hey
jumped off the teeter-tauter plank, when Buddy was high up, and, of
course, down he came, with a slam-bang!

My! how it did jar him up, and shake him, like pepper in the caster, but
that wasn't the worst. No, indeed, and some chocolate cake besides! When
Buddy came down he landed right on an old rubber boot that some one had
thrown away in the woods, and it was so bouncy and springy that he was
tossed high up in the air again, and he curved sideways, just like a
baseball, when he came down this time, and where on earth do you s'pose
he landed? Why, right in the middle of a big, scratchy, blackberry bush!

Yes, sir, that's where it was! Down poor Buddy went, right into the
midst of the bush, and of course he got scratched some, only not as much
as he might, for he happened to go down through a thin place, where
there were not so many briars.

Well, at first he was too surprised to speak, and, besides, the breath
was sort of knocked out of him, but, when he did gather himself
together, he saw that he was in a bad place to get out of. By this time
Johnnie and Billie had found the green acorn and had divided and eaten
it, so they came back to find Buddy.

"Why, where has he gone to?" asked Billie, looking around.

"Maybe he got mad, because we jumped off the plank so quickly and he has
run home," suggested Johnnie. "We shouldn't have done it."

"No," cried Buddy, suddenly. "I haven't gone home! I'm in the blackberry
bush over here!"

"Why, how in the world did you get there?" asked Johnnie, and Buddy told
him.

"I think it would be more polite to ask him how he's going to get out,"
suggested Billie.

"That's so," agreed Buddy. "It's going to be hard work. But I guess I
can crawl through."

So he tried to crawl through the bush, but you know how it is when you
go after berries, the briars seem to stick into you all over. That's the
way it was with Buddy. He couldn't crawl out, no matter how hard he
tried, for the stickers caught into his fur and held him fast.

"Can't you jump out through the same hole you fell in through?" asked
Billie, and Buddy tried to do so, but he was scratched more than ever.

Then Billie and Johnnie tried to open up a place through the bottom part
of the briars for Buddy to slide out, but they couldn't do it, and they
were very sorry they had jumped off the plank so quickly, for that made
all the trouble.

Well, it began to look as though Buddy would never get out, and he felt
li