on. "Though I know what I can do. I'll play a trick on them when they
come back."

In his coat pocket he found an empty paper bag. This he blew up full of
wind, and he twisted the neck of it so the wind wouldn't get out.

"When they come back I'll crack the bag and make it burst. They will
think it's a cannon," he said with a laugh. Then he waited.

But all of a sudden, before he could count forty-'leven, along came the
skillery-scalery alligator. The creature with the double-jointed tail
saw the little red monkey tied fast to the tree with ropes.

"Ah, ha! Now I have you!" cried the 'gator, licking his chops. "You
can't get away from me this time."

And it didn't seem as if Jacko could. He tugged and strained at the
ropes, but they were too tight. It looked as if he were going to be
eaten up.

Nearer and nearer came the alligator. He opened his big mouth, full of
sharp, shining white teeth to bite Jacko, when, all of a sudden the
monkey boy thought of the blown-up paper bag.

"That's the thing," cried Jacko, and with that he clapped his paw down
hard on the bag.

"Bang!" it went, just like a cannon. My! how loud!

"Oh, I'm shot! I'm killed! My double-jointed tail is blown off!" cried
the alligator, and then, half frightened to death, he scurried off
through the woods, taking his tail with him, for of course it wasn't
blown off at all.

So that's how the paper bag saved Jacko, and pretty soon his brother and
the other Indians came back with their prisoners and the game was over.
Then they untied Jacko and they all went to the home of the red and
green monkeys, and Mrs. Kinkytail gave them all some bread and jam. She
spread thirty-three loaves of bread and used up seventeen pots of jam
before they had enough, and the alligator didn't have a smitch, I'm glad
to say.

And the next story will be about Jumpo and the green parrot--that is, if
the window pane doesn't get the toothache in the night and cry like a
baby so it wakes up the pussy cat.

STORY VII

JUMPO AND THE GREEN PARROT

It was about three days and a half after the adventure with the
alligator, when Jacko Kinkytail had scared the skillery-scalery creature
by bursting the paper bag, and the two monkey brothers were coming home
from school in the afternoon.

"Did you miss any of your lessons today?" asked Jacko, as he twined his
tail around a hickory nut on the ground, and picked it up so he could
eat it--eat the nut, not the ground,