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.
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| 182 | have dared to enter that, much less to lie him | have dared to enter that, much less to lie himself |