NEW ENGLAND FENCES 235 



kind, and there is hardly a fissure in its whole 

 length through which his lithe, snake-like body 

 cannot pass. You may now perhaps see his eyes 

 peering out of a hole in the wall, so bright you 

 might mistake them for dewdrops on a spider's 

 web, or see him stealing to his lair with a field 

 mouse in his mouth. In spring, summer, and fall, 

 nature clothes this little hunter in russet, but in 

 winter he has a furry coat almost as white as 

 snow, with only a black tip to his tail by which to 

 know himself in the wintry waste. The chipmunk, 

 too, haunts the wall, and the red squirrel finds in 

 it handy hiding-places into which to retreat, when 

 from the topmost stone he has jeered and snickered 

 at the passer-by beyond all patience. 



Long after our people had begun to tire of mow- 

 ing and ploughing about the great pine stumps, 

 whose pitchy roots nothing but fire would destroy, 

 and when the land had become too valuable to 

 be cumbered by them, some timely genius arose 

 and invented the stump puller and the stump 

 fence. This fence withstands the tooth of time as 

 long as the red-cedar posts, of which the boy said 

 he knew they would last a hundred years, for his 

 father had tried 'em lots of times; and now many 

 fields of our old pine-bearing lands are bounded 

 by these stumps, like barricades of mighty antlers. 

 These old roots have a hold on the past, for in 

 their day they have spread themselves in the un- 



