The Lay of the Band 
authenticated instance of his doing so. The red 
squirrel is the sinner in this respect, and probably 
the gray squirrel also.” 
It will be difficult to find a true bill against him. 
Were the evidence all in, I believe that instead of a 
culprit we should find chipmunk a useful citizen. I 
reckon that the pile of June-bug bodies on the flat 
stone leaves me still in debt to him even after the 
strawberries have been credited. He may err occa- 
sionally, and may, on occasion, make a nuisance of 
himself, — but so do my four small boys, bless them! 
And, well— who doesn’t? When a family of chip- 
munks, which you have fed all summer on the ve- 
randa, take up their winter quarters inside the closed 
cabin, and chew up your quilts, hammocks, table- 
cloths, and whatever else there is of chewable prop- 
erties, then they are anathema. 
The litter and havoc that those squirrels made were 
dreadful, But instead of exterminating them root 
and branch, a big box was prepared the next summer 
and lined with tin, in which the linen was success- 
fully wintered. 
But how real was the loss, after all? Here is a 
rough log cabin on the side of Thorn Mountain. 
182 
