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.

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.