At last, when morning came, the strongest one—that was our Little Mitchell, you know—felt so desperate that, although he was only two or three days old and had not got his eyes open yet, he climbed up to the crotch of the tree to find out what he could.
All he felt was the cold keen air of the early morning; and then, being all confused, I suppose, and not knowing how high he was from the ground,—for his eyes were tight shut, remember,—he tried to walk out into space, and down he fell,—not to the ground, oh dear, no! If he had fallen to the ground he would have been killed, and this story would never have been told.
When he felt himself falling, he caught at the tree-trunk with his little claws, and managed to get hold of a piece of loosened bark. Here he clung, terribly frightened, and crying like a little baby,—which, indeed, he was.
Perhaps it was a good thing for him that his eyes were shut, for how frightened he would have been to look down and see the earth so far below him!—such a cold, unfriendly earth, too, with nothing on it for a baby squirrel to eat.
I do not know how long he had been clinging there and crying before the lady came. For now it is time for his lady to come along, and when she once comes Little Mitchell will be in the story every minute until it ends.
You see, as soon as breakfast was over and they had all eaten all the hot corn-pone and fried cabbage they wanted, the lady was ready to start up the mountain.
The little children and their mother and the school-teacher were sorry to see the lady go, and the father looked anxious,—for Mount Mitchell is a very wild mountain and a very big one, and he was afraid they would get lost. He offered to go and show them; but the guide said no, he knew the way.
So the lady and her guide started on up the mountain in the cold morning air, and it became so steep right away that the lady had to keep stopping to get her breath.
It was while she was stopping to breathe that the guide said,—
“Listen! I hear a boomer, and I would like to get to see it.”