odchuck away from his hole. He
had left his old burrow in the huckleberry hillside, and dug a new hole
under one of my young peach-trees. I had made no objection to his
huckleberry hole. He used to come down the hillside and waddle into the
orchard in broad day, free to do and go as he pleased; but not since he
began to dig under the peach-tree.

I discovered this new hole when it was only a foot deep, and promptly
filled it with stones. The next morning the stones were out and the cavity
two feet deeper. I filled it up again, driving a large squarish piece of
rock into the mouth, tight, certainly stopping all further work, as I
thought.

There are woodchucks that you can discourage and there are those that you
can't. Three days later the piece of rock and the stones were piled about
the butt of the tree and covered with fresh earth, while the hole ran in
out of sight, with the woodchuck, apparently, at the bottom of it.

I had tried shutting him out, now I would try shutting him in. It was
cruel--it would have been to anything but a woodchuck; I was ashamed of
myself for doing it, and went back the following day, really hoping to
find the burrow open.

Never again would I worry over an imprisoned woodchuck; but then I should
never again try to destroy a woodchuck by walling up his hole, any more
than Br'er Fox would try to punish the rabbit by slinging him a second
time into the brier-patch.

The burrow was wide open. I had stuffed and rammed the rocks into it, and
buried deep in its mouth the body of another woodchuck that my neighbor's
dog had killed. All was cleared away. The deceased relative was
gone--where and how I know not; the stones were scattered on the farther
side of the tree, and the passage neatly swept of all loose sand and
pebbles.

Clearly the woodchuck had come to stay. I meant that he should move. I
could get him into a steel trap, for his wits are not abiding; they come
only on occasion. Woodchuck lives too much in the ground and too
constantly beside his own door to grow very wise. He can always be
trapped. So can any one's enemy. You can always murder. But no gentleman
strikes from behind. I hate the steel trap. I have set my last one. They
would be bitter peaches on that tree if they cost the woodchuck what I
have seen more than one woodchuck suffer in the horrible jaws of such a
trap.

But is it not perfectly legitimate and gentlemanly to shoot such a
woodchuck to save one's peaches? C