202 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



the crotch of a tree, I thoughtlessly shot all the cart- 

 ridges remaining in my magazine at the bird, which 

 still stayed perched there. But further up the ridge, 

 as I was eating my breakfast, lo ! a big gray squirrel 

 came out on a branch directly above me not six feet 

 away. Now if there was one thing I detested it was 

 to go home with only one squirrel; I always wanted at 

 least two, and to see three squirrel tails hanging and 

 swinging together seemed something like success and 

 roused my pride. Yet I had no cartridges, not even 

 one, and he was going away! I did not want to see 

 him go, so, with great recklessness, I threw away all 

 that I possessed and could collect at him, — potatoes, 

 stones, sticks, walnuts, — but all without avail, for, after 

 jumping to a young hickory sapling at once and pro- 

 tecting himself for a time amid its twigs, he finally 

 leaped to the ground and scampered up an oak. On 

 another occasion, after a long hunt, and only one squir- 

 rel to show for it, as it was late in the morning and the 

 squirrels seemed to have all gone on a journey, I whiled 

 away a few moments before cooking breakfast by 

 shooting the few cartridges I had left at a white 

 splinter on a tree, with such gratifying success as to 

 assuage a little my solitary squirrel. I evidently could 

 have hit another, I argued, could I only have seen him. 

 At another time we "cornered" a fine big fox squirrel 

 in the crotch of a walnut, some forty feet from the 

 ground, on the slope of a steep ridge, and as we were 

 shooting at the spot trying to drive him out, what 

 should he do but go out, and actually run up to the 

 end of the limb, and deliberately leap off into mid-air, 

 and, apparently by flattening and stretching himself 



