+imprisoned the insect, whose wings stuck so
+fast he could only buzz helplessly, traveling
+back and forth from the place where the bees
+wanted the honey to the place where Twinkly
+Eyes wanted to have it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Thus, in time, the treasure of the pine tree
+disappeared,—and my, you should have seen
+how that little bear’s sides stuck out! It was
+a lucky thing for him that the honey was all
+gone, I tell you!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And what a sight he presented, as he slid
+down the trunk and ambled off to Pollywog
+Pond! His face by this time was smeared
+with honey from ear to ear. Flying leaves
+and little chips of bark clung to it as if they
+had been pasted there. Add to that his
+swollen eyelid, which by now had raised a
+great black welt, and his nose and his mouth
+all lumpy from the poisonous stings, and one
+would certainly have said he had been in a
+fight.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>But he felt so perfectly blissful with his
+sides rounded out with honey the way they
+were that he wasn’t the least bit sorry. Not
+Twinkly Eyes! He would have done the
+same thing over again the next day had he
+had the chance.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He knew just what to do with his wounds,
+and he did it. Searching along the banks
+until he found some particularly sticky clay,
+he plastered it freely all over his tortured face
+until he looked, if possible, worse than before.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But he felt a whole lot better, let me tell
+you. The wet clay soon began to draw the
+poison, and besides, bears get over things like
+that quicker than human beings would. So
+by the time he had had a nice long snooze and
+a drink and a stretch, and the round yellow
+moon began to rise from behind the firs,
+Twinkly Eyes was ready for almost anything.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXI</span><br> MAMMY COTTONTAIL’S SECRET</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Now Twinkly Eyes had a lively bump of
+curiosity on that furry black head of his. He
+was much interested in other people’s affairs.
+And he used to lie hidden by the hour, just
+to find out what other wood-folk were up to.
+But of all the dwellers in that wilderness,
+none interested him so much as the Cottontail
+family. That is, none except his old enemy
+the porcupine!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One day, lying under a clump of high-bush
+blue-berry bushes, in the early spring sunshine,
+he learned a secret.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“We have a secret at our house! Truly,
+truly, truly,” sang Betty Bluebird, sitting on
+a fencepost with her red blouse turned to the
+warming glow of the early morning sunshine.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“We have too, we have too, we have too!”
+trilled Robin Red-breast, running along the
+roadway with a weather eye for worms.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>And down in the marsh behind the barn,
+Conqueree, the Red Winged Blackbird, was
+shrilling at the Crows like a little soldier in
+red epaulettes: “Clear out! Or I’ll put you
+out! I’m Conqueree! Conqueree! Conqueree!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“You cawn’t, cawn’t, cawn’t!” the crows
+retorted, trying to drown out his threats
+with a hoarse chorus of denial, as they swirled
+around and around him, keeping just barely
+out of reach of his swift beak. “We have
+secrets we won’t tell! Such secrets!—Round,
+gray green secrets, four to a nest, hidden
+away up in the tops of the tallest pine trees!
+And you cawn’t, cawn’t, cawn’t guess what
+they are!—you cawn’t.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Trust a crow to tell all he knows!” chuckled
+Daddy and Mammy Cottontail, crouched on
+guard before a small round hole scooped out
+of the turf and lined with bits of fur from
+Mammy Cottontail’s breast. “We could tell
+a pretty cunning secret ourselves, only we
+have better sense than to shout our affairs to
+the four winds,” and their slim ears waggled
+wisely.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>Sure enough, packed snugly back under a
+blanket of dried grass, six of the softest,
+roundest little wriggly-nosed babies that ever
+made a bunny feel like kicking his heels in the
+moonlight slept with their long ears folded
+close along their backs and their long hind legs
+doubled up under their fuzzy brown bodies.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Do you suppose they’ve all got the same
+kind of secrets?” whispered Mammy Cottontail
+delightedly.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Nothing to compare with ours,” sniffed
+Daddy, then stopped suddenly, as the little
+Bear snapped a twig in his effort to creep
+nearer.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_082.jpg' alt='[Rabbits]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXII</span><br> ONE OF TWINKLY’S NEIGHBORS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Twinkly Eyes had roamed to quite another
+part of the woods when the twilight stillness
+was pierced by a sudden screech from up on
+Mount Olaf.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mammy Cottontail’s timid heart quailed
+within her. Mother Red Squirrel could scarce
+be blamed for all but dropping from her limb;
+and even Father Red Fox looked anxious at
+the thought of the red-brown pups in the
+rocky den on the hill-top.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Far down at the Valley Farm, “Lynx!”
+whispered the Boy, wide-eyed, “Hope he
+isn’t coming down to make trouble for our
+wood folks. He’s mighty fond of baby bunnies.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Away up almost at the top of Mount Olaf
+a great cat, three times as heavy as barnyard
+Tamas, was creeping, creeping, creeping along
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>through the underbrush, on great furry feet
+that made no sound.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>His broad ears bore little tufts at their tips,
+his jowls were squared off with the most
+ferocious-looking whiskers, and his thick tail
+was no more than a stub.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Children,” quavered Mammy Cottontail,
+“That was a lynx! Now, I want to tell you
+something, and I want you to listen with all
+your ears, because it is very, very serious!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Old man Lynx and his family live up on
+that mountain top, and while they don’t
+come down this far once in a coon’s age, we’ve
+got to be prepared! Because it would be a
+terrible thing if they did! Terrible for us, and
+terrible for everyone we know!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I’ll tell you why he screeched that way!
+It was to scare timid folks like us, so that we’d
+jump and betray our whereabouts. Yes’m,
+that’s exactly what he screeched for! To
+make us jump!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Because, you see, when Mother Nature invented
+little brown bunnies and grouse hens
+and muskrats and all the rest of us forest folk,
+she knew exactly what she was about. And she
+gave us our brown coats so that we’d match
+the ground, and couldn’t be seen by the big
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>prowling creatures that are always trying to
+have rabbit and grouse for dinner. And just
+so long as we keep as still as field mice, we
+stand a fighting chance of not being seen.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“But Old Man Lynx knows this as well as
+we do. He knows that when he goes hunting
+o’nights, none but the foolish will be stirring
+a hair’s breadth from their own warm beds.
+And if there are no foolish ones that he can
+sneak up on, with his great padded paws that
+tip-toe so silently through the underbrush, he
+screams in the hope that it will startle some
+of us so dreadfully that we will forget to keep
+still, and jump.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“It’s enough to make any one jump out of
+his skin,” said Daddy.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“But that’s exactly what the Old Man
+figures on. And if you can’t control your
+nerves any better than to jump when he
+screeches, he can see exactly where you are!
+If he’s anywhere near, that is! Well, you
+children had better go to sleep now. But just
+you remember this: Lie still when you hear
+him scream, and ten to one he’ll never know
+where you are.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yes, Mammy,” whispered six timid little
+voices.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXIII</span><br> INTRODUCING BOBBY LYNX</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>It was not often that Old Man Lynx gave
+voice to the pangs of hunger. For he knew
+that for every grouse or hare or baby fox he
+startled into betraying its whereabouts, he
+scared a dozen so far away that it made hunting
+harder next time.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But tonight he was teaching some one else
+the trick.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At the very time that Father Red Fox was
+viewing his own red-brown pups with such
+mingled pride and amusement, and Mother
+Douglas was driving Father Douglas out of
+the old oak tree, lest he should step on one of
+the squirrel babies, and Mammy and Daddy
+Cottontail were taking turn and turn about
+guarding the six brown bunnies on the edge
+of the cornfield, Madam Lynx—away up on
+the top of Mt. Olaf—was just as proud as any
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>one of two great, scraggly kittens, as heavy-pawed
+and bob-tailed and fierce-looking as
+anything that could be imagined.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At first even these ferocious creatures were
+as blind and helpless and appealing as any
+tame kittens could have been, though without
+their grace. And as soon as they learned the
+use of their legs, they rolled and tumbled, and
+growled and spat, and boxed one another
+about, fully as mischievously as had Fluff, the
+maltese kitten at the farm, when she and her
+little brothers lived in the basket behind the
+kitchen stove.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But Old Man Lynx was kept mighty busy,
+let me tell you, as soon as they were weaned
+and could eat meat; for the two youngsters
+were such ravenous creatures and they grew
+so fast, and the mountain air was so stimulating,
+that it just seemed as if he couldn’t bring
+in enough to keep his share of the larder
+filled.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So it was by way of teaching young Bob
+Kitten and his brother how to hunt that old
+Man Lynx had screamed in such a blood-curdling
+manner.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>Decidedly Wriggly Nose and Shadow Tail,
+and even fat young Frisky Fox, were going to
+have a very much harder time of it making
+their way in the world, now that there was a
+new young lynx on the top of Mount Olaf.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly Eyes was later to share a couple
+of interesting adventures with young Bobby
+Lynx.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_088.jpg' alt='[Lynx]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXIV</span><br> A BUNNY BALL</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Mammy Cottontail, the little brown hare,
+had been living in the Old Apple Orchard for
+several weeks now and the bunnies were half-grown.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One moonlight night toward the end of
+June—the self-same night that Twinkly Eyes
+had found the bee tree, Mammy said:</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Children, we are going on a frolic tonight.
+So come along, Flap Ears and Furtive Feet,
+and Wriggly Nose and Paddy Paws, and
+Fuzzy Wuzz and Hippity Skip! Daddy’s
+there waiting for us now!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Through the moonlight woods she led
+them in one long line along a little briar-grown
+rabbit path, the youngsters kicking
+their heels high in their excitement.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now they crept under a patch of huckleberry
+bushes, and now they hugged the
+shadow of a grapevine. Straight across the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>blueberry burn, they galloped,—under the
+fruit-laden bushes, then across a corner of
+wild meadow where the daisies gleamed high
+above their heads, and all about them was the
+aroma of sweet fern.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Their path ran zig-zag, this way and that,
+here circling back upon itself, there darting
+off at right angles, till anyone trying to follow
+it would have had an interesting time, to say
+the least.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But after various turnings and twistings
+through the woods, and doublings around the
+rocky hilltop behind Pollywog Pond, they
+found themselves away back on the border
+of a little glade, an opening in the trees where
+the grass was short and fine like that in a
+fairy ring. And the moon streamed down,
+making it all as light as day.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Here on every side were outposts, and the
+mere crunching of a dead leaf by any creature
+larger than a rabbit would be the signal for
+the warning tap-tap of the long hind feet of
+those on guard.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Within the circle of the moonlit glade a
+dozen hares were already assembled, and more
+were coming in from every side.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_74'>74</span>Mammy Cottontail drew up in the shadow
+of a tree trunk, that the youngsters might
+get their courage up before joining those in the
+open. Soon there were half a hundred bunnies,
+young and old, together, scampering
+about and having a glorious good time. They
+pranced and they danced and they raced one
+another. They leapt back and forth across
+a log and they leap-frogged over one another,
+kicking their heels to the moon. There was
+never a sound to break the stillness save the
+chirping of crickets away back in the meadow
+they had left.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then, so suddenly that Mammy’s heart
+gave an extra beat, there came the warning
+thump! thump! thump! just behind them!</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_091.jpg' alt='[Rabbit]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXV</span><br> TWINKLY EYES ATTENDS THE FROLIC</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Now Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear,
+had no idea when he awoke of all that was
+going on so near him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But ambling down to Pollywog Pond for a
+drink after his feast of honey, the sound of his
+crunching over a dead twig was enough to
+warn the sharp ears that ringed about the
+rabbit frolic; and from first one outpost and
+then another came the thump, thump, thump,
+of a half hundred padded feet on the forest
+floor.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In an instant every one of the bunnies
+which a moment before had been capering
+madly in the moonlight had sought cover.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mammy Cottontail and her little brood,
+watching from the shadow of their tree trunk,
+were already hidden, hearts beating bumpety-bump
+in their anxiety.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>For perhaps ten minutes they listened,
+their hearts sounding like trip hammers in the
+breathing stillness of the forest night, in which
+no creature larger than an insect moved, save
+the silent-winged bats and owls.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At least, that was what the listening bunnies
+thought! But Twinkly Eyes, the sly one!—had
+heard the thump, thump of the outposts;
+and he knew just what it meant. Although
+his little sides were already rounded from his
+feast of honey, a bear is always hungry. And
+Twinkly Eyes decided to attend the frolic.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>If Mammy Cottontail, anxious little mother
+that she was, had known all that was being
+plotted in the head of the little Bear, she would
+have started her brood for home on the fastest
+gallop.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But Twinkly Eyes, for all his weight, had
+paws padded so softly that he can, when he
+wants to, steal through the underbrush without
+a sound to warn his quarry of his coming.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Yes, sir, that little rascal can slip through
+the woods as still as a mouse, and you could
+sit straining your ears but you would never
+hear so much as the crunching of a leaf beneath
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>his foot. When he really wants to,
+he can move like a shadow.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now he had decided to attend the frolic,
+but not to join in the play! Mammy Cottontail,
+never dreaming of the sleek black form
+that crept so silently to the edge of the clearing,
+led her six out among the merry-makers.
