LITTLE FOLKS THAT GNAW 211 



it was forty days. He was living up pretty well to 

 the hallowed traditions! I followed him. One — 

 two — three times he had started digging, but each 

 time evidently found the ground frozen too hard. 

 From the third attempt the tracks led around a 

 little slope to the south side, and there, on the white 

 snow, was a pile of fresh, yellow earth. Seventy- 

 five feet away was another pile, even larger, and 

 under it a mound, evidently the earth dug out the 

 year before. Between these two holes, the two ends 

 of his tunnel, was a third hole, with no fresh earth, 

 and on the snow a yellowed track where he had 

 passed back and forth with his muddy paws and 

 belly fur. As there were no tracks leading away 

 except on the circuit I had followed, it was plain 

 he had been hibernating in this burrow, had come 

 out to-day and tried the ground to see if he could 

 start a new one, found he couldn't, and returned to 

 his old quarters, which he proceeded to renovate. 

 It was a species of spring house-cleaning. 



Spring house-cleaning ! I looked across the snowy 

 meadows to the white walls of the mountains and 

 felt the biting March wind blowing from a chill, 

 watery, leaden east, with no hint of a sunset glow in 

 the leaden west. Then I looked down at the pile 

 of fresh earth below the woodchuck's hole, and 

 hoped that the little optimist was a true prophet. 

 At any rate, he had enlivened my walk for me and 

 sent me home in better spirits. 



