190 A BED OF BOUGHS. 



had limited ourselves drew near its close, and we 

 concluded to finish our holiday worthily by a good 

 square tramp to the railroad station, twenty-three 

 miles distant, as it proved. Two miles brought us 

 to stumpy fields and to the house of the upper in- 

 habitant. They told us there was a short cut across 

 the mountain, but my soldier shook his head. 



" Better twenty miles of Europe," said he, getting 

 Tennyson a little mixed, " than one of Cathay, or 

 Slide Mountain either." 



Drops of the much-needed rain began to come 

 down and I hesitated in front of the wood-shed. 



" Sprinkling weather always comes to some bad 

 end," said Aaron, with a reminiscence of an old 

 couplet in his mind, and so it proved, for it did not 

 get beyond a sprinkle, and the sun shone out before 

 noon. 



In the next woods I picked up from the middle of 

 the road the tail and one hind leg of one of our native 

 rats, the first I had ever seen except in a museum. 

 An owl or fox had doubtless left it the night before. 

 It was evident the fragments had once formed part of 

 a very elegant and slender creature. The fur that 

 remained (for it was not hair) was tipped with red. 

 My reader doubtless knows that the common rat is 

 an importation, and that there is a native American 

 rat, usually found much farther south than the local- 

 ity of which I am writing, that lives in the woods 

 a sylvan rat, very wild and nocturnal in his habits, 

 and seldom seen even by hunters or woodmen. Its 



