him so.

"I'm very bad!" growled the bear, "and I'm going to take you off to my
den with me. Come along!"

"Oh, I don't want to," said the bunny uncle, shivering his tail.

"But you must!" growled the bear. "Come on, now!"

"Oh, dear!" cried Uncle Wiggily. "Will you let me go if I give you
what's in my basket?" he asked, and he held up the basket with the nice
orange apple turnover in it. "Let me go if I give you this," begged
the bunny uncle.

"Maybe I will, and maybe I won't," said the bear, cunning like. "Let
me see what it is."

He took the basket from Uncle Wiggily, and looking in, said:

"Ah, ha! An apple turnover-dumpling with oranges in it! I just love
them! Ah, ha!"

"Oh," thought Uncle Wiggily. "I hope he eats it, for then maybe I can
get away when he doesn't notice me. I hope he eats it!"

And the bear, leaning his back against the pine tree in which the
woodpecker had been boring holes, began to take bites out of the apple
dumpling which Nurse Jane had baked for Grandpa Goosey.

"Now's my chance to get away!" thought the bunny gentleman. But when
he tried to hop softly off, as the bear was eating the sweet stuff, the
bad creature saw him and cried:

"Ah, ha! No you don't! Come hack here!" and with his claws he pulled
Uncle Wiggily close to him again.

Then the bunny uncle noticed that some sweet, sticky juice or gum, like
that on fly paper, was running down the trunk of the tree from the
holes the woodpecker had drilled in it.

"Oh, if the bear only leans back hard enough and long enough against
that sticky pine tree," thought Mr. Longears, "he'll be stuck fast by
his furry hair and he can't get me. I hope he sticks!"

And that is just what happened. The bear enjoyed eating the apple
dumpling so much that he leaned back harder and harder against the
sticky tree. His fur stuck fast in the gum that ran out. Finally the
bear ate the last crumb of the dumpling.

"And now I'll get you!" he cried to the bunny uncle; "I'll get you!"

But did the bear get Uncle Wiggily? He did not. The bear tried to
jump toward the rabbit, but could not. He was stuck fast to the sticky
pine tree and Uncle Wiggily could now run safely back to his hollow
stump bungalow to get another dumpling for Grandpa Goosey.

So the bear had no rabbit, after all, and all he did was to stay stuck
fast to the pine tree until a big fox came along and helped him to get
loose, and the bear cried "Wouch!" becaus