RASTUS EARNS HIS SLEEP 275 
The man embraced the trunk, and began to 
shin. He made much harder work of it than the 
*coons had done, but he got to a limb at last, 
pulled his leg over, stood up, and peered into the 
branches. Ten feet above his head, he saw, to his 
surprise, not one, but two dim forms curled into 
crotches on opposite sides of the trunk, and two 
pairs of eyes watching him intently. He began 
to climb again. 
As he neared the ’coons, Rastus began to move 
slowly out along one limb, his mate slowly out 
along another. When the man reached the limb 
Rastus was on, and got his weight fixed against 
it ready to shake, Rastus was far out amid the tip 
branches. Before the man could shake, however, 
completely to his surprise Rastus jumped. He 
landed with a crash of broken sticks square in the 
middle of a pile of rotted down slash, and of 
course Wolf sprang toward the sound. But even 
as he landed and Wolf sprang, his mate plopped 
off the end of her limb at the opposite side of the 
tree, and while Wolf was yet just short of the 
slash pile where Rastus was hidden in the hole his 
fall had broken through, Wolf heard the thud of 
