g hard and flat against his sides as the tree-tops
separated in the wind; now jammed up against himself as they came
together again, pressing him into a flat ring with spines sticking
straight out, like a chestnut bur that has been stepped upon. And there
he swayed for a full hour, till it grew too dark to see him, stretching,
contracting, stretching, contracting, as if he were an accordion and the
wind were playing him. His only note, meanwhile, was an occasional
squealing grunt of satisfaction after some particularly good stretch, or
when the motion changed and both trees rocked together in a wide, wild,
exhilarating swing. Now and then the note was answered, farther down the
ridge, by another porcupine going to sleep in his lofty cradle. A storm
was coming; and Unk Wunk, who is one of the wood's best barometers to
foretell the changing weather, was crying it aloud where all might hear.

So my question was answered unexpectedly. Unk Wunk was out for fun that
afternoon, and had rolled down the hill for the joy of the swift motion
and the dizzy feeling afterwards, as other wood folk do. I have watched
young foxes, whose den was on a steep hill side, rolling down one after
the other, and sometime varying the programme by having one cub roll as
fast as he could, while another capered alongside, snapping and worrying
him in his brain-muddling tumble.

That is all very well for foxes. One expects to find such an idea in
wise little heads. But who taught Unk Wunk to roll downhill and stick
his spines full of dry leaves to scare the wood folk? And when did he
learn to use the tree-tops for his swing and the wind for his motive
power?

Perhaps--since most of what the wood folk know is a matter of learning,
not of instinct--his mother teaches him some things that we have never
yet seen. If so, Unk Wunk has more in his sleepy, stupid head than we
have given him credit for, and there is a very interesting lesson
awaiting him who shall first find and enter the porcupine school.

[Illustration]

The Partridges' Roll Call

[Illustration]

I was fishing, one September afternoon, in the pool at the foot of the
lake, trying in twenty ways, as the dark evergreen shadows lengthened
across the water, to beguile some wary old trout into taking my flies.
They lived there, a score of them, in a dark well among the lily pads,
where a cold spring bubbled up from the bottom; and their moods and
humors were a perpetual source of