en, woe to the audacious monkey that had
dared incur her wrath. Her punishment should fit the crime.

When the storm that had uprooted the trees forming the windfall cut its
wide swath through the forest the ridge of interlocking trunks and
branches formed a barrier that most of the ground-inhabiting animals
could not cross; also, the broad, open space between the wall of trees
on each side was impassable to those dwellers of the treetops lacking
wings or too timid to descend from the security of their aerial homes.
The monkeys belonged to the latter class.

Here and there, however, where the cut narrowed somewhat the spreading
branches of the great trees met overhead forming bridges that were
utilized on occasions by the kinkajous, monkeys and other animals in
crossing from one section of the jungle to the other.

The supply of fruits on the hill side of the windfall was becoming
exhausted. There was no denying that fact, for the depredations of the
toucans, trogons, tanagers and hosts of other birds that swarmed through
the dripping branches were enough to strip even the most prolific of the
fruit-bearers. Most destructive of all were the flocks of parrots; they
wasted more than they ate. They plucked the choicest morsels, took one
bite and dropped them or, snipping the stems with their shear-like
mandibles permitted the nuts or berries to rattle down to the ground.
Later, when there were no more to eat, let alone destroy, they
complained with raucous screams as they were compelled to satisfy their
hunger on leaves and buds.

Myla noted the coming shortage but remembered that lower down, near the
river, the food supply always held out weeks after it had been exhausted
in the foothills. And, all unconscious of the fact that the wrathful
Suma was shadowing her every move, unconcernedly she made her way to the
nearest bridge, a mile distant, and crossed to the land of plenty.

All that afternoon she feasted, Warruk spurning the delicacies she
offered him but growling savagely as she drew the young of a trogon out
of its nest in the cavity of a termites' domicile which was plastered,
like a huge knob, on one of the high branches. And, when night came,
tired and drowsy from overeating she forgot her usual caution and made
herself comfortable on the nearest thick limb that offered her sleeping
quarters, and which was close to the juicy figs so that she could resume
her gorge early the next morning.

Suma observed the