+Soon Wriggly Nose and Paddy Paws, and Flap
+Ears and Furtive Feet, and Fuzzy Wuzz and
+Hippity Skip were leaping and dancing as
+gaily as the best of them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The full moon, shining down on the little
+glade, showed their furry forms so plainly
+that even Twinkly with his near-sighted little
+eyes, could see them kick their heels in air.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Crouched in the shadow of the very log
+where a little while before Mammy and her
+six had hidden, he watched and waited.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_094.jpg' alt='[Rabbits]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXVI</span><br> A JOKE ON THE LITTLE BLACK BEAR</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Twinkly Eyes had his mind all made up,
+as he hid there in the shadow of the tree trunk,
+to add a rabbit to his feast of honey.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He therefore crouched with his great steel
+paw ready to give the one crushing blow that
+would be necessary the moment the first brown
+bunny was so foolish as to pass within his
+reach.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He watched gleefully as he saw their sleek
+brown forms dancing so care-free in the moonlight.
+“Hippity skip and away we go!” their
+soft feet seemed to sing, as they galloped back
+and forth across a fallen log.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Saucy fellows, he told himself, as they
+flapped their long brown ears or leaped high
+in the air.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_096.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>“Leaping high in the moonlight”<br>  <br>  <span class='right'>—Page <a href='#Page_79'>79</a></span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Oddly enough, so silently had the little
+Bear approached that not one of the outposts
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>was aware of his presence. The wind was
+blowing directly toward him, so that they
+did not even get his scent.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Only Mammy Cottontail, prancing gaily
+around to the right, thought for just an instant
+that she had caught an alien odor.
+Leaping high in the moonlight, she struck her
+long hind feet three times upon the ground,
+to see if she could startle whatever it was into
+betraying its whereabouts.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At her danger signal, every bunny in the
+glade stopped stone still to stare and listen;
+but Twinkly Eyes was not to be thus betrayed.
+He was too big to be startled by her stamping,
+and too wise to come out into the open, where
+every rabbit, once warned, could easily outrun
+him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Not he! Twinkly Eyes just bided his time,
+huddled down as still as any frightened field
+mouse. He sat so long in one position that his
+legs got cramped and he began to feel distinctly
+drowsy. Why on earth didn’t one of those
+fat bunnies come just a wee bit closer? How
+weird they looked, now chasing one another,
+now pausing to nibble a few grasses, but
+always well within the open glade where the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>moon would have shown them the first
+instant an intruder thrust a paw within the
+charm-ed circle.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After a while, though, the wind died down,
+and with the bear scent that now suddenly
+came to the merrymakers, there was a series
+of frightened squeaks, and in less time than
+the twinkle of a moonbeam, every last bunny
+of them had darted under the ferns or into
+the deep shadows, and the little glade was as
+empty as if they had never been there.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then Wriggly Nose, more daring than the
+others, crept very, very silently toward that
+dreadful odor. He peered amazed at what he
+saw.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly Eyes had fallen fast asleep.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_099.jpg' alt='[Bear &#38; rabbit]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXVII</span><br> SCHOOL FOR BUNNIES</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Yes, sir, there was Twinkly Eyes, the
+little Black Bear, fast asleep!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>How Wriggly Nose and Paddy Paws and
+the rest did wiggle their long brown ears at
+the sight!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“So he had been spying on our frolic!”
+whispered Flap Ears with a giggle.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yes, he thought he’d have hare for supper.
+Why do you suppose he didn’t catch one of
+us, when he came so near?” asked Wriggly
+Nose, his eyes a-twinkle.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Huh, he knew we could run the faster,”
+and Paddy Paws threw his chest out.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“He was waiting to knock you down the
+instant you came near enough,” said Mammy
+Cottontail, suddenly appearing in the midst
+of her little brood. “Don’t go too near! He
+might wake up at any minute!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>“Aw, come on,” urged Flap Ears to the
+younger bunnies. “I’ll bet you can’t jump
+as high as I can,” and he vaulted fully five
+feet into the air.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Bravo,” said Mammy Cottontail. “That
+is as good as I could do myself!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I can leap farther,” boasted Wriggly Nose,
+and shooting like a coiled spring from the
+ground, he landed a good ten feet away.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“They’ll soon be able to take care of themselves,”
+chuckled Daddy Cottontail, hopping
+over beside Mammy at this moment. “We
+must have more of these drills.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yes,” whispered Mammy, “but don’t let
+’em know it’s a part of their schooling. Let ’em
+think it’s only play, or they won’t take any
+pleasure in it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Right!” agreed Daddy Cottontail. “The
+great secret of training the young is to make
+it play for them. Now when I was a
+youngster—”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He stopped to prick up his ears.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“What is it?” whispered Mammy, with
+an anxious eye on the little bunnies, who were
+now playing leap-frog with the hares from the
+other side of Pollywog Pond.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>“Didn’t you get a sniff of something, just
+then, when the wind changed?” asked Daddy.
+“I could have sworn—there! A fox! A fox!”
+he signaled with that tap—tap—tap of his
+long hind legs that sounded so much like
+drumming on a hollow log.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Instantly every bunny in the glade had
+dashed to cover, and gone scuttling for home
+along the crookedest little rabbit road it
+could find.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For a Fox has sharper eyes than a bear,
+a keener nose and better ears, and on top
+of everything else, he can run as fast as the
+fastest hare that ever grew. At least, a large
+fox could, and even young Frisky Fox had
+grown into a foe worth keeping at a distance.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For the taint on the wind was that of
+Frisky Fox, out on a little spree of his own.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_102.jpg' alt='[Fox]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXVIII</span><br> A BOY AND A BEAR</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Human ears are never so sharp as those
+of the wood folk who have to live by their wits.
+So when the Boy from the Valley Farm heard
+nothing, and saw nothing, he concluded there
+was nothing there.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear,
+was following him none the less, half fearful
+and half curious to see what this two-legged
+creature might be up to in his woods.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was a pleasant afternoon, with just
+enough of a haze to subdue the sunlight. The
+rain had left the earth fresh and green in the
+open patches, and the air was sweet with the
+perfume of Steeple Bush and Joe Pye Weed
+and pink Sweet Clover. From away down
+by the meadow back of the Farm came the
+tinkle of a cowbell, the only sound to break
+the stillness, save the faint lapping of the
+river against a boulder.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>The Boy stopped beside a pool half-shadowed
+by an overhanging log. His sharp
+eyes could just make out a big fat trout that
+lay headed up-stream, lazily fanning the water
+with his fins, to keep himself in position.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now Twinkly Eyes, who had concealed
+himself in a clump of bushes a little downstream,
+began to see the meaning of the long
+black pole with the line dangling from the end
+of it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>First the Boy took a tin can from his pocket,
+a can with holes punched in the top. Selecting
+a fat white angle worm, of a sort that the
+little Black Bear well knew grew in the wet
+places, he fastened it on his hook and dangled
+it before the trout. But to no avail! That
+canny fellow knew perfectly that no such
+worms of soft fat whiteness were ever found
+in his stream. The kind of worms he sometimes
+found when there was a cave-in from
+the bank were strong, slim black ones.—He
+refused even to nibble.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Boy next tried a cricket, then a grasshopper,
+and finally a fat white grub—but
+with the same result. Then, quite by chance,
+he chose a black worm.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>But before he cast it, he saw a shining green
+turtle about as big around as a good-sized
+crab-apple floating about, just a little upstream.
+And carefully laying his pole along
+the bank, he made a grab for the fellow.
+That roiled the water, and although he didn’t
+get the turtle, it was one of the luckiest things
+he could have done. For when he cast his
+worm into the pool again, the water was so
+muddy that the old trout thought, of course,
+the bank had caved in above there, and he
+made for that black bank-worm as if he had
+fasted for a week.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A tweak at the line, and the boy was so
+excited that he swung his fish fully two rods
+through the air, landing him in the very bush
+behind which Twinkly Eyes was hiding!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The little Black Bear gave a start of surprise,
+and for just one instant his head was
+exposed to the boy’s startled gaze.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_105.jpg' alt='[Fishing]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXIX</span><br> THE TABLES ARE TURNED</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>The Boy from the Valley Farm held his
+head high with pride.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For had he not—on the self-same day—landed
+a big fat trout and seen a bear cub!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That would certainly be something to tell
+at home, even for a backwoods boy! His
+mouth watered as he thought of the way his
+mother would broil his fish.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But alas, for the best laid plans of mice
+and men! When he found the place where
+he had landed his catch, there was no fish
+there. Could it be that he had only dreamed
+he caught it? But no, here was its tail on the
+trampled ground. Someone had stolen it.
+But who? That was the question!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Why, of course, the little Black Bear whom
+he had startled out of the underbrush!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“The rascal!” exclaimed the Boy, half
+amused, half crest-fallen. Well, I only hope
+he needed it more than I did.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>“Now I suppose they will never believe me
+at home when I tell of my big catch.” He
+started whistling ruefully, as he set about
+mending his broken horsehair line, which had
+got badly tangled in the bushes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then his eye fell on something that made
+him pause, wide-eyed. Being a backwoods
+boy, he was almost as keen at reading the
+signs about him as were the wood folk themselves—that
+is, so far as he was able! Of
+course his nose and ears were very much less
+sharp than theirs, but he had even better
+eyes than most of them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Here was evidence his eyes could not deny,
+though he reached out and felt of it to be sure.
+One fin of his stolen trout lay caught in the
+very top of a hazel bush.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Now, how on earth did that get there?”
+he asked himself. People who are much alone
+are very apt to talk to themselves. “If that
+cub ate the fish down here, where the ground
+is trampled, how did he come to drop the fin
+in a bush higher than his head?”</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_108.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>“Oh you rascal!” shouted the boy, in delight<br>  <br>  <span class='right'>—Page <a href='#Page_89'>89</a></span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then a bright idea popped into his mind.
+“Why, of course, it must have dropped from
+above. A sly fellow like that wouldn’t have
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>stopped to eat his fish down here. He’s
+carried it up in the top of some tree where he
+could feast in peace. I’ll bet it was this very
+tree I’m standing under—for how else could
+the fin have fallen on top of the bush?” He
+raised his eyes to peer into the green shadows
+of the tree-top.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There, sure enough—so high that the Boy’s
+sharp eyes could barely make him out against
+the tree trunk, sat Twinkly Eyes astride a
+limb, and between his clever forepaws he
+held what must have been the last of the
+trout.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Oh, you rascal!” shouted the boy, in
+delight. “I’ll get you for that!”</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_110.jpg' alt='[Bear]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXX</span><br> A CLIMBING MATCH</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>“You Scalawag!” the Boy kept laughing,
+as he stared at Twinkly Eyes, the little Black
+Bear, in the top of the beech tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“So it was you who stole my fish?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But Twinkly Eyes said never a word. He
+just sat still, like a bump on a log, in the hope
+that the Boy might yet be deceived into
+thinking him only a blackened limb.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But the Boy from the Valley Farm was not
+to be deceived. He, and his father before him,
+had lived all their lives in the north woods
+where footprints are very clear—and the little
+Bear’s footprints led straight to the tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Moreover, he had long been wishing he
+might catch a cub for a pet. Therefore, he
+started to climb the tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly Eyes, who did not know the kindness
+of the Boy’s intentions—and who certainly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>would not have wanted to be caught if he
+had—decided it was time to show fight.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Whoof! Whoof!” he growled, slapping his
+heavy paws on the tree trunk.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“You can’t scare me!” laughed the Boy.
+“You’re nothing but a yearling cub. And I’m
+the best wrestler at the Cross-roads School!”
+And on he came regardless.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now here was where ignorance was bliss.
+For while it was true that cubs have been
+caught and tamed, the Boy from the Valley
+Farm had much to learn about how it is done.
+And there was one thing he did not know.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He did not know that if it came to a wrestling
+match with Twinkly Eyes, the Boy would
+be the one to get very much the worst of it all.
