undertone of sound, produced by their
multitudinous clucking, as they sit near their dens. It is one of the
characteristic sounds of fall.

I was much amused one October in watching a chipmunk carry nuts and
other food into his den. He had made a well-defined path from his door
out through the weeds and dry leaves into the territory where his
feeding-ground lay. The path was a crooked one; it dipped under weeds,
under some large, loosely piled stones, under a pile of chestnut posts,
and then followed the remains of an old wall. Going and coming, his
motions were like clock-work. He always went by spurts and sudden
sallies. He was never for one moment off his guard. He would appear at
the mouth of his den, look quickly about, take a few leaps to a tussock
of grass, pause a breath with one foot raised, slip quickly a few yards
over some dry leaves, pause again by a stump beside a path, rush across
the path to the pile of loose stones, go under the first and over the
second, gain the pile of posts, make his way through that, survey his
course a half moment from the other side of it, and then dart on to some
other cover, and presently beyond my range, where I think he gathered
acorns, as there were no other nut-bearing trees than oaks near. In four
or five minutes I would see him coming back, always keeping rigidly to
the course he took going out, pausing at the same spots, darting over or
under the same objects, clearing at a bound the same pile of leaves.
There was no variation in his manner of proceeding all the time I
observed him.

He was alert, cautious, and exceedingly methodical. He had found safety
in a certain course, and he did not at any time deviate a hair's breadth
from it. Something seemed to say to him all the time, "Beware, beware!"
The nervous, impetuous ways of these creatures are no doubt the result
of the life of fear which they lead.

My chipmunk had no companion. He lived all by himself in true hermit
fashion, as is usually the case with this squirrel. Provident creature
that he is, one would think that he would long ago have discovered that
heat, and therefore food, is economized by two or three nesting
together.

[Illustration: CHIPMUNK]

One day in early spring, a chipmunk that lived near me met with a
terrible adventure, the memory of which will probably be handed down
through many generations of its family. I was sitting in the
summer-house with Nig the cat upon my knee, when the chipmunk