36 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



bolstered with rags laboriously dragged in to 

 senseless confusion. The field mice had the floor 

 above. Here and there on the plates, between 

 joists, and over every window and door, were 

 their nests, carefully made of wool, chewed from 

 old garments and made fine, soft, and cosy. 

 Their larders were full of cherry-stones, literally 

 bushels on bushels of them, each with a little 

 round hole gnawed in it and the kernel extracted. 

 As the toil of the human inhabitants year after 

 year had left its mark on the floors of the house, 

 worn thin everywhere, in places worn through 

 with the passing and repassing of busy feet, so 

 had the generations of field mice left behind them 

 mute witnesses of patient, enormous labor. 

 From the two cherry trees in the neighboring 

 yard how many miles had these shy little people 

 traveled, unseen of men, with one cherry at a 

 time, to lay in this enormous supply ! 



Within the chimneys were the wooden nests of 

 chimney swifts, glued firmly to the bricks ; under 

 the cornice was the paper home of a community 

 of yellow hornets ; and under the floor where was 

 no cellar, right next the base of the warm chim- 

 ney, were apartments that had been occupied by 

 generations of skunks. Each space between floor 



