t wind-harps of trees, became wild and
legendary, though probably made by a lumberman driving a wedge or
working about his mill.

We expected a friendly visit from porcupines that night, as we saw
where they had freshly gnawed all about us; hence, when a red
squirrel came and looked in upon us very early in the morning and
awoke us by his snickering and giggling, my comrade cried out,
"There is your porcupig." How the frisking red rogue seemed to enjoy
what he had found! He looked in at the door and snickered, then in
at the window, then peeked down from between the rafters and
cachinnated till his sides must have ached; then struck an attitude
upon the chimney, and fairly squealed with mirth and ridicule. In
fact, he grew so obstreperous, and so disturbed our repose, that we
had to "shoo" him away with one of our boots. He declared most
plainly that he had never before seen so preposterous a figure as we
cut lying there in the corner of that old shanty.

The morning boded rain, the week to which we had limited ourselves
drew near its close, and we concluded to finish our holiday worthily
by a good square tramp to the railroad station, twenty-three miles
distant, as it proved. Two miles brought us to stumpy fields, and to
the house of the upper inhabitant. They told us there was a short
cut across the mountain, but my soldier shook his head.

"Better twenty miles of Europe," said he, getting Tennyson a little
mixed, "than one of Cathay, or Slide Mountain either."

Drops of the much-needed rain began to come down, and I hesitated in
front of the woodshed.

"Sprinkling weather always comes to some bad end," said Aaron, with
a reminiscence of an old couplet in his mind, and so it proved, for
it did not get beyond a sprinkle, and the sun shone out before noon.

In the next woods I picked up from the middle of the road the tail
and one hind leg of one of our native rats, the first I had ever
seen except in a museum. An owl or fox had doubtless left it the
night before. It was evident the fragments had once formed part of a
very elegant and slender creature. The fur that remained (for it was
not hair) was tipped with red. My reader doubtless knows that the
common rat is an importation, and that there is a native American
rat, usually found much farther south than the locality of which I
am writing, that lives in the woods,--a sylvan rat, very wild and
nocturnal in his habits, and seldom seen even by hunters or woodmen.