194 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



maple, where it looked like a piece of bark caught and 

 swinging in the air. 



Some men seem not to know how to keep still when 

 in the woods, and not to know what noise is. I have 

 taken friends out to hunt, and they have splashed 

 through the woods like hippopotamuses, and then were 

 always wondering where the squirrels were. Squirrels, 

 however, can walk among the driest of dry leaves 

 without making the noise of scarcely a patter. I have 

 seen them creep along logs or on the ground among 

 a thick fall of leaves, where it seemed to me impossible 

 that they could go so noiselessly, and yet at but ten 

 paces distant I have not been able to detect a scratch 

 or a rustle. It is not always that they are silent, for 

 I have seen them running and rustling and leaping 

 and playing among the fallen leaves as if with a real, 

 genuine joy at the woods' wildness; and I have seen 

 them in a game of tag circle round and round the trunk 

 of a shagbark until the woods was dinned with the 

 rattle of the strips of bark and with their chucklings. 

 Sometimes — though rarely — squirrels will mistake a 

 man's swish among the leaves for the jump and crash 

 of one of their own species, and I have had them make 

 directly toward me at such times, when I had made a 

 sudden misstep or had stumbled. As a rule they do 

 not seem to scrutinize the woods very carefully in 

 search of an enemy, but to depend more upon their 

 sense of hearing; for I have walked quietly round and 

 round a tree in wet weather, in order to get a good 

 shot, and they seemed totally oblivious of my presence. 

 But let me once tread on a twig and snap it, or let me 

 rustle and crackle the leaves injudiciously In dry 



