Up he came—and Chatter hadn’t any higher place to climb! He’d lost his temper, too. But as soon as he saw what a pickle he was in he found it again, and his wits with it. He rocked until his perch had a good long swing and then he let himself go. Out he leaped, all paws spread, sailing like a bird, then down—down——
Down went Chatter Squirrel. He kept right side up for he had his tail to help him. There was a big branch right beyond him. One good flick of his rudder, like a swimming fish, and his toes caught it. He swung right around it, like a trapeze man in a circus, scratched his nose on a twig, and then clamped his poor kicking hind feet against the bark. There he stuck with his poor little sides panting.
Down went Killer the Weasel. His measly little scrump of a tail was mighty little use to him. He went toes over ears. He never so much as got a claw on any twig because he couldn’t see to catch them; but he knew where every one of them was. They whipped him and switched him from behind and before as he whirled through them. He got a terrible spank when he found his branch, for he found it wrong side first and went bouncing off again, bing, into Nibble Rabbit’s Pickery Things. “Yip! Yeaur-r-r!” Rip! Tear! Blam! he hit the earth at last.
There he lay. For a minute he thought he was dead—right then. Then he began to breathe; before he really knew what to do next he found his legs were running, running, just like Nibble Rabbit runs when Killer is after him. And he let them go. Past the Brushpile he ran, across the Clover-patch, through the Corn. Suddenly right before him he saw the stone-pile. Down a crack he dove and pulled his tail in after him.
He found a little bed of dry grass no wind had ever blown in there, but he didn’t stop to think about it then. He was so weak and tired and bumped about he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He hardly hit the bottom before he was sound asleep.
Now some of the fieldmice who ran away from Doctor Muskrat’s pond before the Big Rain had chosen that stone-pile to live in—those who didn’t go all the way up to the barn. If Killer hadn’t been more hurt than he was hungry and more tired than he was hurt, he wouldn’t have had to smell very far to find out it was a mouse’s own bed he’d fallen asleep on.
The mice knew soon enough, and then of all the wailing and weeping and sniffing and squeaking you ever heard tell of—well! Of course, they called a meeting. They held it outside, in the cold wind that was whistling through the stones. But not all of the mice would come.
One mad old mother mouse decided to stay and run the risk of being eaten rather than go to new dangers; and one greedy weepy mouse refused to leave his second set of winter stores.
Poor old Great-grandfather Fieldmouse, who’s so old his ears are all crinkled, sat all hunched up with his whiskers drooping and his tail as straight as a sick pig’s. But he was very wise for a fieldmouse. “Mice,” said he, lifting a shaky paw, “we must not think; we must run. And
‘Down wind to flee from danger.