possessed him. And what happened finally? 

 A sad thing, of course. A creature with such a 

 head on his shoulders could not come to a fine 

 and happy end. 



I took Pinky back to the woods the third 

 time, and the third time he returned, but blun- 

 dered into a neighbor's yard, and— and a little 

 later he was drawn up in a bucket of water from 

 the bottom of that neighbor's well, still asleep, 

 only— they could not wake him up. 



It is not easy to reconcile such wit as this 

 with the cunning of the fence-rail road and the 

 chimney entrance. Yet this one of the corn- 

 shock is not the only possum I have known to 

 take a roundabout way home for the sake of 

 hiding his trail. One autumn I was fooled over 

 and over,— we were fooled, the dog and I,— 

 until snow fell and the whole trick was written 

 out in signs that our stumbling wits had to 

 •understand. 



Around the rim of the steep wooded hillsides 

 circling Lupton's Pond runs a rail fence, along 

 which grow a number of old chestnut-oak trees 

 with clusters of great stems from single spread- 

 ing stumps that are particularly gone to holes. 

 " [209] 



