have carried more than one nut at a time, up the 

 tall boot-leg and down the oily, slippery inside. I 

 should have liked to see her scurrying about the 

 cellar, looking after her curiously difficult harvest. 

 Apparently, they were new nuts to her every evening. 

 Once or twice I came down to find them lying un- 

 touched. The mouse, perhaps, was away over night 

 on other business. But the following night they 

 were all gathered and nicely packed in the boot 

 as before. And as before I sent them sixty ways 

 among the barrels and boxes of the furnace room. 

 But I did it once too often, for it dawned upon 

 the mouse one night that these were the same old 

 nuts that she had gathered now a dozen times ; and 

 that night they disappeared. Where? I wondered. 

 Weeks passed, and I had entirely forgotten about the 

 nuts, when I came upon them, the identical nuts of 

 my boot, tiered carefully up in a corner of the deep, 

 empty water-tank away off in the attic. 



Store? The mouse had to store. She had to, not 

 to feed her body, there was plenty in the cellar for 

 that, but to satisfy her soul. A mouse's soul, that 

 something within a mouse which makes for more than 

 meat, may not be a soul at all, but only a bundle of 



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