My Boyhood and Youth 



still to watch him. He looked down the gopher 

 hole in a listening attitude, then looked back 

 at me to see if I was coming, looked down again 

 and listened, and looked back at me. I stood 

 perfectly still, and he kept twitching his tail, 

 seeming uneasy and doubtful about venturing 

 to do the savage job that I soon learned he had 

 in his mind. Finally, encouraged by my keep- 

 ing so still, to my astonishment he suddenly 

 vanished in the gopher hole. 



A bird going down a deep narrow hole in the 

 ground like a ferret or a weasel seemed very 

 strange, and I thought it would be a fine thing 

 to run forward, clap my hand over the hole, 

 and have the fun of imprisoning him and seeing 

 what he would do when he tried to get out. So 

 I ran forward but stopped when I got within a 

 dozen or fifteen yards of the hole, thinking it 

 might perhaps be more interesting to wait and 

 see what would naturally happen without my 

 interference. While I stood there looking and 

 listening, I heard a great disturbance going 

 on in the burrow, a mixed lot of keen squeak- 

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