ll, protected at every point by such terrible weapons.

The hand moved very cautiously as it went down his side, within reach of
Unk Wunk's one swift weapon. There were thousands of the spines, rough
as a saw's edge, crossing each other in every direction, yet with every
point outward. Unk Wunk was irritated, probably, because he could not
have the salt he wanted. As the hand came within range, his tail snapped
back like lightning. I was watching for the blow, but was not half quick
enough. At the rustling snap, like the voice of a steel trap, I jerked
my hand away. Two of his tail spines came with it; and a dozen more were
in my coat sleeve. I jumped away as he turned, and so escaped the quick
double swing of his tail at my legs. Then he rolled into a chestnut bur
again, and proclaimed mockingly at every point: "Touch me if you dare!"

I pulled the two quills with sharp jerks out of my hand, pushed all the
others through my coat sleeve, and turned to Unk Wunk again, sucking my
wounded hand, which pained me intensely. "All your own fault," I kept
telling myself, to keep from whacking him across the nose, his one
vulnerable point, with my stick.

Unk Wunk, on his part, seemed to have forgotten the incident. He
unrolled himself slowly and loafed along the foot of the ridge, his
quills spreading and rustling as he went, as if there were not such a
thing as an enemy or an inquisitive man in all the woods.

He had an idea in his head by this time and was looking for something.
As I followed close behind him, he would raise himself against a small
tree, survey it solemnly for a moment or two, and go on unsatisfied. A
breeze had come down from the mountain and was swaying all the tree-tops
above him. He would look up steadily at the tossing branches, and then
hurry on to survey the next little tree he met, with paws raised against
the trunk and dull eyes following the motion overhead.

At last he found what he wanted,--two tall saplings growing close
together and rubbing each other as the wind swayed them. He climbed one
of these clumsily, higher and higher, till the slender top bent with his
weight towards the other. Then he reached out to grasp the second top
with his fore paws, hooked his hind claws firmly into the first, and lay
there binding the tree-tops together, while the wind rose and began to
rock him in his strange cradle.

Wider and wilder he swung, now stretched out thin, like a rubber string,
his quills lyin