them playing hide and seek just like children, scampering round and
round, their pretty gray tails waving, until some noise would send
them out of sight, and the silent forest would seem as if no living
thing were near. It was upon one of these rides that your grandfather
told me how, when he was about twelve years old, and spending his
Christmas holidays at Runiroi with his grandfather, he once said that
he could shoot one hundred squirrels between sunrise and sunset. His
uncle, George Pollock Devereux, happened to hear him and rebuked him
sharply for so idle a boast, and when your dear grandfather manfully
stood his ground, saying that it was not an idle boast, his uncle
called him a vain braggart, which so offended your grandfather that he
told his uncle that he would prove the truth of his assertion. And so,
upon the following morning, he rose early and was at Vine Ridge gun in
hand, ready to make his first shot, as soon as the sun should appear.
The squirrels were very numerous at first, and he made great havoc
among them. Many a mile he tramped that day, scanning with eager eyes
the trees above him, in search of the little gray noses, hidden behind
the branches, and thus it happened that he got many a fall and tumble
among the cypress knees; but what did that matter to his young limbs?
he had only to pick himself up again and tramp on. As the day
advanced, fewer little bright eyes peeped from the tree-tops and his
number was not made up; he was getting tired too, and very hungry, for
he had eaten nothing since his early breakfast. He stumbled wearily
on, however, determined not to fail, for he dreaded his uncle's
triumphant sarcasm should he do so. A few more shots brought his
number to ninety-nine, but where was the one-hundredth to be found?
The sun was sinking to the horizon; he had come out from the swamp and
was tramping homeward; the gun, so light in the morning, now weighed
like lead upon his shoulder. As he looked into every tree for that
hundredth squirrel which could not be found, the sun's disk was
resting upon the horizon when he turned into the willow lane leading
to the house. Just at the entrance there stood a great chestnut oak.
This was his last chance. He paused to take one hopeless look, when,
to his unspeakable joy, he beheld a fox squirrel seated up among the
branches. Now he knew that the fox squirrel was the slyest, as well as
the shyest of all his kind; no creature so expert as he in slippin