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!