y over the mud patch beneath his swollen eye, "the blue-berries
were just about done. And as Teddy would not go down to the lower
lands again to hunt for other kinds of rations, he had to do a lot of
hustling to find enough blue-berries for his healthy young appetite.
Thus it came about that when one day, on an out-of-the-way corner of
the mountain, he stumbled upon a patch of belated berries--large,
plump, lapis-blue, and juicy--he fairly forgot himself in his greedy
excitement. He whimpered, he grunted, he wallowed as he fed. He had
no time to look where he was going. So, all of a sudden, he fell
straight through a thick fringe of blue-berry bushes and went sprawling
and clawing down the face of an almost perpendicular steep.

"The distance of his fall was not far short of thirty feet, and he
brought up with a bump which left him not breath enough to squeal. The
ground was soft, however, with undergrowth and debris, and he had no
bones broken. In a couple of minutes he was busy licking himself all
over to make sure he was undamaged. Reassured on this point, he went
prowling in exploration of the place he had dropped into.

"It was a sort of deep bowl, not more than forty feet across at the
bottom, and with its rocky sides so steep that Teddy Bear did not feel
at all encouraged to climb them. He went sniffing and peering around
the edges in the hope of finding some easier way of escape.
Disappointed in this, he lifted his black, alert little nose, and
stared longingly upwards, as if contemplating an effort to fly.

"He saw no help in that direction; but his nostrils caught a savor
which for the moment put all thought of escape out of his head. It was
the warm, delectable smell of honey. Teddy Bear had never tasted
honey; but he needed no one to tell him it was good. Instantly he knew
that he was very hungry. And instead of wanting to find a way out of
the hole, all he wanted was to find out where that wonderful smell came
from. If he thought any more at all of the hole, it was only to be
glad he had had the great luck to fall into it.

"From the deep soil at the bottom of the hole grew three big trees,
together with a certain amount of underbrush. Two of those were fir
trees, green and flourishing. The third was an old maple, with several
of its branches broken away. It was quite dead all down one side,
while on the other only a couple of branches put forth leaves. About a
small hole near the top of