andfuls. In finding this chamber I had followed one of
the tunnels around till it brought me within a foot of the original
entrance. A few inches to one side of this cavity there was what I took
to be a back alley where the weasel threw his waste; there were large
masses of wet, decaying fur here, and fur pellets such as are
regurgitated by hawks and owls. In the nest there was the tail of a
flying squirrel, showing that the weasel sometimes had this game for
supper or dinner.

I continued my digging with renewed energy; I should yet find the grand
depot where all these passages centred; but the farther I excavated, the
more complex and baffling the problem became; the ground was honeycombed
with passages. What enemy has this weasel, I said to myself, that he
should provide so many ways of escape, that he should have a back door
at every turn? To corner him would be impossible; to be lost in his
fortress was like being lost in Mammoth Cave. How he could bewilder his
pursuer by appearing now at this door, now at that; now mocking him from
the attic, now defying him from the cellar! So far, I had discovered but
one entrance; but some of the chambers were so near the surface that it
looked as if the planner had calculated upon an emergency when he might
want to reach daylight quickly in a new place.

Finally I paused, rested upon my shovel a while, eased my aching back
upon the ground, and then gave it up, feeling as I never had before the
force of the old saying, that you cannot catch a weasel asleep. I had
made an ugly hole in the bank, had handled over two or three times a ton
or more of earth, and was apparently no nearer the weasel and his store
of mice than when I began.

Then I regretted that I had broken into his castle at all; that I had
not contented myself with coming day after day and counting his mice as
he carried them in, and continued my observation upon him each
succeeding year. Now the rent in his fortress could not be repaired, and
he would doubtless move away, as he most certainly did, for his doors,
which I had closed with soil, remained unopened after winter had set in.

But little seems known about the intimate private lives of any of our
lesser wild creatures. It was news to me that any of the weasels lived
in dens in this way, and that they stored up provision against a day of
need. This species was probably the little ermine, eight or nine inches
long, with tail about five inches. It was still