+The cub was so small and cunning, so like an
+over-grown Newfoundland puppy, that the
+Boy would not have believed, had you told
+him, what a scrapper he could be.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Grown bears the Boy feared, but this little
+fellow didn’t look the least bit dangerous as
+he clung to his tree-top. And the Boy was
+only fourteen. That is to say, he held the
+firm belief that he could lick his weight in
+wildcats—to say nothing of bear cubs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>It was well for the Boy from the Valley
+Farm that Twinkly Eyes had no mind to let
+him try it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Yes, sir, it was lucky for that Boy!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As it was, no sooner had he scrambled painfully
+half way up the trunk than Twinkly
+Eyes climbed to the very topmost branch;
+and as the Boy still came after him, he crept
+so near the tip that it swayed beneath his
+weight. Here he felt sure the Boy could not
+follow, and his courage returning with a
+bound, he turned to “Whoof!” at his pursuer.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Ho! ho!” laughed the Boy from the Valley
+Farm. “I can shake you off, you rascal, if
+that’s your game.” For you see his natural
+kindness was forgotten in the thrill of the
+chase, and he was bound and determined now
+to have that bear.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_113.jpg' alt='[Bear &#38; boy]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXXI</span><br> THE BEAR GETS THE BEST OF IT</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, had
+crept to the end of the drooping limb with an
+air of—</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Now catch me if you can!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“You funny little rascal,” laughed the Boy
+from the Valley Farm, as he hitched himself
+astride the other end of the limb.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I’m going to wait right here till you get
+tired of it. So you might as well make up
+your mind to getting caught. You won’t
+mind in the least, though, once you find out
+what it’s like to be tame. I’ll bring you all
+the fish you can eat. Sweet corn, too! And
+every time you learn to do a trick I’ll give
+you a lump of maple sugar. How’ll you like
+that, sir?” And the Boy fished a lump of his
+favorite sweet from his overalls pocket and
+held it out to the cub.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>But he received no response from the other
+end of the limb.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Indeed, had the cub really understood what
+the Boy was saying, the result would have
+been no different. For freedom means more
+to a wilderness creature than life itself. Better
+a dinner of bark and his freedom than a
+banquet of honey served at the end of a rope,
+Twinkly Eyes could have told him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then an idea came to him. He began
+shaking the limb to which clung the cub. He
+shook and shook, till he was tired—but the
+harder he swung the limb, the tighter clung
+the little Black Bear to the swaying tip.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The lump of maple sugar dropped from the
+Boy’s busy fingers. The cub gazed after it
+with a hungry sniff, then—as easily as a bag
+of meal—he dropped to the ground, grabbed
+the sugar, and made off with it between his
+jaws.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Boy stared in surprise, then let himself
+slide down the trunk. But fast as he came,
+the little bear was faster, and all he found for
+his afternoon’s adventure were the boy-like
+tracks of the padded feet, with their doglike
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>claws, as they galloped away down the
+wet river bank.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Well, I declare!” said the Boy. “If you
+haven’t got the best of me again, you clever
+rascal!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But he didn’t give up the chase. Not for an
+instant. The cowbell found him deaf, and for
+once the supper hour was forgotten. For now
+he wanted nothing on earth so much as to
+catch that cub.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Following the broad footprints till they
+turned off among the thick pine needles, he
+fell to his knees to study the ground for signs
+of the little bear’s trail.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_116.jpg' alt='[Boy]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXXII</span><br> THE LITTLE BEARS GO FISHING</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, galloped
+across the pine needles as noiselessly as a
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>His drop from the tree-top had taken only
+a second, while the Boy had used up fully half
+a minute sliding down the trunk. So that, by
+the time the Boy began looking for footprints,
+the bear was away up stream in the top of another
+tree, peacefully licking up the ants from
+the bark.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Meantime the Boy from the Valley Farm
+was running into a danger of which he little
+dreamed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Being a backwoods boy, he knew that a
+mother bear with cubs is a person to avoid.
+But he did not know that Mother Black Bear
+had brought her two new cubs to the very
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>stream along which he was searching for footprints.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>True, they were on the other side of the
+river. And the wind was blowing in quite
+the wrong direction, so that Mother Black
+Bear’s nose could not warn her of his approach.
+Thus, if he kept on the way he was headed, he
+was due to stumble upon the little family
+very soon, and give both them and himself an
+unpleasant surprise.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For Mother Black Bear was mighty touchy
+where her cubs were concerned. She was in a
+mood these days for clawing anyone who so
+much as looked at them, so precious were the
+two fat babies to her.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The last red glow of the setting sun was
+glinting off the river between the shadows
+of the trees. And Mother Black Bear was
+catching fish. The two fat, roly-poly cubs,
+Twinkly’s baby sisters, sat on the bank and
+watched gravely, while their mother waded in
+up to her neck, paddling so carefully downstream
+that she scarcely made a ripple in the
+mirror that it made. A trout might well have
+taken her for a log floating gently with the
+current.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>Her arms she held well down to her sides
+with claws spread. Suddenly she felt a smooth
+form glide against her side! With one swift
+clutch of her curved iron claws she had her
+fish, and was flinging it ashore to the babies.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next fish she carried ashore in her jaws
+for her own supper. Then back she led the
+cubs up-stream to where the riffles glittered
+in the sunset red. Here, standing perfectly
+still in the shallow water, she waited till a
+trout came by, when with one sharp blow on
+the head she finished his career.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Meantime, where was the Boy from the
+Valley Farm?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Deciding at length that it was getting too
+dark to see foot-prints, he became aware that
+the cow-bell was again tinkling and remembered
+with a guilty pang that his father was
+probably waiting for the cows that minute.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_119.jpg' alt='[Bear]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXXIII</span><br> TWINKLY AGAIN MEETS THE PORCUPINE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear, cocked
+first one ear and then another.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There was certainly a buzzing somewhere
+that sounded mighty like the sound that
+honey bees made. The memory of his feast
+at the bee tree made him lick his chops in
+delight.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He followed the sound to the tree around
+which it centered, clambered up the trunk, and
+was soon following the particular limb on the
+end of which most of the “bees” were
+clustered.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly, after all, had had but one
+experience with bees, and it is not surprising
+that these insects should have fooled him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>True, he had not expected to find the
+honey out at the end of the branch inside a
+round gray ball. The time he had had that
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>feast, the honey had been in a great mass of
+comb inside the hollow trunk.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But then, one never could tell. His ears
+told him that there were bees, and he always
+trusted more to his ears than his eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But then, he trusted more to his nose than
+either of them,—at least generally.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At any other time he would have listened
+to the warning of his nose. This time he
+wondered why he could not smell the honey
+as he had before. But perhaps he didn’t
+want to be warned. He hoped so dreadfully
+that there was honey that he tried to persuade
+himself it was there, even if he couldn’t
+smell it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So on he went, straight to the end of the
+swaying limb! Then he sat down to think it
+over.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was certainly very peculiar, that huge
+gray ball into which the “bees” were pouring.
+For while a few tried to sting the intruder and
+only got as far as his fur, so quiet had been his
+approach that most of them were going inside
+as if he had not been there. There is no animal
+in all the Deep Woods that can move as noiselessly
+as a little Black Bear when he wants to.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>Finally, when every “bee” had gone into
+the gray ball through a little round hole, he
+cautiously put out one paw and tried to reach
+after them. But it was too small for him;
+he only succeeded in closing it so the “bees”
+couldn’t get out. An angry buzz answered
+this move on his part.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Unk Wunk, the yearling porcupine, who
+had been watching from the tree across the
+way, gave a grunt of amusement.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Those aren’t bees,” he jeered. “Those
+are wasps. So you won’t find any honey.
+I’d hate to be in your place when you take
+your paw off that hole!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Hello, there,” grinned Twinkly Eyes.
+“I’m not afraid!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He really thought Unk Wunk was trying
+to drive him away from his find in order to
+enjoy it himself. He didn’t believe for an
+instant that it was really a nest full of angry
+wasps he had imprisoned.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXXIV</span><br> A GOOD SPORT</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>“No, sir, I’m not afraid,” said Twinkly Eyes,
+the Little Black Bear.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He suspicioned that Unk Wunk the porcupine
+had been trying to drive him away from
+his find, as he had from Lone Lake, in order
+to enjoy it himself. For Twinkly Eyes really
+believed that he was in a bee tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>What else could these buzzing insects be, he
+asked? And where bees were, there was
+honey. His mouth watered at the thought.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The only peculiar thing about it was that
+the bees should have gone into this huge gray
+ball that hung from the end of the limb.
+Twinkly held his paw over the opening, keeping
+his “bees” prisoners, while he thought it
+over.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>If it should prove to be wasps—whatever
+THEY were—how Unk Wunk would jeer at
+him! He wished the little porcupine would
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>go away instead of sitting there watching with
+that spiteful gleam in his little black eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But Unk Wunk had no intention of going
+away. While he did not care to go to
+the trouble of taking the impudent scamp
+down a peg, he told himself he would just
+as soon the wasps did it for him. So he
+settled himself comfortably on his limb to
+watch what would happen when Twinkly took
+his paw off the hole in the wasp’s nest.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I suppose that pin-cushiony fellow is just
+aching to see me get hurt,” Twinkly told
+himself. “But I shan’t let him know, if I do.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“So far as I can figure it out, there are about
+six chances to half a dozen that this is wild
+honey, and I’m going to take one of the six
+on it!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>With an extra screw to his courage and a
+great show of enjoyment for Unk Wunk’s
+benefit, the little Black Bear tore open the
+wasps’ nest.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Out poured the angry insects by the
+hundreds!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But Twinkly took his medicine without
+a yelp to betray to Unk Wunk that he minded.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXXV</span><br> BOBBY LYNX LEARNS A LESSON</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Now Bob Kitten, Madam Lynx’s young
+hopeful, was due to have an experience that
+he would not forget in a hurry.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Never yet had he so much as crossed the
+trail of any creature he could not get the best
+of with tooth and nail, if he did not paralyze
+it with his terrifying howl. He therefore
+assumed that there was no one anywhere
+that he need fear.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But one night when the moon rose round
+and yellow from behind the firs, Bob Kitten
+heard that curious gnawing again, and this
+time it came from right above his head, in a
+birch tree. Not only that, but he got a whiff
+of the most tantalizing scent! It simply made
+his mouth water!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He peered into the tree-top, his round eyes
+gleaming through the shadow in which he
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>stood. There was a dark ball swaying far
+out on a slender bough, and it did not look the
+least bit for-mid-able.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Bob let out his blood-curdling yowl, hoping
+that the thing might be so scared it would
+drop right down at his feet, and save him the
+trouble of climbing; but the dark ball never
+moved a muscle. It simply hung there gnawing
+the bark as if it hadn’t a care in the world.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This angered Bob, and he was up in that
+birch tree, and out on the swaying branch,
+without even stopping to think. One blow
+of his heavy paw, and the creature would be
+felled to earth!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But still the round ball did not even glance
+up from its gnawing. The impudence of it,
+thought Bob! Didn’t the creature even know
+enough to be afraid? He crept nearer. Now
+he could see the rather mild-looking face and
+the fat, hairy body ending in a stubby, pointed
+tail. Its hair was certainly coarse looking,
+gleaming lighter on the ends in the moonlight.
+He had never seen fur like that before.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Suddenly there was rattle as of so many dry
+twigs clacking together, and the round ball
+suddenly fluffed itself out to twice its size,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>confronting Bob with every quill erect. For
+it was a young porcupine Bob had trapped in
+this awkward position, and he simply tucked
+his face down between his paws till he was all
+bristles, and waited.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And Twinkly Eyes, the yearling cub, also
+waited, in the shelter of a neighboring ironwood
+tree. For this was Unk Wunk, his old
+enemy of the swimming hole.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This would have been an excellent time for
+Bob to have revised his plan of action. But
+ignorance was bliss,—and with a yell of defiance,
+he struck out at his adversary.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next instant he gave voice to a howl
+of pain, for his sensitive paw struck a handful
+of quills,—and it was exactly like slapping at
+the points of so many needles. Nay, worse, as
+Bob was to find,—for each punishing quill was
+barbed at the end.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Bob’s reaction came with the swiftness of
+unreasoning instinct. With one lunge he was
+down on the branch below, and traveling
+earthward as fast as three sets of powerful
+claws would let him.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_128.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>“He gave voice to a howl of pain”<br>  <br>  <span class='right'>—Page <a href='#Page_106'>106</a></span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Bob certainly felt as if he had been shot, as
+he scuttled back to earth with paw smarting
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>from the slap he had given the little brown
+ball in the tree-top. And for days to come, he
+was to nurse a foot that was so sore he went
+on three legs, and picked out the soft spots.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He needed no further teaching to keep his
+distance, when he saw a harmless black ball
+gnawing a supper of birch bark, or lying all
+humped up like a mammoth chestnut burr.
