“May you be rewarded,” says the wolf; and he crouched down under the bushes, and the bear covered him up with dead leaves, so that only the tip of his nose could be seen.

Then the bear climbed slowly up into the fir tree, into the very top, and looked out to see if the fox and Cat Ivanovitch were coming.

They were coming; oh yes, they were coming!  The hare ran up and knocked on the door, and said to the fox,—­

“Michael Ivanovitch the bear and his brother Levon Ivanovitch the wolf have been ready for a long time, and have brought presents of a sheep and an ox as greetings to his Excellency.”

“Get along, Squinteye,” says the fox; “we are just coming.”

And so the fox and the cat set out together.

The bear, up in the top of the tree, saw them, and called down to the wolf,—­

“They are coming, Brother Levon; they are coming, the fox and her husband.  But what a little one he is, to be sure!”

“Quiet, quiet,” whispers the wolf.  “He’ll hear you, and then we are done for.”

The cat came up, and arched his back and set all his furs on end, and threw himself on the ox, and began tearing the meat with his teeth and claws.  And as he tore he purred.  And the bear listened, and heard the purring of the cat, and it seemed to him that the cat was angrily muttering, “Small, small, small....”

And the bear whispers:  “He’s no giant, but what a glutton!  Why, we couldn’t get through a quarter of that, and he finds it not enough.  Heaven help us if he comes after us!”

The wolf tried to see, but could not, because his head, all but his nose, was covered with the dry leaves.  Little by little he moved his head, so as to clear the leaves away from in front of his eyes.  Try as he would to be quiet, the leaves rustled, so little, ever so little, but enough to be heard by the one ear of the cat.

The cat stopped tearing the meat and listened.

“I haven’t caught a mouse to-day,” he thought.

Once more the leaves rustled.

The cat leapt through the air and dropped with all four paws, and his claws out, on the nose of the wolf.  How the wolf yelped!  The leaves flew like dust, and the wolf leapt up and ran off as fast as his legs could carry him.

Well, the wolf was frightened, I can tell you, but he was not so frightened as the cat.

When the great wolf leapt up out of the leaves, the cat screamed and ran up the nearest tree, and that was the tree where Michael Ivanovitch the bear was hiding in the topmost branches.

“Oh, he has seen me.  Cat Ivanovitch has seen me,” thought the bear.  He had no time to climb down, and the cat was coming up in long leaps.

The bear trusted to Providence, and jumped from the top of the tree.  Many were the branches he broke as he fell; many were the bones he broke when he crashed to the ground.  He picked himself up and stumbled off, groaning.