in its summer dress of
dark chestnut-brown above and whitish below.

It was a mystery where the creature had put the earth which it must have
removed in digging its den; not a grain was to be seen anywhere, and yet
a bushel or more must have been taken out. Externally, there was not the
slightest sign of that curious habitation there under the ground. The
entrance was hidden beneath dry leaves, and was surrounded by little
passages and flourishes between the leaves and the ground. If any of my
readers find a weasel's den, I hope they will be wiser than I was, and
observe his goings and comings without disturbing his habitation.

A few years later I had another adventure with a weasel that had its den
in a bank on the margin of a muck swamp in the same neighborhood. We had
cleared and drained and redeemed the swamp and made it into a garden,
and I had built me a lodge there. The weasel's hunting-grounds, where
doubtless he had been wont to gather his supply of mice, had been
destroyed, and he had "got even" with me by preying upon my young
chickens. Night after night the number of chickens grew less, till one
day we chanced to see the creature boldly chasing one of the larger
fowls along the road near the henhouse. His career was cut short then
and there by one of the men. We were then ignorant of the den in the
bank a few yards away. The next season my chickens were preyed upon
again; they were killed upon the roost, and their half-eaten bodies were
found under the floor. One night I was awakened about midnight by that
loud, desperate cry which a barn fowl gives when suddenly seized upon
its roost. Was I dreaming, or was that a cry of murder from my
chickens? I seized my lantern, and with my dog rushed out to where a
pair of nearly grown roosters passed the nights upon a low stump. They
were both gone, and the action of the dog betrayed the fresh scent of
some animal. But we could get no clue to the chickens or their enemy. I
felt sure that only one of the fowls had been seized, and that the other
had dashed away wildly in the darkness, which proved to be the case. The
dead chicken was there under the edge of the stump, where I found it in
the morning, and its companion came forth unhurt during the day.
Thenceforth the chickens, big and little, were all shut up in the
henhouse at night. On the third day the appetite of the weasel was keen
again, and it boldly gave chase to a chicken before our eyes. I was
standing in m