THE HUNTING OF THE WOODCHUCK 



. . . the chylcle may Rue that ys vn-born, it wos the 

 mor pitte. 



THEEE was murder in my heart. The wood- 

 chuck knew it. He never had had a 

 thought before, but he had one now. It came 

 hard and heavily, yet it arrived in time ; and it 

 was not a slow thought for a woodchuck, either 

 —just a trifle better, indeed, than my own. 



This was the first time I had canglit the wood- 

 chuck away from his hole. He had left his old 

 burrow in the huckleberry hillside, and dug a 

 new hole under one of my young peach-trees. 

 [21] 