+No, decidedly, Unk Wunk had nothing further
+to fear from Bob.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was from quite another quarter that he
+had to be on guard.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_130.jpg' alt='[Lynx]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXXVI</span><br> TWINKLY WATCHES AGAIN</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>The little Black Bear was non-plussed.
+Surely it would be rash to try to punish Unk
+Wunk. But young Frisky Fox was like many
+another youngster. He wanted to find out
+for himself. Therefore, one night when
+Mother Red Fox had taken the pups all out
+for a hunt, Frisky had caught a whiff of that
+tan-ta-liz-ing smell that had made Bob’s
+mouth water.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Hurry! There’s our supper now!” he had
+yipped joyously.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Sh!—Do you want to scare everything
+within earshot?” Mother Red Fox had
+whispered, as she nipped his ear. “Besides,
+that’s nothing we can eat at this time of
+year.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Why not?” insisted Frisky, though under
+his breath, for his mother was still within
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>nipping distance. “It smells perfectly great!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“It tastes great, too! But we can’t catch
+porcupines at this time of year, I tell you;
+it takes deep snow to catch them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This satisfied him for the moment. But
+as they came nearer and nearer to the tempting
+odor, he sniffed and sniffed till he could
+hardly stand it. Then suddenly he saw where
+it came from, just a little dark lump on the
+ground—that’s all it was! It didn’t look in
+the least like a creature that could run away.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Why, I could catch that fellow myself,
+just as easily as not!” he told himself. “I
+wonder why on earth mother thought I
+couldn’t? I’d just like to show her, anyway!”
+And he felt strongly tempted to slip on ahead
+and try it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He did, in fact, tiptoe along behind a fallen
+log, till he came to a little clump of bushes
+right beside the porcupine. And there he
+stood watching and listening, and wondering
+for all he was worth why he couldn’t leap
+right on the creature and set his teeth in his
+throat. And the little Bear watched too!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But Unk Wunk was also listening, and no
+sooner had he detected the faint snap of a tiny
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>twig down the hillside than he tucked his head
+under his paws and doubled up under his
+prickles, and there wasn’t so much as an inch
+of him that anyone could get at.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Frisky stared and stared at the strange
+creature. Here was that delicious-smelling
+supper right at his very feet, but—could
+Mother Red Fox have been right after all?</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_133.jpg' alt='[Fox &#38; porcupine]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXXVII</span><br> FOXY COUNSEL</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c002'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“He who fights and runs away</div>
+      <div class='line'>Lives to fight another day.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>But young Frisky Fox didn’t even fight.
+He just ran away!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Yes, sir, there was something about that
+prickly ball, about the way the quills rattled
+as he curled up tighter, that sounded ominous.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was just this habit of looking the situation
+over before he leaped that was to make
+Frisky so much wiser than some of his neighbors.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“<span class='sc'>Always Leave Porcupines Strictly
+Alone</span>,” his mother scolded, as he went trotting
+back after her, crestfallen and shamefaced.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“At the first touch, that fellow would have
+snapped his tail in your face, and you’d have
+got a handful of quills in your mouth or some
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>place where it would have been a mighty
+serious matter.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Yes, sir-ee! It would have been a mighty
+serious matter!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“You couldn’t have rubbed them out, for
+every move you made would only have driven
+them deeper, what with their barbed tips,
+till you’d be lucky if they didn’t finish you
+once and for all.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“My!” gasped the Red Fox pup.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Next time,” Mother Red Fox continued,
+rather rubbing it in, “you’d do well to take
+your mother’s word for a thing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“There, now!—Listen to that!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Frisky pricked up his ears. From back up
+the slope of Mount Olaf, where he had
+come so near making a fatal mistake, there
+sounded a rattling as of dry twigs. It was Unk
+Wunk shaking his quills.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Unk Wunk! Unk Wunk! Unk Wunk!”
+he was muttering over and over to himself.
+“I just guess people had better leave me alone,
+if they know what’s good for them!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And through the moonlit woods, still in
+their April nakedness, the Fox family could
+plainly see a dark, round form slowly and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>deliberately climbing into a birch tree, where
+it resumed its gnawing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Whew! He’s not afraid of anything!
+Guess I’ll keep away from his part of the
+woods!” breathed Frisky Fox a bit unsteadily.
+For he could not help imagining how it would
+be to have his face full of quills. “But who’d
+ever think to look at him he could be so
+dangerous?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“He’s dangerous only when you attack
+him,” explained Mother Red Fox, seating
+herself with the youngsters in a half circle
+before her.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“He wouldn’t touch you if you didn’t come
+too near. He never goes out of his way an
+inch to make trouble. He’s far too fat and
+lazy. He just simply goes his way in peace
+unless someone tries to molest him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Even then he just waits, all curled up like
+a burr, knowing there isn’t the least bit of
+danger so far as he himself is concerned.
+That is, except when there is deep snow on
+the ground, and a fellow can sneak up underneath
+him, and grab where there are no quills.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Otherwise he knows there isn’t a creature
+in all these woods but would get the worst of
+it—with the exception, possibly, of Twinkly
+Eyes, the bear.”</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXXVIII</span><br> A JOLLY WORLD</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Now there wasn’t a creature in all the Deep
+Woods that wouldn’t have had the worst
+of it in an encounter with Unk Wunk, the
+porcupine—unless possibly Twinkly Eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And even Twinkly would be hurt as badly
+as anyone, were he to get a handful of
+quills slapped into his face with Unk Wunk’s
+punishing tail. But Twinkly Eyes had a way
+of managing an encounter that was all his own.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the first place, he had always found the
+world such a jolly place to live in that his
+little black eyes twinkled at whatever they
+looked at. It was such fun to climb trees and
+see what was going on round about him, as he
+nibbled buds or shook down beech nuts.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He never had one bit of trouble getting
+down, because when he was ready he just let
+go and slid, landing like a rubber ball.
+That was the way he took life generally!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>Then there were other delightful things
+to do. For one thing, there was fishing in
+Pollywog Pond. It was full of frogs at this
+time of year, while as for fish!—Um! There
+was nothing to beat them. Not even the
+delicious sour ants that he sometimes found
+beneath loose bark.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Deep Woods were simply full of enticing
+things to do, and Twinkly Eyes had the
+happiest kind of time all day long. Nor was
+he all appetite. There was much that interested
+him that had nothing whatever to do
+with getting a square meal. In fact, he had
+a lively bump of curiosity, had Twinkly Eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But while curiosity is a great thing to have,
+if you want to learn what is going on around
+you, it is also rather dangerous at times, as we
+shall see. On this particular evening, no
+sooner had the great red sun began to disappear
+behind the fir trees than Twinkly sauntered
+forth to take the air and see what the
+prospects were for supper. Sleeping nearly
+all day as he did, up there in his den on Mount
+Olaf, he seldom came out much before dusk,
+and it was even later that Twinkly suddenly
+stopped in his tracks to sniff.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>There was certainly a tantalizing odor in
+the air,—for those that have noses as sharp
+as have the Forest Folk.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>What could it be?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He climbed a log and sniffed again. It
+seemed to come from the top of that old beech
+tree! He stood on his hind legs and peered
+through the budding branches.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then suddenly he heard a low, monotonous
+grunting. “Unk, Wunk! Unk Wunk!” that
+came from a dark hump as round and fat and
+care-free as if winter had never been,—for the
+porcupine does not sleep in winter, but climbs
+the trees as the snow mounts higher, and eats
+his fill of their bark.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Peering far up into the beech tree, Twinkly
+Eyes could see a surly-looking fellow that
+rattled his quills as he moved, with a sound
+like dry twigs crackling one against another.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The fellow was the same who had laughed
+when the little Bear got into the wasps’ nest.
+He was the same young porcupine, what is
+more, who had driven Twinkly Eyes from
+the Lone Lake swimming hole the summer
+before, when Unk Wunk had had his mother
+to help him!</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XXXIX</span><br> WHO WILL BE SORRIEST</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c002'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Never trouble trouble</div>
+      <div class='line'>Till trouble troubles you.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>At least that is a mighty good plan where
+porcupines are concerned.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And Twinkly Eyes knew that as well as he
+knew how to climb. But that odor was so
+terribly inviting, and Twinkly had such a
+score to settle that he could hardly resist
+poking his nose in where he knew he had no
+business.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Sometimes young folks will do that way.
+They just can’t help it; and they always
+come out of the experience wiser than they
+were before,—provided, of course, that they
+come out of it at all.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“He’s certainly fat enough, if it IS the
+spring of the year!” thought Twinkly Eyes,
+hungrily, as he watched Unk Wunk away
+up in the beech tree, chiseling off the rough
+outer bark to nibble the juicy inner layer.
+“He can make a meal off of anything.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>“I wonder—” and Twinkly’s eyes began to
+dance more mischievously than ever, “I just
+wonder, now, if I could shake that saucy
+fellow off! It certainly would be a peck of fun
+to see him come tumbling down like a chestnut
+burr right on his own quills!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And the little Black Bear fairly rolled off
+the log in his excitement. Picking himself
+up as softly as he could and tiptoeing over
+till he stood just beneath the gnawing one,
+huddled up there in the moonlight with a
+glint on the tip of every quill, Twinkly Eyes
+began, oh, ever so cautiously, to climb the
+beech tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He would climb just as high as he possibly
+could without getting in reach of Unk Wunk’s
+terrible barbed tail, and then he would shake
+the tree, and perhaps the prickly one would
+lose his hold and go pelting to the ground—like
+a great chestnut burr!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now, as always when one’s nerves are at a
+tension, Twinkly Eyes was conscious of all
+the little sounds and odors about him. It
+certainly was a jolly world to be taking such
+a risk in. From away down the mountainside
+in Pollywog Pond, his sharp ears could
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>just make out the croak-croak, croak-croak
+of the frogs as they called to one another or
+gossiped back and forth through the April
+night. And from farther still—from the
+Valley Farm, perhaps, came the faint fragrance
+of wood smoke where the pasture lot
+had been burned over a bit recklessly.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Unk Wunk, Unk Wunk!” said the dark
+form above him, but without really being
+aware of any one but himself. So confident
+was the little porcupine that no one in all that
+wilderness could harm him, no matter how
+they tried, that he didn’t even take the
+trouble to look beneath him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly Eyes drew a long breath and began
+to shake the tree. Unk Wunk went on gnawing,
+quite as if it had been no more than a
+passing breeze that had swayed him. Twinkly
+drew another breath and shook the harder,
+then dodged back to the opposite side of the
+trunk from Unk Wunk, prepared to watch
+the fall.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But still nothing happened. The self-confident
+one simply kept on clinging with
+his long nails that had held him safe through
+many a wind-storm, even, sometimes, when
+their owner slept.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>Suddenly he turned his head. His narrow
+little eyes looked Twinkly over coolly, even
+indifferently. There was a bit of tender-looking
+bark just below him, and he began
+slowly descending.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly’s heart beat faster. What should
+he do?</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_143.jpg' alt='[Bear &#38; porcupine]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XL</span><br> TWINKLY EYES PLAYS SAFE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Twinkly Eyes was certainly put to it to
+know what to do.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He had planned simply to shake the beech
+tree till Unk Wunk should fall off. Then one
+of two things would happen. Either he would
+crack like a chestnut burr, and supper would
+be an easy matter, or else it would be a fight
+on level ground, where Twinkly knew a trick
+or two.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But to have Unk Wunk turning on him in
+this fashion! It was not at all the situation
+that he had counted on. For Unk Wunk
+wouldn’t for an instant stop going wherever
+he wanted to go. Certainly not for a little
+black bear whose face he could slap with a
+tailful of barbed quills if said bear got too
+fresh.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Up to this moment Twinkly Eyes had
+never dreamed that a porcupine would actually
+turn on any one that hadn’t even touched
+him yet.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>As an actual fact, the prickly one had no
+intention of striking Twinkly Eyes. He had
+simply been un-a-ware of his presence up to
+that very moment, and unless the little Bear
+made a hostile move, he certainly wouldn’t
+be the first one to attack.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Should Twinkly make a sudden move in
+his direction, though, he’d turn his back like
+lightning and slap, slap his armored tail,
+driving whatever might be in its way full
+of quills. One slap would be more than
+enough.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>However that may be, Twinkly made a
+sudden resolution, and it didn’t take him as
+long to carry it out as it does to read about it.
+He just let go and came down! Yes, sir,
+Twinkly just let go and slid! No careful
+searching for a foot hold, not even hand-over-hand
+work—nothing but ker-biff! And
+the little Black Bear had bounced down on
+his own fat self like a rubber ball, and out
+from under that beech tree, as fast as if
+Unk Wunk were going to try to drop
+on him—Yes, sir, he was somewhere else
+before you could have said Jack Robinson!
