So Tony went on in the path until at length he came to a place where there was a gateway leading into a dark and secluded wood. The wood was very dark and secluded indeed, and Tony thought that the path through it must lead to some very retired and solitary place, where nobody could find him.
“I presume there is a brook, too, somewhere in that wood,” he added, “where I can fish.”
The gate was fastened, but there was a short length of fence on the left-hand side of it, formed of only two rails, and these were so far apart that Tony could easily creep through between them. So he crept through, and went into the wood.
He comes to the brook.
He rambled about in the wood for some time, following various paths that he found there, until at length he came to a brook. He was quite rejoiced to find the brook, and he immediately began fishing in it. He followed the bank of this brook for nearly a mile, going, of course, farther and farther into the wood all the time. He caught a few small fishes at some places, while at others he caught none. He was, however, restless and dissatisfied in mind. Again and again he wished that he had not come away from home, and he was continually on the point of resolving to return. He thought, however, that his father would have brought Thomas into the field, and commenced his plowing long before then, and that, consequently, it would do no good to return.
Fishing. The squirrel.
While he was sitting thus, with a disconsolate air, upon a large stone by the side of the brook, fishing in a dark and deep place, where he hoped that there might be some trout, he suddenly saw a large gray squirrel. He immediately dropped his fishing-pole, and ran to see where the squirrel would go. In fact, he had some faint and vague idea that there might, by some possibility, be a way to catch him.
The squirrel ran along a log, then up the stem of a tree to a branch, along the branch to the end of it, whence he sprang a long distance through the air to another branch, and then ran along that branch to the tree which it grew from. From this tree he descended to a rock. He mounted to the highest point of the rock, and there he turned round and looked at Tony, sitting upon his hind legs, and holding his fore paws before him, like a dog begging for supper.
An unsuccessful hunt.
“The rogue!” said Tony. “How I wish I could catch him!”