crisscross and loop and lady's-chain and lead 

 nowhere simply for the fun of it. 



Fairies do wonderful things and live in im- 

 possible castles ; but no fairy ever had a palace 

 in fairy -land more impossible than this unfairy- 

 like meadow-mouse had in my back yard. 



One February day I broke through the frozen 

 crust of earth in the garden and opened a large 

 pit in which forty bushels of beets were buried. 

 I took out the beets, and, when near the bottom, 

 I came upon a narrow tunnel running around 

 the wall of the pit like the Whispering Gallery 

 around the dome of St. Paul's. It completely 

 circled the pit, was well traveled, and, without 

 doubt, was the corridor of some small animal 

 that had the great beet-pit for a winter home. 



There were numerous dark galleries branch- 

 ing off from this main hallway, piercing out 

 into the ground. Into one of these I put my 

 finger, by way of discovery, thinking I might 

 find the nest. I did find the nest and more. 

 The instant my finger entered the hole a sharp 

 twinge shot up my arm, and I snatched away 

 my hand with a large meadow-mouse fastened 

 to the end of my finger, and clinging desperately 

 [26] 



