habit to spend his winters right there in Farmer
Green's young pines, near the foot of Blue Mountain, on many a cold
morning Jasper's ear-splitting "_Jay! jay!_" rang out on the frosty
air.

At that season Jasper often visited the farm buildings, in the hope of
finding a few kernels of corn scattered about the door of the corn-crib.
But it seemed to make little difference to him whether he found food
there or not. If he caught the cat out of doors he had good sport
teasing her. And he always enjoyed that.

Jasper was a bold rowdy--but handsome. And Farmer Green liked to look
out of the window early on a bleak morning and see him in his bright
blue suit frisking in and out of the bare trees. Still, Farmer Green
knew well enough that Jasper Jay was a rogue.

"He reminds me of a bad boy," Johnnie Green's father said one day. "He's
mischievous and destructive; and he's forever screeching and whistling.
But there's something about him that I can't help liking.... Maybe it's
because he always has such a good time."

"He steals birds' eggs in summer," Johnnie Green remarked.

"I've known boys to do that," his father answered. And Johnnie said
nothing more just then. Perhaps he was too busy watching Jasper Jay, who
had flown into the orchard and was already breakfasting on frozen
apples, which hung here and there upon the trees.

When warm weather came, the rogue Jasper fared better. Then there were
insects and fruit for him. And though Jasper took his full share of
Farmer Green's strawberries, currants and blackberries, he did him no
small service by devouring moths that would have harmed the grapes.

But in the fall Jasper scorned almost any food except nuts, which he
liked more than anything else--that is, if their shells were not too
thick. Beechnuts and chestnuts and acorns suited him well. And he was
very skilful in opening them. He would grasp a nut firmly with his feet
and split it with his strong bill. Johnnie Green could not crack a
butternut with his father's hammer more quickly than Jasper could reach
the inside of a sweet beechnut.

Though Jasper hated to spend any of his time during the nutting season
by doing much else except _eat_, he was so fond of nuts that he always
hid away as many as he could in cracks and crevices, and buried them
under the fallen leaves.

You see, he was like Frisky Squirrel in that. He believed in storing
nuts for the winter. But since he had no hollow tree in which to put
the