He felt quite sure of it when he had replied to Chatterer’s sharp voice, and had been told in no uncertain tones that the best thing he could do would be to run right back where he had come from.
Of course, he couldn’t do that, so he decided to do the next best thing—run over to the Green Forest and see what there was to do there. He hopped up on the rail fence and whisked along the top rail.
What fun it was! He didn’t have a care in the world. All he had to do was to eat, drink, and have a good time. Ha! who was that coming along behind him? Was it Chatterer? It looked something like him, yet different somehow. Tommy sat quite still watching the stranger, and, as he watched, a curious terror began to creep over him.
The stranger wasn’t Chatterer! No, indeed, he wasn’t even a squirrel! He was too long and slim, and his tail was different. He was Shadow the Weasel! Tommy didn’t have to be told that. Although he never had seen Shadow before, he knew without being told. For a minute he couldn’t move. Then, his heart beating with fear until it seemed as if it would burst, he fled along the fence toward the Green Forest, and now he didn’t stop at the posts when he came to them. His one thought was to get away, away as far as ever he could; for in the eyes of Shadow the Weasel he had seen death.
Up the nearest tree he raced and hid, clinging close to the trunk near the top, staring down with eyes fairly bulging with fright. Swiftly, yet without seeming to hurry, Shadow the Weasel came straight to the tree in which Tommy was hiding, his nose in Tommy’s tracks in the way that a hound follows a rabbit or a fox. At the foot of the tree he stopped just a second and looked up. Then he began to climb.
At the first scratch of his claws on the bark Tommy raced out along a branch and leaped across to the next tree. Then, in a great panic, he went on from tree to tree, taking desperate chances in his long leaps. In the whole of his little being he had room for but one feeling, and that was fear—fear of that savage pitiless pursuer.
He had run a long way before he realized that he was no longer being followed. The fact is, Shadow had found other game, easier to catch, and had given up. Now, just as soon as Tommy realized that Shadow the Weasel was no longer on his track, he straightway forgot his fear. In fact it was just as if he never had had a fright, for that is the law of Mother Nature with her little people of the wild. So presently Tommy was once more as happy and care-free as before.
In a big chestnut-tree just ahead of him he could see Happy Jack the Gray Squirrel; and Happy Jack was very busy about something. Perhaps he had a storehouse there. The very thought made Tommy hungry. Once more he hid, but this time not in fear. He hid so that he could watch Happy Jack. Not a sound did he make as he peered out from his hiding-place.
Happy Jack was a long time in that hollow limb? It seemed as if he never would come out. So Tommy started on to look for more mischief, for he was bubbling over with good spirits and felt that he must do something.
Presently, quite by accident, he discovered another hoard of nuts, mostly acorns, neatly tucked away in a crotch of a big tree. Of course he sampled them. “What fun!” thought he. “I don’t know who they belong to, and I don’t care. From now on, they are going to belong to me.”