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>Something deep inside him had suddenly
+decided there was more fun in playing safe.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly always came down that way, falling
+perfectly limp, like a fat butter ball, and
+it never hurt him any more than it would to
+roll off a log.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And it wasn’t till he was half way down the
+mountain-side that he remembered he was
+hungry.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Hoo-wuff!” he sighed as he slowed down
+for breath, once more catching the croak-croak
+from Pollywog Pond. “That was a most
+amazing fellow! I’m not surprised that
+people keep their distance. I’d rather starve
+than try that again, anyway,—at least I think
+I would.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I wonder, though—how I wonder what
+he would do if I were to find him some day
+just plodding along the ground, and I were
+to flip a clod of earth at him? I really am
+curious to see what would happen, the old
+slow-poke! By ginger, I’ve half a mind to
+try it!”</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XLI</span><br> TWINKLY EYES GETS A GREAT SURPRISE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Twinkly Eyes was certainly as full of
+curiosity as a pond is of frogs. And though he
+went on and caught himself a nice dinner in
+Pollywog Pond, he wondered all the way why
+Unk Wunk was such a curious fellow, and
+what he would do if he were provoked.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The idea of his going on gnawing as if
+nothing had happened, with Twinkly shaking
+the tree for all he was worth! And then to
+stare down at his tormentor with that cold
+in-dif-fer-ence! It was too much for Twinkly
+Eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>No sooner had he filled his tummy comfortably
+full than his courage all came back
+to him, and he determined to go back and get
+a rise out of that old grizzly grouch.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These things he turned over and over in his
+curious mind, as he padded noiselessly back
+along the furtive trail, his eyes twinkling at a
+little plan that began forming in the back of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>his head. It would be worth trying, just to
+see what would happen.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Suddenly swish, thump, thumpety-thumpety-bump,
+came something straight
+down the side of a ledge!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly’s first thought was that it must
+be a man, for certainly no Forest Folk would
+make such an out-ra-geous racket. Even a
+bear could pad along through the underbrush
+without more than cracking a twig, while as
+for foxes and rabbits and owls, and even
+lynxes, if they made that much noise just
+once, they’d deserve to have all their enemies
+come on the run!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>No, assuredly, it must be some creature
+that had no place in the wilderness; and as
+it was coming altogether too near his line of
+march, he decided to climb the nearest tree
+and wait till he saw what the excitement was
+all about.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Bang, bump, thump, came the sounds
+again. Then something struck a clump of
+high-bush blueberry bushes in a way that
+crushed them flat, and a great ragged ball
+of dry oak leaves emerged, with a sound of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>scraping and crackling that was quite unlike
+anything Twinkly Eyes had ever heard before.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It went on a little farther, then brought
+up against a boulder. Eyes fairly popping
+with curiosity, Twinkly slid down his tree-trunk,
+bounding off into a covert of low
+bushes, from which he might peer at the
+astounding mass at the foot of the boulder.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After a time it began unrolling, and gradually
+out of the turmoil appeared none other
+than Unk Wunk, the porcupine, who proceeded
+to stretch his legs and yawn, quite as
+if nothing had happened.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“If that is his usual method of traveling,”
+thought Twinkly Eyes, “I’d rather not meet
+him, that’s sure. Wonder who was after him
+that time. I’ll bet he never intended to do
+all that rolling. Or is that just one of his
+queer ways?”</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_149.jpg' alt='[Bear]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XLII</span><br> TWINKLY EYES PLOTS MISCHIEF</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>“A rolling stone gathers no moss.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But Unk Wunk was just the opposite.
+In his roll down hill he had gathered several
+pecks of moss and leaves on the points of his
+quills.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Porcupines always do go by contraries.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And Twinkly Eyes, the Bear, was no
+sooner convinced that that great jagged mass
+of dry leaves was his foe of the swimming hole
+experience than his little black eyes began
+twinkling more merrily than ever. For here
+was opportunity knocking at his very door.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now Twinkly Eyes was different to this
+extent from most of the folk that lived in the
+deep woods. He had a sense of humor.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>To Mammy Cottontail and her brood, life
+was one perpetual effort to escape the jaws
+and claws and beaks and bills of the enemies
+on every side. The mere matter of finding
+enough to eat had its dangers.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>While young Frisky Fox occasionally smiled
+at his own cleverness, it took the fat little
+bear to find amusement in everything that
+happened. In the first place, he was thus
+far afraid of nothing under all the wide blue
+sky. He was so much stronger and better-armed
+than almost any other creature in the
+wilderness!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>True, he wasn’t as well armed as Bobby
+Lynx, but then, Bobby had no desire to dine
+off of any one that could fight like Twinkly
+Eyes. So, being unafraid, Twinkly could
+enjoy life. And being happily able to eat
+almost anything that came his way with relish,
+he had time to spare for play.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Just now, as he approached that bristling
+ball of oak leaves that had come so near to
+rolling square upon him, his little black eyes
+danced with mischief. Twinkly had a plan
+whereby he meant to have some fun at the
+prickly one’s expense!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He waited till Unk Wunk, indifferent to his
+presence, had stretched his legs and begun
+lazily gnawing the tree trunk that was nearest
+to his nose. “Unk Wunk, Unk Wunk!” he
+began to sing in his two monotonous notes.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>“Here I am again, right side up with care,
+and I don’t care the flip of my tail who sees
+me, nor what they try to do with me. Because
+I’m dead sure they’ll get the worst of it
+every time.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Woo-huff!” snorted Twinkly Eyes, sitting
+up on his haunches. “Sure and I’m going to
+find that out for myself! I’ll bet I know a
+trick that will take you down a peg, you old
+grouch, you! I saw my mother do it once
+last year, and I’ve never had so much fun
+since.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>With this, to which the porcupine paid not
+the slightest attention, Twinkly arose and
+began padding cautiously forward. For a few
+minutes he stood directly over the gnawer,
+but Unk Wunk accorded him not even the
+glance of an eye.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_152.jpg' alt='[Porcupine]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XLIII</span><br> TWINKLY TEASES UNK WUNK</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Little did Unk Wunk dream of the trick
+that was being plotted against him, as he sat
+there lazily gnawing at the root of the handiest
+tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>To be sure he knew that Twinkly Eyes was
+there. He was not that stupid. Only he felt
+so thoroughly entrenched beneath his quills
+that he never even dreamed that the little
+Black Bear would dare to attack him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Indeed, if worst came to worst, could he
+not remove himself with the same speed with
+which he had just rolled down hill? That
+had been pure accident. Curling up at the
+approach of some prowler of the night,—he
+had not troubled to find out who,—he had
+suddenly lost his balance, and gone hurtling
+down the slope in the manner that had so
+startled Twinkly Eyes. It just made one
+more trick in his bag! For his bones were
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>fatly padded, and he simply found himself
+in another place as good as the one he had
+left.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So once more he began creaking contentedly
+in his nasal voice his never ending chorus
+“Unk Wunk, Unk Wunk, Unk Wunk!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Life certainly looked good from the porcupine
+standpoint, now that the trees were full
+of sap, and the great round yellow moon
+shown softly through the budding branches,
+lighting up every cranny of the forest floor.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The hylas in the marsh below chirped as
+musically as distant sleigh bells, reminding
+one that grass was lush and green, and there
+would be no more cold and snow,—nothing but
+one grand feast, more months than he could
+look ahead.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Beyond that, all he had to do was to keep
+quills out, and none could interfere with his
+pleasure.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But underneath, on the side where there
+were no quills,—as Twinkly Eyes suspected,—the
+little porcupine was as soft and vul-ner-able
+as any of the forest folk,—and it was this very
+fact that Twinkly meant to make the most
+of.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>He therefore opened his offensive by flipping
+a clod of earth at the armored one. That
+had no visible effect, so he flipped a second.
+The third one struck the porcupine square on
+his unprotected nose, and Unk Wunk gave a
+grunt of annoyance, and started to transfer his
+person to a more distant tree.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Swift as thought, the little Bear thrust
+a cautious paw clear beneath one of the
+quilled sides, and with one blow hurled Unk
+Wunk against the tree trunk.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_155.jpg' alt='[Frogs]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_156.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>“Hurled Unk Wunk against the tree trunk”<br>  <br>  <span class='right'>—Page <a href='#Page_132'>132</a></span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XLIV</span><br> TWINKLY EYES GETS HIS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>If Twinkly Eyes had thought for a moment
+that the matter was ended, he had reckoned
+without his host.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He might well have called it off with Unk
+Wunk’s prob-able amaze-ment. But the little
+porcupine, though somewhat bruised, was
+still so set in his self-esteem that he could not
+imagine its happening a second time. And,
+feeling the need of an im-me-di-ate stim-u-lant,
+he once more uncurled from the ball he had
+doubled himself into in mid-air, and resumed
+his gnawing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Imagine Twinkly Eyes’ astonishment, as
+he turned, his shoulder all but dislocated from
+the force of the thrust, to find the enemy still
+in-dif-fer-ent to his presence!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Hot-headed now with the thrill of battle,
+he padded across to Unk Wunk, who happened
+quite by chance to be nearly en-trenched between
+his tree and a hollow log. Then, being
+nothing but a yearling cub, he quite forgot
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>the caution with which he had once seen
+Mother Black Bear manage the ma-nœuv-re.
+Whereupon he flipped his clod again, hoping
+to drive the porcupine from behind his log,
+and with a neat success, for the clod landed
+plop on the pacifist’s nose again!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>With a squeak of righteous indignation,
+the quilled one thrust his unprotected face
+into the hollow log, and there he waited!
+Even now he felt no fear, only a desire to
+punish, to fight for peace.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And Twinkly Eyes—rash fellow—lumbered
+closer, and once more thrust his paw beneath
+the porcupine. But this time he allowed himself
+to come too close.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Quick as lightning, slap, slap! Unk Wunk
+snapped his barbed tail back and forth, and
+Twinkly gave a howl of pain.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A handful of the torturing quills had
+im-paled the tormentor’s scalp!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But for one chance this would have been
+the finish of the little Black Bear. It so
+happened that his head was down, and the
+quills struck directly over the hard bone of
+the skull. Into this they could not pen-e-trate.
+He was simply a bear with a mighty sore
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>head. It was sore for long afterward, though
+with his good blood and the life of the open,
+it did finally heal, leaving him just a little scarred
+and more than a little chastened.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Henceforth Unk Wunk would be given a
+wide berth by one more of his neighbors.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_160.jpg' alt='[Bear]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XLV</span><br> BOBBY LYNX GOES FISHING</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Now Twinkly’s neighbor Bobby was a
+sadder but a wiser young lynx kitten before
+ever Whoo Lee the owl had finished with him.
+For Bobby had climbed to the nest in the pine
+tree, rash fellow!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It but put the finishing touches on his lesson
+when the bark to which he was clinging with
+his one free paw gave way beneath his weight
+and sent him tumbling.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Not that Bobby minded, after the first
+shock of falling. Like all members of the cat
+family, large and small, he managed to double
+into a somersault in mid-air and so came
+down right side up, more hurt in his feelings
+than anywhere else. Indeed, he twice broke
+his fall by catching at passing limbs, and he
+need not have come to the ground at all, save
+that he preferred not to occupy the same tree
+as Whoo Lee.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>In fact, no sooner had Bobby reached all
+fours in safety than he went slinking off
+through the shadows, as fast as ever his heavy
+feet could carry him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After a time he sat down to wash his face
+and lick the places where the owl had clawed
+him. Then he realized that he was very, very
+thirsty, and hungry to boot, and he made his
+way to Pollywog Pond.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Here, unfortunately, he found Mother Red
+Fox and Frisky Fox and the other four Fox
+youngsters just finishing a lesson in catching
+frogs, and he was in no mood for meeting any
+one of that family.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So on and on he crept, through the ravine
+and on down to Rapid River. Here his
+mother had once brought him to teach him
+to catch trout, and here, after drinking deep
+of the chill waters, he crouched along a boulder
+to await the dawn.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At the first faint flush of pink along the sky,
+the first lightening of the shadows of the forest,
+and the first wee notes of awakening warblers,
+Bobby stretched one paw out over the water’s
+edge, claws set for a sudden swoop,—and waited
+silently.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span>For so long that Bobby all but went to
+sleep, his half-shut eyes could see no gleam
+of speckled scales in the silver water,—not, at
+least, within the reach of the waiting paw,—though
+that paw hung over the rim of one of
+the deepest pools, where trout were likeliest.
