42 WILD SCENES AND "WILD HUNTERS. 



nose, and tlien great shining eyes filling the round black knot- 

 hole, and out another pops — ^and then another and another — • 

 three of them — his brother and sisters ! 



Hark ! — ^listen, — qua ! qua ! quagh ! That is another one 

 over on another tree ! He answers it, and then such a time ! 

 such whisking of tails, darting along limbs and bounding 

 from swinging twig to rustling tree-tops, until they all meet, 

 — two families of them ! 



Now the frolic begins in earnest, and round and round the 

 rough trunks, rattling the bark down as they chase each 

 other ! Their tails are spread now as wide as they can, as 

 if they were badly scared, and that young lady he makes 

 love to, you may be sure, for now he has chased her out 

 to the very end of a great high limb, and hard pushed, here 

 she comes right off into the air ! — down almost into my face 

 — the white of her arms underneath, spread wide like her 

 stiffened tail ! — into the leaves head foremost, and then up 

 and away, patter ! patter ! patter ! Here he comes, too. 

 Bailing down after her, plump ! and rattles off along the old 

 logs and swinging vines in hot chase ! 



So they all would frolic, chasing one another, and one would 

 see me, and stop and stamp his tiny feet and bark hoarsely 

 at me, jerking his tail in comic wrath. Sometimes another 

 would dart away suddenly, as if possessed, scurrying round 

 and round the tree after nothing ; and then I knew well 

 enough that it was not its tail that it was chasing, but one of 

 its little airy friends, only it was of too transpraent sub- 

 stance for me to see it by the day-light. 



Nor were these all the sights I saw out there in those 

 quaintly peopled woods. There was saucy chip-munck, with 

 black and white stripes down his brown back ; he was a spry 

 fellow, too, upon the ground, and lived in the prettiest house 

 under an old stump. He would show his striped nose push- 

 ing through the long moss hanging over his little hole under 

 the decaying root. How bright his soft, vivid eyes, and how 



