26 



tfjjttle Brother 

 To 



That was the beginning of a long acquaint- 

 ance, cultivated sometimes by day, more often 

 b v n ight; sometimes .alone, when I would 

 ca t c h one of the family fishing or clamming 

 or grubbing roots or nest robbing ; sometimes 

 with a boy, who caught two of the family in 

 his traps ; and again with the hunters under 

 the September moon, when some foxy old 

 coon would gather a freebooter band about 

 him and lead them out to a raid on the corn- 

 fields. There each coon turned himself 

 promptly into an agent of destruction and, 

 reveling in the unwonted abundance, would 

 pull down and destroy like a child savage, 

 and taste twenty milky ears of corn before 

 he found one that suited him perfectly; and 

 then, too full for play or for roaming about 

 to find all the hollow trees in the woods, he 

 would take himself off to the nearest good 

 den and sleep till he was hungry again and 

 the low whinny of the old leader called him 

 out for another raid. 



Could we have followed the family on this 

 first night of their wanderings, before the 

 raids began and the dogs had scattered them, 