+The fish had to come pretty near the surface
+for him to strike successfully.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then suddenly his mouth began to water,
+for a great fat beauty was swimming straight
+towards him. Bob’s eyes gleamed hungrily,
+his whiskers twitched with nervousness, and
+the green muscles tensed along his ready
+forearm.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then a quick dart of his barbed paw, a
+flash of silver, and Bob had squared himself
+with a growl to as juicy a breakfast as anyone
+could ask.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Great ravenous bites he took, growling as
+he crunched, to warn all comers that a
+hungry lynx is not the person from whom it
+would be wise to try to steal.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next instant there was a resounding
+splash in the stream behind him, and Bob in
+his surprise jumped full three feet in the air,
+landing on a limb of the nearest tree.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XLVI</span><br> A NEW ACQUAINTANCE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>It is always annoying to be disturbed in the
+midst of one’s breakfast,—the more so if one
+has just had a painful scrimmage with a great
+barred owl whose nest one was trying to rob.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is therefore not surprising that Bobby
+Lynx looked murderously about him from
+the limb to which he had leaped at the sound
+of the splash.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It must have been a large animal, he
+reasoned, to make so much noise; and Bob
+was after all but a kitten, whose life had thus
+far been one long adventure from the day he
+had had it out with Unk Wunk, the porcupine,
+to his recent falling out with the angry owl.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Someone, he felt sure, meant to rob him
+of his trout, and, unfortunately, in his surprise
+he had left it on the boulder beside the River.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The trouble with Bob, and, indeed, the
+entire Lynx family, was that, although they
+are so strong and their claws and teeth so
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>sharp, their eyes are little good to them. In
+the woods, where nearly every creature is
+colored like the tree trunks, they cannot see
+anything unless it moves.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Otherwise it would be too easy for a lynx
+to make his kill, and the grouse and the hares
+and the toads and the meadow mice would
+have no chance at all in the game of life.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Not only were Bobby’s eyes not good, but
+his nose wasn’t half as keen as the noses of
+most wood-folks. He would walk right past a
+grouse hen without getting a smell of her.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That is why Bobby was always so alarmed
+when a sudden sound came from behind. He
+never knew what it might be until he saw the
+creature move.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This time he had not long to wait. A
+glossy form came ambling by, and Twinkly
+Eyes, the little Black Bear, sat down on his
+haunches not ten feet away, to devour his
+catch. For he, too, had been fishing, and the
+splash that had startled Bobby was the sound
+of his great paw slapping through the water
+at his trout.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Bobby watched craftily from under a
+canopy of leaves, his gray-brown body flattened
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>along the limb. Then convinced that
+Twinkly Eyes had no design on his person,
+he began to wonder if the intruder would try
+to make off with his fish.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But the little Bear knew the law of the
+wilderness as well as any one. He knew that
+to steal another’s catch would mean a fight
+if the owner caught him. Though he could
+not see the hidden claimant of the half-eaten
+trout, his nose was keen enough to tell that
+another’s scent clung to the rock on which
+it lay, and he had no mind for calling that
+other’s wrath upon his head.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He was just slouching past, pretending he
+did not see it, in order to fish farther up the
+stream, when there was a snarl and a splutter,
+as Bobby leaped, spitting and clawing back
+to his fish.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly stared at the strange creature,
+his little black eyes showing red lights, as he
+squared himself for the scrap that he feared
+would follow.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>What had he done, anyway, to call forth
+such an exhibition of bad temper, he asked
+crossly with a growl deep down in his throat.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then, too, Twinkly Eyes had never seen
+a lynx before, and the unknown is always to
+be distrusted.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XLVII</span><br> THE HIRED MAN DROPS A MATCH</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>What Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear,
+could not know as he stared at Bobby Lynx
+crouched beside his fish was that Bobby was
+quite as much afraid as he was.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In fact, if the truth were known, Bobby
+Lynx was more afraid of Twinkly Eyes than
+Twinkly was of Bobby.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But, of course, it never does to show one’s
+fear. So the two only glared at each other,
+green eyes staring into black, the bear cub
+poised on his hind legs ready for a wrestling
+match, the lynx kitten ready to spring should
+the other make a hostile move.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then Twinkly Eyes began backing away,
+ever so gradually, while Bobby watched
+through half closed lids, a growl deep down in
+his throat and his bob tail lashing from side
+to side.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“What is the use?” Twinkly had asked
+himself. “I don’t want his old fish, and I
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span>don’t want to fight. This isn’t my idea of
+going fishing at all! Though, of course, if no
+one had been there to claim that trout, I
+certainly shouldn’t have let it go to waste.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then suddenly both youngsters turned to
+sniff, as a new odor stole through the forest
+on the breath of the wind,—an odor so acrid
+and alarming that their fear of each other was
+forgotten in the face of a common peril.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>With the smell came a soft gray cloud
+floating through the aisles of trees from Pollywog
+Pond.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Here the timber was chiefly hardwood,
+though an occasional birch reached white arms
+up against the green, and a tangle of high-bush
+blueberries and wild blackberry vines
+grew densely to as high as Twinkly Eyes could
+see from on tiptoe.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It had been a dry spring in the region
+around Mount Olaf. For weeks there had
+been no rain, and though Rapid River still
+ran broad and full from the thaw, the hot
+sun had drunk up every drop of moisture it
+could draw from the forest floor of dead leaves
+and fallen branches.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_144'>144</span>On the very night that the Red Fox family
+had gone frogging at Pollywog Pond, and
+Unk Wunk the Porcupine had amused himself
+by rolling down hill, and Bobby Lynx had
+met Twinkly Eyes on a fishing trip, the Hired
+Man at the Farm had set forth an hour before
+cock-crow to set a line of skunk traps.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Following the Old Logging Road toward
+Pollywog Pond, he had paused on a fallen
+log to tie his shoe-string and light his pipe,
+and as he rose he had given his match a shake
+and thrown it away.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now of course the Hired Man meant to put
+his match out before he dropped it, but he
+didn’t look behind him to make sure. No
+sooner was his back turned than a thin flame
+sprung up in the dead leaves beside the fallen
+log, and soon a healthy bon-fire was snapping
+and curling around the log.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A white birch, with its paper bark, had
+caught a spark and started a red snake of
+flame that crept along the ground with the
+wind, first back towards the Farm, then
+around to the River. And before ever
+the Hired Man could race back home for
+help, the fire had gained such headway that
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span>the whole area between the pond and the
+river was ablaze and the underbrush going
+like kindling.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was the smoke of this red ruin that had
+so terrified both bear and lynx that they forgot
+their feud.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_172.jpg' alt='[Bear &#38; lynx]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_146'>146</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XLVIII</span><br> THE FOREST AFLAME</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>It takes a common peril to make people
+forget their hard feelings toward one another.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Bobby Lynx was quite as willing as Twinkly
+Eyes to overlook the little matter of the fish,
+once they had sniffed the acrid smoke that
+now came creeping between the aisles of trees.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was not big as forest fires go, and the
+trees were mostly hardwood, which go slowly.
+But the fire lay between Bobby and home.
+It was to the Lynx kitten a peril new to his
+experience.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>His first thought was concealment, and he
+leaped into a tall pine and clambered to the
+topmost branches that would hold him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly Eyes, mere curiosity once the first
+shock of his alarm was past, went shambling
+through the underbrush to see whence came
+that pungent cloud.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>What Bobby saw from his outlook was a
+wall of fire. This advanced rapidly on the
+freshening wind. It devoured the underbrush
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>that covered the forest floor, and it all but
+outsped the creatures he dimly saw were fleeing
+before it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Here leaping flames climbed to the very
+tree-tops on the arms of the paper birches, and
+even the hard pines gave up their deadwood
+and smaller branches.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Long arms of scarlet raced through the
+open patches, devouring the dead pine needles
+and dry oak leaves. Their snapping and
+crackling widened Bobby’s eyes with terror
+as he flattened himself along his limb.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Soon, as Twinkly Eyes discovered before
+he had gone very far, the thickening smoke
+cloud was becoming uncomfortably hot. Its
+breath stung his nostrils and closed his eyes,
+and he gasped and stumbled, and finally
+turned back in one mad dash of terror.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Bobby turned to peer longingly across the
+river, which here stretched wider than he
+dared to swim.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He feared the water almost more than these
+unknown creatures of fire and smoke that
+seemed to be circling in on him now from
+every other side.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He crept stealthily down his pine tree on
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>the side opposite the flames, and on to another
+that all but overhung the water, and there he
+lay, green eyes dilating nervously as he peered
+down at the scene around him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly Eyes dashed first up-stream, then
+down, in his anxiety to get back to his den on
+Mount Olaf. For added to all his other
+troubles it was by now broad daylight, and
+he wanted to hide himself away and sleep till
+the shelter of the dark came round again. But
+there was no way out, and he took his stand
+at the edge of the water, eying the swift
+current, loath to venture the long swim to the
+other shore unless compelled to.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_175.jpg' alt='[Flames]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>XLIX</span><br> IN THE FACE OF A COMMON PERIL</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>As the morning wore on, the wind grew
+stronger, blowing the leaping flames straight
+toward the river bank, where Bob and Twinkly
+Eyes huddled side by side in terror.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was not a big fire, but it swept through
+the dry underbrush of the hardwood grove
+from Pollywog Pond to the plowed fields at
+the Valley Farm, and from the Old Logging
+road to the river.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Had the trees not been of hardwood, a fire
+might have started that would have eaten its
+way over miles of woodland. As it was,
+everyone at the farm turned out with wet
+gunny sacks to beat back every flame that
+leaped across the road as it wound from the
+pond on around at right angles to the river.
+It should at least be kept within those natural
+boundaries.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But to the Forest Folk whose homes were
+in the burned area, the fire seemed the most
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>terrible thing that had ever happened to
+them. To those who crouched, waiting, on
+the bank of the river, the approaching flames
+and the long swim across the current to the
+opposite bank seemed equally impossible to
+face. Bobby Lynx, coughing and blinking in
+the acrid smoke, as he clung to the limb of his
+pine tree, felt, catlike, that it would scarce
+be worse to stay where he was than to plunge
+into the water.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly Eyes, sitting like a black stump
+beneath, stared with amazement as a band
+of hares, cousins of Mammy Cottontail, came
+galloping madly before the racing flames.
+They were gasping for breath, their round eyes
+bulging in terror and their hearts beating like
+trip-hammers in their furry chests.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One scatter-brained brown bunny so far lost
+his wits as to circle around and go dashing
+straight back into the advancing fire, while
+another sought shelter fairly between Twinkly’s
+black feet. But the little Bear was far too
+interested in the crackle of the flames to
+notice.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Almost on the heels of the hares loped Red
+Fox and his family, whom a sudden shift of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>the wind had cut off from safety. But they
+likewise gave the hares no more than a passing
+glance, but sat down opposite them at the
+river’s brink to watch, and cough, and blink
+their smoke-stung eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Next came Mother Red Squirrel and others
+of her kin, leaping from branch to branch
+above the smoking ground till they had taken
+up their places directly above the stream’s
+edge.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Here, too, came Betty Bluebird and
+Conqueree the Blackbird, and Mother Grouse
+Hen, hurrying her fledglings along as best she
+could. Jim Crow and his black brothers,
+frightened from their nest in the top of the
+Pine, had gone soaring high above the smoke
+line, and so off to a point from which they
+could watch in safety.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There were other creatures, too, who sought
+haven along the River Bank. There was
+Writho the Black Snake, and Timothy Field
+Mouse, and Fleet Foot, the Spotted Fawn who
+had strayed too far from her mother. The
+little deer huddled with the hares as far from
+Twinkly Eyes and Red Fox as they could
+crowd, without actually leaping off the bank.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>The Red Squirrel family hid out of sight
+of both Bobby Lynx and Red Fox, and
+Timothy Field Mouse and his deadliest
+enemy, the Black Snake, both tried to hide in
+the same hole under the very nose of Red Fox,
+without any one of the three having a thought
+beyond their common peril.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_179.jpg' alt='[Fleeing]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>L</span><br> WHILE THERE IS LIFE THERE IS HOPE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Yes, Sir, “while there is life there is hope!”
+But things certainly looked bad for Bobby
+Lynx and Twinkly Eyes and Red Fox and his
+family as the flames licked nearer and nearer
+through the circling trees.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The heat fairly seared their eyeballs, the
+smoke set them gasping every time the wind
+turned their way, and the huge sparks that
+now began to drop on their fur added pain to
+their terror.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Yet there was no way out, save the River
+which here ran wide and deep.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But if the larger animals were terror-stricken,
+imagine the feelings of Mother Red
+Squirrel’s family, and the brown bunnies, and
+Fleet Foot the Fawn, and Writho the Black
+Snake, and Timothy Field Mouse! For would
+they not escape the red flames and the cutting
+smoke but to furnish luncheon for their
+enemies, at whose very feet they crouched?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>Of a sudden, as a blazing brand fell hissing
+beside Red Fox, he took a good grip on his
+resolution and plunged into the stream, and
+yelped to his family to follow. It was, after
+all, the only thing to do, as he had known for
+some time. His hesitation had lain in the
+fact of the puppies’ inexperience in the water.
