he butter. And on
his way home a big wolf chased after him. But what do you s'pose the
monkey boy did? Why, he just spread a little of the butter on the path
behind him, and made it so slippery that the wolf slid all over as he
ran, and so he couldn't catch Jacko.

But I must tell you what happened to Jumpo. The little monkey walked on
and on through the woods, and he was thinking of how nice it was under
the trees. Every once in a while he would pick up a chestnut to eat, and
this took him so long that soon he noticed it was getting dark.

"Oh, I must hurry faster than this," he said, and then, holding the
basket of jam tarts under his paw, he fairly ran on. And then, all of a
sudden, he saw a big chestnut burr on the ground in front of him. The
burr wasn't open yet, and it had a stem, like a handle to pick it up by,
so the stickers wouldn't stick you.

"Oh, there must be at least three big chestnuts in that burr," thought
Jumpo. "I'll pick that up, and then I won't stop a bit more." So he
picked up the chestnut burr, and on he hurried to Uncle Wiggily's house.
But he got a bit tired just as he was almost out of the woods, and he
thought he'd sit down to rest for only a few seconds.

So Jumpo was sitting on a flat stone, looking at the chestnut burr and
wondering if perhaps there might not be four brown, shining nuts inside,
when, all at once, he heard a rustling in the leaves beside him.

"Hark! What's that?" he cried as he leaped up and looked at the basket
of jam tarts which he had set down. "Perhaps that is some of the tarts
trying to jump out," he said.

Then he looked again, and what he saw frightened him very much. For
there was a big, fat, crawly snake on the ground moving toward the
basket of jam tarts.

"Oh, ho!" exclaimed the snake, sticking out his tongue, which was like a
fork--in two parts. "I'm glad I happened to come this way." Then he
wound his pointed tail around the handle of the basket, and hissed: "I
am very fond of jam--especially in nice flaky tarts."

"Do you--do you happen to mean these tarts?" asked Jumpo, sort of
sad-like.

"Indeed, I do," answered the snake, and then he stood upon the end of
his tail on the cover of the basket and sang:

"Oh, I am happy, light and free,
Jam tarts are the things for me.
I eat them morning, noon and night,
For jam tarts, they are my delight."

Then that snake began to lift off the cover of the basket to get at the
tarts, and