UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
the side of his hole just deep enough to make room 
for the passage of these broad, flat stones, and then 
had packed it full of earth again. In one case where 
a red squirrel had apparently been trying to force 
an entrance, such a niche was disclosed, as if the 
softer earth there had dropped out. Yet, as I had 
found other holes the rims of which had evidently 
never been tampered with, and the dump of which 
held one or more stones larger than its diam- 
eter, I was hopelessly puzzled. I had found still 
other holes that had no dump at all — not a grain 
of fresh earth anywhere in their neighborhood. 
There is one by the roadside in front of Woodchuck 
Lodge now, eight feet from the stone fence, into 
which the chipmunk is daily carrying his winter 
stores, but which has not the slightest vestige of an 
earth-mound anywhere in its vicinity. If the squir- 
rel ever carried the dirt away in his cheek pockets, 
I might conclude that he had scattered it along the 
roadway. This mystery of the holes that have no 
visible dumping-place I have not yet cleared up. 
Were there a woodchuck-hole near any of them I 
might think that the loosened soil had been shot 
into that. As the problem standsiwith me now, it is 
an insoluble mystery. A friend suggests that, like 
the Irishman, he probably digs another hole to put 
the earth in, which reminds me of an old story about 
two countrymen who tried to “stump” each other 
with questions, it being stipulated that no question 
28 