+But after all, the youngsters of the wilderness
+could nearly always swim, once they were
+forced to it. And there was Mother Red Fox
+and himself to help the pups along, should
+they become too tired to make the entire
+distance.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Young Frisky Fox splashed in like any
+healthy puppy, his fat legs paddling so energetically
+that he had little difficulty in keeping
+up with his father. There did come a moment,
+however, when he felt as if he would have to
+rest or sink, and with one of these sudden
+bright ideas that make the foxes the cleverest
+creatures in all the wilderness, he grabbed the
+tip of his father’s plumy tail in his teeth and
+clung. The wiry fellow, from whom Frisky
+had inherited both strength and cunning, cut
+across the current and towed him to the shallow
+waters of the opposite bank.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>Seeing Frisky, Mother Red Fox gave a
+sharp command to the youngest pup, while
+she towed him the same way. Then both
+parents swam back to aid the remaining
+youngsters, one by a timely word of encouragement,
+another by holding to his ear, and the
+third as they had aided the first two.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Seeing the Fox family making so valiantly
+for safety, Twinkly Eyes flung himself into
+their wake, and began gasping and snorting
+in his fight with the current. Bobby Lynx,
+half blinded by the smoke, peered vaguely
+at the sounds beneath his tree, then, with the
+courage of desperation, leaped far out into the
+unknown element.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But so ill do the great cats take to water
+that his head went under, and he felt that now
+surely it must be all up with him. Then,
+suddenly, he clutched at the little Bear’s
+haunches and was half towed to shore.—Thus
+ended their quarrel!</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>LI</span><br> THE BOY FROM THE VALLEY FARM</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Landed on the other shore, Twinkly hid
+in a tree-top to see what else he might see.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now it often looks darkest just before
+daylight.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That was the way in this case. The little
+group of refugees on the shore were all but
+ready to leap into the river, preferring death
+by drowning, as the flames swept nearer
+through the underbrush, snapping and crackling
+and spitting red sparks.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The wind had veered upstream, driving
+the smoke with it, but the heat was fast
+becoming unbearable.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The brown bunnies, huddling close together
+in their terror, were not built to swim
+at all. Fleet Foot, the spotted fawn, was yet
+too young for the water, having indeed
+acquired the art of walking but a few days
+before. While Mother Grouse Hen could
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>have flown across, her chicks could not, and
+she of course would not leave them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All these stared with wide, hopeless eyes
+as the flames ate their way toward them.
+Their throats were parched and their hearts
+beat visibly.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mother Douglas Squirrel and her family
+were perched on the very tipmost branch of
+the tree nearest the water, and there they
+raged and scolded. Shadow Tail measured
+the distance to the nearest tree of the opposite
+shore, half tempted to try the leap at the risk
+of landing in mid-stream, but Mother Douglas
+was too wise to attempt it, for any squirrel
+with half an eye could have seen it was
+impossible.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then, suddenly, up the stream came creaking
+a broad, flat-bottomed row-boat, and at
+its oar locks sat the Boy from the Valley Farm
+and his sister,—the Little Girl on one side of
+the broad seat, he on the other.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The two children being too small to aid
+the men with the fire-fighting, back along the
+Old Logging Road, had ventured up here on
+their own account, to see if any sparks had
+leaped across the river to the dry timber on
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>the other side. Once they had seen a flying
+brand which the Boy had gone ashore to
+quench with mud from the river’s bank.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now they rounded the bend just in time
+to see Twinkly Eyes, the little Black Bear,
+and his passenger, Bobby Lynx, climb up the
+farther bank and dart off to hiding.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Oh, see!” cried the Girl, pityingly, as she
+saw the group on the river bank.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Let’s get ’em!” proposed the Boy.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Let’s!” agreed the Girl, and the pair
+rowed swiftly up the doomed right bank and
+began grabbing the trembling hares by their
+long brown ears, dropping them into the
+bottom of the boat.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Once the leaders were aboard, some sign
+seemed to go the rounds, and the rest of the
+bunnies did not wait for assistance, but went
+scuttling over the side of the boat so fast that
+the children could scarce find a place to put
+their feet.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At that instant a flaming branch fell hissing
+almost into the boat.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Pull out, quick!” gasped the Boy, swinging
+the boat around.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>“Oh, but the Fawn!” wailed the Girl. “We
+can’t leave the Fawn!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“We’ve got to!” commanded the boy,
+sternly, “or that whole tree will be down on
+us!”</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_186.jpg' alt='[Fleeing]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>LII</span><br> TWINKLY’S FELLOW REFUGEES</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>The Boy’s judgment told him it was not
+safe for them to linger a moment longer so
+near the racing flames. Any moment the
+wind might shift and blind them with its
+yellow smoke cloud, and it was hard enough
+at best for the children to handle the heavy
+row-boat.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But there stood Fleet Foot, her broad ears
+turned inquiringly at the newcomers, whom
+she was too young to fear, her great velvet eyes
+round with terror and her pink nose twitching
+nervously.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>She was tinier than a three weeks’ calf,
+and nothing could have been lovelier than her
+white-spotted red-brown coat shading into
+light tan on throat and chest.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_188.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>“He lifted her bodily into the boat”<br>  <br>  <span class='right'>—Page <a href='#Page_161'>161</a></span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Boy dropped his oar again and stepped
+ashore, while his sister held the boat, with
+its cargo of brown bunnies, in position, by
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>reaching out and clinging to an overhanging
+bush.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In all her three weeks of life the Fawn had
+never laid eyes on human kind, nor, indeed,
+on any creature larger than herself save her
+mother, the Doe. She therefore raised trusting
+eyes to the Boy, licking his palm as he
+rubbed her nose, and she made no protest
+when he lifted her bodily into the boat, shoving
+the hares aside till he had found a place
+for her at the Little Girl’s feet.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Just at that moment they caught sight of
+the Squirrels. Mother Red Squirrel and
+Shadow Tail and his brothers clung to a
+branch almost above their heads, and their
+cries grew shrill as a creeping flame began
+ascending the very tree they were on.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Oh, please see if you can’t get them!”
+begged the Girl, calling and coaxing to make
+them come down. The Boy tried, too, but
+in vain. Poor Mother Red Squirrel didn’t
+understand, and she feared the children quite
+as much as she feared the flames.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In vain, too, the Boy pursued the Grouse
+chicks, while the sparks began showering all
+around them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>“Pull out, quick!” he cried. The Girl’s
+eyes filled as she thought of Shadow Tail, the
+squirrel baby she had once held in her hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mother Grouse Hen had clucked her chicks
+beneath her wings and now crouched despairingly
+on the wet mud of the jutting bank. She
+would protect them with her own body till
+the last possible moment.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“I have it!” exclaimed the Boy, bending to
+one strong oar while his sister took the other.
+“Let’s get across quick, and then I’ll show
+you!”</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_191.jpg' alt='[Hen]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>LIII</span><br> A WAY FOR THE SQUIRREL FAMILY</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>For the space of four minutes the children
+bent to their oars, while the breath of the
+flames on the shore behind them scorched
+their cheeks and parched their nostrils, and
+the fire ate its way through the brush to the
+very water’s edge.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The bunnies fairly stood on top of one
+another till they filled the rowboat with brown
+billows of soft fur. And Fleet Foot, the little
+spotted Fawn, crouched with soft eyes
+fastened appealingly on the children’s faces.
+In all the wilderness there is no creature so
+innocent and so helpless and so altogether
+lovely as a spotted fawn. So at least the
+children thought.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Poor, poor bunnies!” sighed the Girl, as
+one was all but crowded over the edge of the
+boat.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Aw, they’ll be all right once they’re on
+the other side,” said the Boy. “Get in there,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>you!” and he shoved the hare back from the
+edge with his foot. His voice was just gruff
+enough to hide the pity in it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But once drawn up on the opposite bank,
+he paused not even to help lift the bunnies
+out, but grabbed the belt axe that a backwoods
+boy always carries, and went hacking
+away at a slender sapling just opposite the
+tree the squirrels were on.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He made quick work of it, I can tell you,
+for there wasn’t a moment to lose. Notching
+it first on the side toward the river, he took
+care that it fell so that its slender top reached
+into the far-hanging branch on which the
+little family had taken its last stand.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As the sapling landed, Mother Red Squirrel’s
+black eyes snapped with a sudden hope.
+I can assure you she needed no second invitation
+to use the bridge thus mir-a-cu-lous-ly
+thrown across to her. With a glad bark to
+the youngsters to follow, she raced down the
+sapling across the stream, Shadow Tail at her
+heels. They didn’t even stop to draw breath
+till they had scrambled up a pine tree set
+well back from the sight and the smell of the
+fire across the stream.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>The Boy’s eyes shone. “It didn’t take them
+long to make up their minds,” he chuckled.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Now, get out of here,” and he lifted the
+last of the bunnies out of the boat, to go
+bounding off into the depths of the green
+woods beyond,—far too fast for either Bob
+or Twinkly, I can assure you.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For the truce of their common peril was
+over, and the hares well knew if they didn’t
+get into hiding before Bobby Lynx got sight
+of them, he’d celebrate his escape on one of
+his fellow-refugees.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Back on the wet mud of the bank they
+had left, Mother Grouse Hen seemed in a
+fair way to pull through after all, for the fire
+had stopped at the River’s brink, and there
+was now but one great vista of charred and
+smoking tree trunks for as far as the eye
+could reach.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_194.jpg' alt='[Squirrels]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>LIV</span><br> WHAT HAPPENED TO FLEET FOOT</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>“What worries me,” said the Boy, with an
+amused glance after the fleeing hares, “is
+what we are going to do with the Fawn. She’s
+far too young to look out for herself,” nodding
+toward the green depths into which bear and
+lynx had disappeared.—Twinkly wondered too.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“She is certainly too young to get along
+without her mother,” agreed the Girl, as the
+children from the Valley Farm studied the
+last of the refugees, who gazed into her face
+with her great trusting eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“The trouble is,” said the Boy, “she
+probably has a mother somewhere, and then
+she’s a wild thing. She’d never be really
+happy with the cows. I suppose the doe just
+managed to save the other fawn. Aren’t
+there always two?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“You think her mother got away then?”
+asked the Girl.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>“Well I don’t know,” returned the Boy,
+gazing searchingly across the River through
+the charred tree trunks. Here the ground
+still smoked yellowly as the fire ate into the
+damp leaves of the nether layer of the forest
+floor. Red embers glowed where the flames
+had raged through the underbrush.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now, as it happened, the Doe was searching
+despairingly that very moment for her
+Fawn. She had made her escape in good
+season with the larger fawn, but Fleet Foot
+she had missed from her side when it was too
+late to return, and a wall of flame had risen
+between her and her little one.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The lost Fawn had raced, with the other
+Wood Folk, on before the flames to the River’s
+brink, where the children had found her.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Meantime her mother had circled clear
+around the fire with her remaining little one,
+trotting up-stream until she came to a narrow
+part where her fawn could cross, peering and
+searching everywhere for Fleet Foot.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now suddenly the children heard a dainty
+stamp and a shrill whistled “H-e-e-e-yew,
+he-u!” And over a copse of hazel bushes
+peered a red-brown doe, who instantly turned
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>and leaped out of sight, tail raised like a little
+white flag behind to show the fawn which way
+to follow.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And “He-w!” said Fleet Foot, with a tiny
+stamp, and followed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And Twinkly Eyes, the bear cub, took it all
+in, from the hiding of his tree-top.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_197.jpg' alt='[Bear]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>LV</span><br> TWINKLY EYES GOES HOUSE-HUNTING</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Betty Bluebird, like most of the other feathered
+folk, was beginning to think of starting
+south. For the wild ducks honking overhead
+told her it was going to be a cold winter and
+advised her to start without delay.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly Eyes also heard the warning. And
+it set him restlessly searching about for a snug
+den in which to pass the winter. For Twinkly
+Eyes was going to hi-ber-nate. With the
+first snow-fall he would cuddle up in the depth
+of some cave and pull the dead leaves after
+him, and tuck himself in bed for a sleep that
+would last until spring.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Every day now he rose with the dawn to
+begin his search. And every night he kept
+up till black darkness made it im-pos-sible to
+see.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But with all his searching, Twinkly Eyes
+never once ceased to eat everything good he
+came to.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span>No, indeed, Twinkly Eyes was not the bear
+to stop eating just because he was busy
+house-hunting.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Not a bit of it! In fact, if anything he ate
+more. Though he cut himself down to one
+meal, that one meal lasted from the moment
+he awoke in the morning to the moment he
+dropped to sleep in the chill of the autumn
+night.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One effect of so much eating was, of course,
+to make him as fat as a ball of butter. Another
+was to make his fur as thick and warm and
+glossy as the finest sleeping bag that ever
+was invented.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But search as he would, Twinkly Eyes
+could not find just the right place in which to
+den up for the winter. Of course, the first
+place he had visited was the den where he had
+been born. But his mother was there with
+this year’s cubs, and she had made it quite
+plain that there would not be room for him
+too.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then he thought of the pine woods on the
+slope of Mount Olaf, on the side toward the
+Valley Farm. And one chill October morning,
+when a fine drizzle reminded him that up
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span>north here winter was not far away, he decided
+to explore these woods.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The dried pine needles lay like a velvet
+carpet over the forest floor, and everywhere
+was the fragrance of wet pine. Through the
+thick gloom he could make out countless
+mushrooms growing at his feet, and each one
+he had sniffed, eating such as he knew would
+not poison him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For his mother had taught him as a cub
+to know mushrooms.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The ground here slanted up a rocky
+knoll, and here and there were boulders, and
+here and there a fallen tree trunk.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But nowhere could Twinkly find a cave.
