hornet's nest.

"Then away we goes up an' down, up an' down, an' roun' an' roun' that
perpendicular race track, until we made such a blur in the scen'ry that
any fool with half an eye an' standin' half a mile away could 'a' seen
a great big figger eight layin' on its side in the middle o' the
landscape. We took turns at carryin' the packet, but sometimes I
noticed Old-pot-head's son was havin' a good deal of trouble with it.
It didn't seem to bother him much when he was climbin' up; for he just
swung it on his back with the loop o' the tump-line over his head, an'
so he had his hands free. But it was when he was comin' down the
slippery birch that the weight of the bag made him rather more rapid
than he wanted to be; an' so, when he an' the bag struck groun', they
nearly always bounced apart; an' if the Injun failed to get his feet in
time to ketch the sack on the first bounce, I ketched it on the second
bounce as I glode by. So between the two of us we managed to hang on
to the packet.

"By-an'-by, we was gettin' terribly tuckered out. It was a good thing
for us that the bear was gettin' winded an' dizzy as well; because, at
about the sixty-seventh roun', the brute had no sooner gone down the
birch than he bounded up agen just when Old-pot-head's son was
a-climbin' thro' the upper branches o' the birch. So he slips over
into the top o' the east pine, while I stays in the top o' the west
pine, an' the bear sits down in a upper crotch o' the birch.

"Well, we puts in a good many heats of anywhere from twenty-five to
seventy-five laps roun' that track by the time daylight comes, an'
sunrise finds us all ketching our wind in the upper branches. I
noticed that whenever the brute wanted to stop the whirligig it always