42 WILD SCENE3 AND WILD HUNTERS. 
nose, and then 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, 
sailing 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 
