It was one of the first acorns of the season, and Billie and Johnnie each wanted to get it, so, without thinking what they were doing, they jumped off the teeter-tauter plank, when Buddy was high up, and, of course, down he came, with a slam-bang!

My! how it did jar him up, and shake him, like pepper in the caster, but that wasn’t the worst.  No, indeed, and some chocolate cake besides!  When Buddy came down he landed right on an old rubber boot that some one had thrown away in the woods, and it was so bouncy and springy that he was tossed high up in the air again, and he curved sideways, just like a baseball, when he came down this time, and where on earth do you s’pose he landed?  Why, right in the middle of a big, scratchy, blackberry bush!

Yes, sir, that’s where it was!  Down poor Buddy went, right into the midst of the bush, and of course he got scratched some, only not as much as he might, for he happened to go down through a thin place, where there were not so many briars.

Well, at first he was too surprised to speak, and, besides, the breath was sort of knocked out of him, but, when he did gather himself together, he saw that he was in a bad place to get out of.  By this time Johnnie and Billie had found the green acorn and had divided and eaten it, so they came back to find Buddy.

“Why, where has he gone to?” asked Billie, looking around.

“Maybe he got mad, because we jumped off the plank so quickly and he has run home,” suggested Johnnie.  “We shouldn’t have done it.”

“No,” cried Buddy, suddenly.  “I haven’t gone home!  I’m in the blackberry bush over here!”

“Why, how in the world did you get there?” asked Johnnie, and Buddy told him.

“I think it would be more polite to ask him how he’s going to get out,” suggested Billie.

“That’s so,” agreed Buddy.  “It’s going to be hard work.  But I guess I can crawl through.”

So he tried to crawl through the bush, but you know how it is when you go after berries, the briars seem to stick into you all over.  That’s the way it was with Buddy.  He couldn’t crawl out, no matter how hard he tried, for the stickers caught into his fur and held him fast.

“Can’t you jump out through the same hole you fell in through?” asked Billie, and Buddy tried to do so, but he was scratched more than ever.

Then Billie and Johnnie tried to open up a place through the bottom part of the briars for Buddy to slide out, but they couldn’t do it, and they were very sorry they had jumped off the plank so quickly, for that made all the trouble.

Well, it began to look as though Buddy would never get out, and he felt like crying, only he was brave, and didn’t shed a single tear.  Then Johnnie suggested that he and Billie go up a tall tree, and lower a string down to Buddy in the bush, and try to pull him up that way.  They tried it, but it wouldn’t work, for the stickers still caught in the little guinea pig’s fur.