RASTUS EARNS HIS SLEEP 283 
bound, forepaws downward to pin the game right 
in the little patch of briars—and found nothing 
whatever there! With a yelp, he dashed over 
them, and rushed with nose to the ground, in an 
expanding fanlike radius. Then he came back 
to the briar patch, smelled, scratched, barked, 
looked worried, and dashed forth again. By this 
time the man was down from the tree. He poked 
thoroughly into the briar patch, and then took 
Wolf to a rail fence not far away and held him 
up to run his nose along that, on a chance that 
somehow the ’coon had reached it and run along 
it to conceal his scent. The rail was “ cold.” 
Back Wolf tore to the briar patch, his instinct 
telling him Rastus must be there. Suddenly he 
whined, and tore along a new scent—from the 
briar patch to—to the little pond! The pond 
had an outlet brook. Rastus had escaped! Not 
a hundred yards down that brook, the thick 
woods began, and the ’coon could have gone up 
directly from the water into any one of scores 
of trees, and traveled thenceforth far above the 
ground. 
The man went back, leaving poor Wolf to 
