UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



the side of his hole just deep enough to make room 

 for the passage of these broad, flat stones, and then 

 had packed it full of earth again. In one ease where 

 a red squirrel had apparently been trying to force 

 an entrance, such a niche was disclosed, as if the 

 softer earth there had dropped out. Yet, as I had 

 found other holes the rims of w^hich had evidently 

 never been tampered with, and the dump of which 

 held one or more stones larger than its diam- 

 eter, I was hopelessly puzzled. I had found still 

 other holes that had no dump at all — not a grain 

 of fresh earth anywhere in their neighborhood. 

 There is one by the roadside in front of Woodchuck 

 Lodge now, eight feet from the stone fence, into 

 which the chipmunk is daily carrying his winter 

 stores, but which has not the slightest vestige of an 

 earth-mound anywhere in its vicinity. If the squir- 

 rel ever carried the dirt away in his cheek pockets, 

 I might conclude that he had scattered it along the 

 roadway. This mystery of the holes that have no 

 visible dumping-place I have not yet cleared up. 

 Were there a woodchuck-hole near any of them I 

 might think that the loosened soil had been shot 

 into that. As the problem stands i with me now, it is 

 an insoluble mystery. A friend suggests that, like 

 the Irishman, he probably digs another hole to put 

 the earth in, which reminds me of an old story about 

 two countrymen who tried to "stump" each other 

 with questions, it being stipulated that no question 



28 



