"THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THEM GREW LESS QUITE RAPIDLY."
Returning from the city one morning in October, I turned off the old highway into the woods. I thought that some of the wood-folk would notice my visit and reward me with gossip for my note-book. I stopped to rest near a red squirrel's nest. The nest was in the top of a tall hemlock-tree and I was on the ground, but the proprietor knew I could climb, and so was eager to drive me away. He did not dare to attack me, for I suppose that sometime in his life he had worked the idea through his little head that man was too big and powerful to be whipped by a red squirrel, but he did the next thing. He flew into a passion and abused me in the expressive and vehement language common to this squirrel. He would run out on the limbs over my head and dance himself into a frenzy, and chatter and bark and shriek as if that would drive me away. He was wound up for a half-hour. After he had run down, he stretched out on a limb and silently watched me. Soon after, I heard a slight rustling of leaves, and a gray squirrel appeared from the underbrush with an acorn in his mouth. The red saw the gray, but remained silent. The gray squirrel selected a spot and proceeded to bury the nut. When he had finished and was patting the dirt down, the red set up a great laugh. The gray cast one look aloft, and instantly his little paws were making the dirt fly. In less time than it takes me to write it, he had dug up the nut and had disappeared. I don't think the red squirrel thought to appropriate the nut. I think he enjoyed the joke which was on the gray. I know that I did.
A thaw in the winter made trouble for me outside of the sloppy walking. It brought out the skunk family, and each individual skunk thought he owned the old highway, and he did, when I met him. Many and many times I have had to climb through snow, or over ledges, to give the right of way to some sleepy old fraud, that did not know enough about man to be afraid of him.
"'HERMIT, YOU ARE OUT.'"
One evening I went to the well for water, and left the cabin door open. When I returned, I saw a big skunk climbing over the door-sill. I shouted, in hopes to make him turn back, but he looked at me as much as to say, "Hermit, you are out," and so I was. It was a cold, drizzly evening, and I was in my shirt-sleeves. It was a good half-hour before the scamp had satisfied himself that my stores were locked up. I was glad that he did not try his teeth on my cupboard. In that case I should have had to stop out all night.
VI.
THE WHITE-FOOTED MOUSE
The white-footed mouse, unlike the house mouse, is a handsome fellow. He sports a chestnut coat, a white vest, reddish brown trousers, and white stockings. His eyes and ears are uncommonly large, causing his head to resemble a deer's in miniature. This resemblance has bestowed upon him the name of "deer-mouse." He is also called "wood-mouse," but is known to science as Hesperomys leucopus.