Nobody has ever told whether the boy--and after him the
minister--got the woodchuck or not, but there is at least an even
chance that he did not, for a woodchuck in sandy ground will move on
into it, taking his hole with him, at a rate that has defied more
than one industrious pursuer. Just how he breathes while this is going
on is more than I know, for he fills the passage behind him with
the debris of his digging, but he evidently does find air enough,
for after tiring out the excavating hunter and waiting a
reasonable time he digs up and out and proceeds to the deglutition
of kitchen gardens with an artistic thoroughness that has been his
since days of the Pilgrim Fathers, and I will not undertake to say
how long before that. I do not doubt that the first Indian that
ever planted corn and beans and "iskooter-squashes" said the same
things about the woodchuck that I do, in his own language; and I
believe that the woodchuck then, as he does now, just wrinkled his
stubby black nose and retired to his burrow to sleep upon it while
the garden digested.

No one to look casually at the woodchuck would think he was hard
to get, but he is. The first time I ever glimpsed one I learned
that. The woodchuck was eating second-crop clover in a hayfield
that had been mown about three weeks before. A little cocker
spaniel and I were strolling in the field when suddenly we heard a
squeal that was shrill enough to be a whistle and a fuzzy brown blur
streaked for the stone wall, followed by another. The cocker spaniel
had decided, like that boy, that he had got to get the woodchuck. I
fancy he thought he had him when they came together about five feet
outside the crevice in the wall for which the woodchuck had made his
fuzzy bee line, but as a matter of fact the woodchuck got the first
grip. His long yellow incisors met in the cocker's shoulder and that
worthy gave forth a yelp of pain and indignation as the battle began
with that strange hold.

I wish I might describe the Homeric conflict that followed, but it
was too full of action for anyone to grasp the details. A furry
pinwheel revolved in varying planes, smearing the stubble with
gore and filling the air with cries of mingled pain and defiance,
for what seemed to an astounded and perturbed small boy a good
part of the afternoon. Most of the gore and all the cries came
from the dog, for the woodchuck fought in grim silence, though no
whit more pluckily than his opponent. In the