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!”