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!