+And besides, he smelled lynx tracks everywhere,
+and it would never do to go to sleep
+for the winter in a place where Old Man
+Lynx could find him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>No, decidedly, the pine woods would not
+do.—Where, then, should he search?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Cutting down through a mixed wood that
+led to a tiny lake, Twinkly soon found himself
+neck-high in blueberry shrub. Only now the
+berries were all gone. He had been here many
+times before, only never with a den in mind.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>So now he went over the ground again and
+through the brush around the lake, and back
+up the slippery hillside.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Suddenly a strange, sweet odor smote
+his nostrils. He was approaching an old
+deserted shack, with roof tumbling in and
+door hanging on one hinge. It had once been
+a sugar camp, had Twinkly Eyes but known.
+And the knowledge would have hastened his
+clumsy foot-steps. For that new smell was the
+fragrance of maple sugar, the one thing in the
+world that bears consider even better than
+honey.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There was no thought of danger as Twinkly
+Eyes approached the shack. Though had he
+not been too sleepy to reason it out, he might
+have known that anything so delicious as
+maple sugar would never be left like that.
+Not if the bees could get at it! And then how
+was it that his mother had never taken a
+chance on anything so tempting?</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>LVI</span><br> AT THE SUGAR CAMP</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Twinkly sniffed and sniffed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>From the tumble-down shack on the
+mountain-side came the most wonderful odor!
+It fairly made his mouth water.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But still his natural cunning bade him
+sniff all about the place before he ventured
+within. Though there were hobnailed footprints
+everywhere, the man-scent had long
+since disappeared.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That twisting thunder-storm last July was
+doubtless to blame for the charred and
+crumbling appearance of the side the door
+was on. There was nothing to keep him from
+walking straight inside.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There were a number of iron kettles in the
+shack, and into each of these Twinkly sniffed
+with interest. But they were clean and
+empty. Where, then, did that sugary odor
+come from? Ah, over in one corner, where
+it had fallen, lay a wooden cask. This,
+Twinkly’s wriggling nose told him, was the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_174'>174</span>place. Inside this cask was the delicious
+something that made his mouth water so.
+Successive wettings, as rain and wind had
+pummeled through the side of the shack,
+had wet the contents till they were oozing
+liquidly through the cracks.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly Eyes put out his tongue and licked
+the sides, then set joyously to work with his
+curved claws to tear an opening into the
+thing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So suddenly that it struck him square in the
+face, the half of one stave came off. Then
+he broke off another, and after that a third.
+The keg had not been full, and the part he had
+torn an opening into was the empty part.
+But Twinkly didn’t care. He simply thrust
+his head in and licked, and licked, and licked
+at the sugary cake.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He could just reach it with the red tip of
+that greedy tongue. There was nothing he
+could reach with his jaws. And presently
+he began to twist and wiggle in the effort to
+get more.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>By dint of much shoving he finally got his
+head clear inside the cask. Then he was
+happy. My, how that bear enjoyed the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>next half-hour! By stretching his neck
+farther and farther through the narrow opening
+he could just scrape the delicious contents
+with his teeth.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>His jaws dripped with the combined delights
+of an-tic-i-pa-tion and real-i-za-tion. That the
+feast would continue till the last crumb was
+gone he had no doubt whatever. Not
+Twinkly Eyes!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>By and by, however, stretch as he might,
+he could thrust his head no farther, and he
+could reach no more. Then what a time there
+was, as the little Bear tried to pull himself
+out of the barrel.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And as he jerked and banged about in
+growing alarm, his heels sent everything in
+the cabin spinning about his shanks.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>When finally his head came free quite
+suddenly, he sat down with such violence that
+he went sliding across the floor with the huge
+iron kettle over-turned on top of him. And,
+of course, being unable to see what it was that
+had imprisoned him, he struck out still more
+viciously.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>LVII</span><br> A FEAST AND A FAST</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Twinkly Eyes was a most un-com-fort-able
+bear.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>True, he had freed his head from the sugar
+cask. But in his blind fury at the thing that
+held his head imprisoned he had thrashed
+about till all the furniture in the camp had
+been sent spinning about his heels. Then at
+last the huge iron kettle had landed squarely
+on top of him!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He finally backed out of the thing and
+hastened from the cabin, sitting up on his
+haunches to nurse his bruised head. All the
+same, this maple sugar was mighty good stuff!
+Was he going to leave it? Not Twinkly Eyes!
+Not the little Black Bear who had once robbed
+the bee tree in spite of the worst its owners
+could do with their stings! He would go
+straight back there, give that kettle a good,
+vigorous cuff for its impudence, and then
+knock the sugar cask to bits.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>So they thought they could frighten him
+away, did they? Cautiously he tiptoed back
+into the shack. This time he felt sure he had
+caught the keg at a dis-ad-van-tage, for with
+one powerful blow of his great, furry fist, he sent
+it whirling into the corner. Then grappling
+it with his long steel claws, he wrenched at the
+syrup-soaked wood.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For once it did not grab at his head. For
+he had torn such a hole in the side that there
+was room and to spare. Next moment the
+fat cub had settled himself at that giant lump
+of maple sugar with the cask held tight between
+his black knees.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>If Twinkly Eyes had been a small boy,
+he wouldn’t have wanted anything more to eat
+for a week. And it is more than likely that
+he would hate the smell of maple sugar for the
+rest of his life.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But bears are not built that way. And
+Twinkly Eyes, with that same greed with
+which he had gobbled the honey comb, now
+put that maple sugar inside till there wasn’t
+so much as a crumb of it left.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After that he slept awhile with his little
+black tummy rounded out till he could hardly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>move. For that is what makes a bear feel
+happiest, when he is eating his last meal for
+five months.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Next day he once more started on his
+lumbering tramp over the slopes of Mount
+Olaf to find his winter’s resting place.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Winter would set in early this year, the
+wild ducks had shouted as they honked their
+way southward that fall.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And already the last leaves were falling in
+yellow swirls that crackled under-foot. In the
+pine forest it was still. But everywhere else
+the winds swept around the mountain in a
+way to chill through even Twinkly Eyes’
+thick coat.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Then one morning he awoke to find a world
+of white! And still he had found no cave to
+shelter him.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_207.jpg' alt='[Bear]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>LVIII</span><br> THE FIRST SNOW</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>Yes, sir, Twinkly Eyes awoke to find it
+snowing!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A more surprised young bear you never
+saw in all your life, for as yet he had found
+no cave in which to pass his winter’s sleep.
+And the winds that tore around Mount
+Olaf made goose-flesh underneath his furs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He stared about him dazedly. Great soft
+flakes as big as feathers were falling, falling,
+falling through the naked tree-tops. He had
+never heard the world so still. And off across
+the valley the air looked thick and gray like a
+blanket.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>And indeed, it was a blanket—was this
+whirling white stuff that kept covering over
+the dead leaves that carpeted the forest floor.
+It filled in all the niches, and shut out all the
+wind.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was a blanket for next year’s flowers,
+and for little young trees and shrubs too
+tender yet to meet the winter’s cold.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>It was a blanket for the field mice and
+the white-footed wood mice, in their homes
+under-ground or inside old hollow stumps.
+It would be a sheltering blanket for Fatty
+Chuck in his cave under the barn-yard fence,
+down at the Valley Farm. For it would sift
+down into his entrance hole and over the
+earth above until frost could not reach him
+curled up in a ball there sound asleep.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But all this did not help Twinkly Eyes,
+staring at the falling flakes while he longed
+with his whole soul for sleep. If in all his
+rambles over the mountainside he had not
+found even a crevice in the rocks in which
+he might den up for the winter, was it likely
+that further search would reveal one? He
+yawned, for he was oh, so dreadfully sleepy!
+He longed to curl up right where he was—but
+he knew if he did, he’d never wake. He’d
+just freeze solid, and that would be the end
+of him!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>His last meal of dried bark and pine
+needles,—the meal that was to keep his
+stomach from feeling empty until spring, just
+because it wouldn’t digest,—sat heavy within
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>him now, and he longed to begin his hi-ber-na-tion.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Animals that hibernate, you know, sleep
+away the cold months when food is hard to
+find. And when they wake up in the spring,
+they look very different from the fat creatures
+they were in the fall. They are then as thin
+as they were plump before.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But of course, with the season of plenty,
+they soon make up all they have lost. Meantime,
+they have kept safe and warm all
+through the bitter winter. For they first
+close up the entrance to their dens with leaves
+and mosses, and then curl up into warm furry
+balls, with their toes and their noses inside.
+Then the snow falls so deep that it keeps the
+high winds from finding their way to the
+sleepers, and there is nothing to disturb
+their dreams.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Fatty Chuck hibernates, too. But Fatty
+had gone into winter quarters long before, and
+was now snoozing away as snug and comfy
+as anything you can imagine.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>If only the winter had been as easy a
+problem for Twinkly Eyes! What was he to
+do?</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'><span class='c011'>LIX</span><br> TWINKLY EYES GOES TO BED</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c006'>What should he do, asked Twinkly Eyes
+as he stared about at the falling snow-flakes?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He had been driven from the den in which
+he had slept away his first winter in the
+Great North Woods, because his mother’s
+littlest cubs now took up all the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>His father had a cave, too, somewhere, he
+supposed. But Twinkly Eyes would not
+have dared to enter that, much less to lie <a id='t182'></a>himself
+down to sleep beside that great, growling
+monster. Like most cubs, Twinkly was
+wholesomely afraid of his father.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As he stood swaying sleepily, winking the
+snow-flakes from his heavy eyelids, Twinkly
+Eyes had a sudden bright idea. He would
+simply curl up under a stump!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There was an old overturned pine stump
+not far away, and to its roots had clung such
+a mass of earth that he could easily cuddle
+beneath it. In fact, the dried leaves with
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>which he would have made his bed, had he
+found a cave to stow them in, were already
+drifted high there. And all he had to do was
+to crawl in and wait for the snow to cover his
+shelter completely over.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That was it! The snow would drift over
+leaves and stump and all, shutting out the
+winds and the frost, and hiding him while he
+slept.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>An hour later, any one passing that way
+would have seen a huge round ball of black fur
+just showing beneath a blanket of leaves
+under the stump. And by nightfall they would
+have found nothing but a deep white bank
+with a root sticking out at the top.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Just enough air would filter through the
+snow to keep his lungs supplied, and that was
+all he needed now for a long time to come.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Twinkly Eyes, cuddled up snug in his
+strange feather bed, gave one last blissful
+sigh, and was off into a dreamland where
+honey filled every hollow tree trunk and blueberries
+grew everywhere as thick as grass.</p>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003'>
+</div>
+<div class='tnotes x-ebookmaker'>
+
+<div class='chapter ph2'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c004'>
+    <div>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<table class='table0'>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c012'>Page</th>
+    <th class='c012'>Changed from</th>
+    <th class='c013'>Changed to</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c008'><a href='#t182'>182</a></td>
+    <td class='c014'>have dared to enter that, much less to lie him</td>
+    <td class='c015'>have dared to enter that, much less to lie himself</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+  <ul  class='ul_1'>
+    <li>Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
+    </li>
+  </ul>
+
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77049 ***</div>
+  </body>
+  <!-- created with ppgen.py 3.57e (with regex) on 2025-10-13 23:20:41 GMT -->
+</html>
+
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diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #77049
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77049)