A SQUIRREL'S VISIT 11 



ploring the world, used to creep over the white stone 

 by the threshold. The girls would pick them up to 

 feel their soft mole-like fur: the young shrew is a 

 gentle creature and does not attempt to bite. Some 

 of the more adventurous ones were always blundering 

 into the empty flower-pots heaped against the wall, 

 and there they would remain imprisoned until some 

 person found and took them out. 



One morning, at half-past four o'clock, when I was 

 lying awake listening to the blackbird, a lively squirrel 

 came dancing into the open window of my bedroom 

 on the first floor. There were writing materials, 

 flowers in glasses, and other objects on the ledge and 

 dressing-table there, and he frisked about among 

 them, chattering, wildly excited at seeing so many 

 curious and pretty things, but he upset nothing; and 

 by-and-by he danced out again into the ivy covering 

 the wall on that side, throwing the colony of breeding 

 sparrows into a great state of consternation. 



The river was quite near the house not half a 

 minute from the front door, though hidden from sight 

 by the trees on its banks. Here, at the nearest point, 

 there was an old half-dead dwarf oak growing by the 

 water and extending one horizontal branch a distance 

 of twenty feet over the stream. This was the favourite 

 drumming-tree of a green woodpecker, and at intervals 

 through the day he would visit it and drum half-a- 

 dozen times or so. This drumming sounded so loud 

 that, following the valley down, I measured the dis- 



