cured yet. Then, he noticed the clothes-line, and
thought he might do something with that. He could get that down easy
enough, for it was not very high. Cousin Redfield had often hung out the
clothes on it himself. So he untied the ends of the clothes-line and
tied one end of it to the top of his bear-ladder, but didn't know what
to do with the other end, until he happened to see the big hooks in the
top of the cave where his father hung meat when they had a good supply.

"So then Reddie made a bunch of the other end of the rope and threw it
at those hooks, and kept on throwing it until after a while it caught on
one of them, and enough of it hung down for him to get hold of. Cousin
Redfield, for a small bear, was really quite smart to think of all that.

"It wasn't easy, though, even now, to get the bear-ladder up straight.
Reddie pulled, and tugged, and propped his feet against the side of the
cave, and the table and benches, and got out of breath, and was panting
and hot and his sore places hurt him awful, and he thought he'd have to
give it up, but at last the end of the bear-ladder caught on the side of
the cave where the jug was, and stayed there, and Cousin Redfield could
let go of the rope, and get behind the ladder and push, and then, pretty
soon, it was up straight, and he could get the molasses-jug as easy as
anything.

"It was getting along in the afternoon now, and Reddie knew that Uncle
Brownwood Bear was likely to come home before long. So he went right up
and got the jug, and nearly dropped it getting down, it was so heavy.
But he got down with it all right, and then pulled out the cob that was
its stopper, and tipped the jug to pour some of the molasses out in his
hand.

[Illustration: "AND THEN PRETTY SOON IT COMMENCED TO RUN BETTER"]

"But the jug was quite full, and, the molasses being very thick, would
not run out very well. So he tipped the jug over farther, but could only
get a little. Then he tipped it on its side, and then pretty soon it
commenced to run better, and came out better, and made a nice noise,
'po-lollop, po-lollop, po-lollop,' and formed quite a thick pool right
on the floor of the cave, and little Cousin Redfield Bear got down on
his hands and knees and licked and lapped, and forgot everything but
what a lovely time he was having, and didn't realize that he was getting
it all over himself, until he started to get up, and then found it was
all around him, and his knees were in i