Page:The Way of the Wild (1923).pdf/132

 a strange buzzing sound which came from the ball. He could just hear it. It sounded like flies. He had often amused himself with catching flies. Why, here was a ballful of flies. He would have a fine time. So he went up and sniffed the ball.

At the very first sniff he leaped into the air as though he had been trying to jump a high fence. When he came down he landed upon the ball and this made matters much worse. For the ball was a hornets' nest, and hornets do not like to have rabbits tumbling about their nest, so they swarmed out to punish the intruder. They stung him in the nose and about the eyes. They stung his ears and even his shoulders and back. He ran wildly this way and that with the hornets still stinging him. He plunged into the thickest ferns and rolled and tumbled and finally rubbed them all off, but it was not until he had been stung in half a dozen places. He had been stung once before in his short life, so he knew what it was. His nose, eyes, and ears smarted and burned as though they were afire. He cried and rubbed