The bees were working like mad to carry away at least a part of their store before he should devour it; but they were not too busy to try once more to drive him off. A fourth bee gave up his life to thrust his barbed and poisonous sting into his nose. But Twinkly Eyes only became the more stubborn in his desire to clean out the tree. Bracing himself in the crotch of a branch just beneath the opening, he thrust one paw in deeply and brought it back dripping with yellow liquid and dotted with black bees. Bees and all went into his eager mouth, and he crunched joyously handful after handful. Once a bee tried to come too near, and with one sticky sweep of his honeyed paw he imprisoned the insect, whose wings stuck so fast he could only buzz helplessly, traveling back and forth from the place where the bees wanted the honey to the place where Twinkly Eyes wanted to have it. Thus, in time, the treasure of the pine tree disappeared,—and my, you should have seen how that little bear’s sides stuck out! It was a lucky thing for him that the honey was all gone, I tell you! And what a sight he presented, as he slid down the trunk and ambled off to Pollywog Pond! His face by this time was smeared with honey from ear to ear. Flying leaves and little chips of bark clung to it as if they had been pasted there. Add to that his swollen eyelid, which by now had raised a great black welt, and his nose and his mouth all lumpy from the poisonous stings, and one would certainly have said he had been in a fight. But he felt so perfectly blissful with his sides rounded out with honey the way they were that he wasn’t the least bit sorry. Not Twinkly Eyes! He would have done the same thing over again the next day had he had the chance. He knew just what to do with his wounds, and he did it. Searching along the banks until he found some particularly sticky clay, he plastered it freely all over his tortured face until he looked, if possible, worse than before. But he felt a whole lot better, let me tell you. The wet clay soon began to draw the poison, and besides, bears get over things like that quicker than human beings would. So by the time he had had a nice long snooze and a drink and a stretch, and the round yellow moon began to rise from behind the firs, Twinkly Eyes was ready for almost anything. XXI MAMMY COTTONTAIL’S SECRET Now Twinkly Eyes had a lively bump of curiosity on that furry black head of his. He was much interested in other people’s affairs. And he used to lie hidden by the hour, just to find out what other wood-folk were up to. But of all the dwellers in that wilderness, none interested him so much as the Cottontail family. That is, none except his old enemy the porcupine! One day, lying under a clump of high-bush blue-berry bushes, in the early spring sunshine, he learned a secret.