Part 8

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_.