y way he did this convinced me that he was
my friend of yesterday.

I had outwitted him once, and I determined to try and outwit him again.
I saw that near me was a tree with short branches, reaching close down
to the ground. I thought that if I could climb up it, I might get out
of the reach of my persecutor. Mustering all my strength, I suddenly
started up, shrieking out at the top of my voice, and flourishing my
stick, which I brought down with all my force on the bear's head. Bruin
so little expected the assault that, without attempting to attack me, he
turned round and trotted off to the distance of forty yards or so, when
he stopped and looked very intently at me. I seized the moment of my
emancipation to climb up the tree near me.

The bear, the instant he saw me take to flight, uttering a deep growl,
sprang eagerly back to the foot of the tree; but I was beyond his reach.
What, therefore, was my dismay to see him put his huge arms and legs
round the trunk and begin to ascend. Up he came, and as he advanced, I
ascended higher and higher. Every now and then he looked up at me, and
performed the to me unpleasant ceremony of licking his jaws. He was a
cautious brute, for, as he got higher, he felt the boughs and shook
them, to ascertain if he could trust his weight on them. I at last was
obliged to retreat along a wide extending bough, from which I could just
reach my enemy's head as he came near me. I shouted and banged away
with all my might, which so much annoyed him that he gave up the chase.
The moment I saw him hesitate I redoubled my blows, and at last,
infinitely to my satisfaction, not liking the treatment he was
receiving, he began slowly to descend the way he had come up. I shouted
and poked at him, but nothing would hurry him.

At last he reached the bottom, but instead of going away, he sat himself
down to watch me. Then we were just like the fox and the crow in the
fable. I the crow, and he the fox, only he wanted to get me instead of
the cheese. I sat on my bough flourishing my stick at him, and at last
he grew tired of watching me; but he did not go away--not he. My
astonishment was not small, to see him crawl into the bed-place I had
left, and quietly roll himself up and go to sleep. He must have slept,
however, with one eye open, for whenever I commenced descending from my
bough, he popped up his head as much as to say, "You had better not, or
I'll be after you," and then down he l