[Illustration]

THE HUNTING OF THE WOODCHUCK

... the chylde may Rue that ys vn-born, it wos the mor pitte.


There was murder in my heart. The woodchuck knew it. He never had had a
thought before, but he had one now. It came hard and heavily, yet it
arrived in time; and it was not a slow thought for a woodchuck,
either--just a trifle better, indeed, than my own.

This was the first time I had caught the woodchuck 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.