Crow. Best wishes to poor Mr.
'Coon, and I hope Mr. 'Possum's funeral will be a success."

And Mr. Crow called good-by, and motioned to Mr. 'Coon and Mr. 'Possum,
who had crept out again a little, and they slipped over to the window
and peeked out, and saw Mr. Aspetuck Savage Bear following Mr. Robin
back to the Sinking Swamps, to the honey-tree which Mr. Robin had really
found there, for Mr. Robin is a good bird, and never deceives anybody.

HOW MR. 'POSSUM'S TAIL BECAME BARE

MR. 'POSSUM RELATES SOME
VERY CURIOUS FAMILY HISTORY

Once upon a time, when it was a very pleasant afternoon, and the Hollow
Tree people were sitting along the edge of the world, hanging their feet
over and thinking, Mr. 'Possum went to sleep, and would have nodded
himself off into the Deep Nowhere if his strong, smooth tail hadn't been
quite firmly hooked around a little bush just behind him. All the others
noticed it, and said how lucky it was that a person of Mr. 'Possum's
habits had a nice, useful tail like that, which allowed him to sleep in
a position that for some was thought dangerous even to be awake in. Then
they wondered how it happened that Mr. 'Possum's family had been gifted
in that peculiar way, and by and by, when he woke up, and stretched, and
moved back in the shade, and leaned against a stump to smoke, they asked
him.

Mr. 'Possum said it was a very old story, because it had happened about
a hundred and fifty-six great-grandfathers back. He had heard it when he
was quite small, he said, and would have to think some, to get it
straight. So then he shut his eyes and smoked very slowly, and about the
time the Deep Woods people thought he was going to sleep again he began
telling.

"My family is a very ancient one," he said--"one of the oldest in the
Big Deep Woods, and there used to be only a few, even of us. That was
when Mr. Painter, or Panther, as we say now, was King of the Deep Woods,
and he was very fond of our family, which helped to make them scarce,
and was one reason why they got to slipping out at night for food, when
Mr. Painter was asleep.

"We were a pretty poor lot in those days, and whenever Mr. Painter took
after one of my ancestors that ancestor would make for a tree and run
out on a limb that was too small to bear up Mr. Painter, and just cling
there, because Mr. Painter would climb up, too, and shake the limb, and
very often he would shake an ancestor down, like a papaw, and the only
thing