Peering far up into the beech tree, Twinkly Eyes could see a surly-looking fellow that rattled his quills as he moved, with a sound like dry twigs crackling one against another. The fellow was the same who had laughed when the little Bear got into the wasps’ nest. He was the same young porcupine, what is more, who had driven Twinkly Eyes from the Lone Lake swimming hole the summer before, when Unk Wunk had had his mother to help him! XXXIX WHO WILL BE SORRIEST “Never trouble trouble Till trouble troubles you.” At least that is a mighty good plan where porcupines are concerned. And Twinkly Eyes knew that as well as he knew how to climb. But that odor was so terribly inviting, and Twinkly had such a score to settle that he could hardly resist poking his nose in where he knew he had no business. Sometimes young folks will do that way. They just can’t help it; and they always come out of the experience wiser than they were before,—provided, of course, that they come out of it at all. “He’s certainly fat enough, if it IS the spring of the year!” thought Twinkly Eyes, hungrily, as he watched Unk Wunk away up in the beech tree, chiseling off the rough outer bark to nibble the juicy inner layer. “He can make a meal off of anything.” “I wonder—” and Twinkly’s eyes began to dance more mischievously than ever, “I just wonder, now, if I could shake that saucy fellow off! It certainly would be a peck of fun to see him come tumbling down like a chestnut burr right on his own quills!” And the little Black Bear fairly rolled off the log in his excitement. Picking himself up as softly as he could and tiptoeing over till he stood just beneath the gnawing one, huddled up there in the moonlight with a glint on the tip of every quill, Twinkly Eyes began, oh, ever so cautiously, to climb the beech tree. He would climb just as high as he possibly could without getting in reach of Unk Wunk’s terrible barbed tail, and then he would shake the tree, and perhaps the prickly one would lose his hold and go pelting to the ground—like a great chestnut burr! Now, as always when one’s nerves are at a tension, Twinkly Eyes was conscious of all the little sounds and odors about him. It certainly was a jolly world to be taking such a risk in. From away down the mountainside in Pollywog Pond, his sharp ears could just make out the croak-croak, croak-croak of the frogs as they called to one another or gossiped back and forth through the April night. And from farther still—from the Valley Farm, perhaps, came the faint fragrance of wood smoke where the pasture lot had been burned over a bit recklessly.