st, since you can't provide
me with shade."

The bear lay down and closed his eyes, but there was no sleep for him
this time. For the other trees had heard what he said and there came
such a chattering and a jabbering and a rustling of leaves as had never
been known in the forest:

"Heaven knows what sort of trees those are!" said one.

"Of course, it's a story which the bear wants us to swallow," said
another.

"What can trees be like whose leaves are so close together that the
sunbeams can't pierce them through?" asked a little oak who had been
listening to what the big ones were saying.

But next to him stood an old, gnarled tree, who slapped the little oak
on the head with one of his lower branches:

"Hold your tongue," he said, "and don't talk till you have something to
say. And you others need not believe a word of the bear's nonsense. I am
much taller than you and I can see a long way over the forest. But as
far away as I can see there is nothing but oak-trees."

The little oak remained shamefaced and silent and the other big trees
whispered softly to one another, for they had a great respect for the
old one.

But the bear got up and rubbed his eyes:

"Now you have disturbed my afternoon nap," he growled, angrily, "and I
shall have my revenge on you, never fear. When I come back, I shall
bring some beech-seed with me and I'll answer for it that you will all
turn yellow with envy when you see how handsome the new trees are."

Then he trotted away.

But the oaks talked to one another for days at a time of the queer trees
which he had told them of:

"If they come, we'll do for them!" said the little oak-tree.

But the old oak gave him one on the head:

"If they come," he said, "you'll be civil to them, you puppy. But they
won't come."

3

But this was where the old oak was wrong, for they did come.

In the autumn, the bear returned and lay down under the old oak:

"I am to give you the kind regards of the people down below there," he
said and picked some funny things off his shaggy coat. "Just look what
I've got for you."

"What's that?" asked the oak.

"That's beech," replied the bear. "Beech-seed, as I promised you."

Then he trampled the seed into the earth and prepared to leave again:

"It's a pity I can't stay to see how annoyed you will be," he said, "but
those dashed human beings have become so troublesome. They killed my
wife and one of my brothers the other day and I must look