"Hear him chittering an' chattering! There's some fire to that conversation. See! the squirrel looks all red mouth," laughed Nixon. The mouth of the little tree-climbing fury yawned, indeed, like a tiny coral cave decorated with minute ivories as he sat bolt upright on the dry branch, scolding the dog. "Oh! come on, Blink, you can't get at him. You can chase a woodchuck or something else that isn't quite so quick, and kill it!" cried his master. The "something else" was presently started in the form of a little chipmunk, ground brother to the squirrel, which had been holding solitary revel with a sunbeam on a rock. With a frightened flick of its gold-brown tail it sought shelter in a cleft of a low, natural wall where some large stones were piled one upon another. Instantly it discovered that this shallow refuge offered no sure shelter from the dog following hot upon its trail. Forth it popped again, with a plaintive, chirping "Chip! Chip! Chir-r-r!" of extreme terror and fled, like a tuft of fur wafted by the breeze, to its real fortress, the deep, narrow hole which it had tunneled in under a rock, and which it was so shy of revealing to strangers that it would never have sought shelter there save in dire extremity. It was such a very small hole as regards the round entrance through which the chipmunk had squeezed, which did not measure three inches in circumference--and such a touchingly neat little hole, for there was no trace of the earth which the little creature had scattered in burrowing it--that it might well have moved any heart to pity. The terrier finding himself baffled, sat down before it, and pointed his ears at his master, inquiring about the prospects of a successful siege. "He was too quick for you that time, Blinkie. But you'll get another chance at him, pup," guaranteed Leon, while his companions were endeavoring to solve the riddle--one of the minor charming mysteries of the woods--namely, what the ground-squirrel does with the earth which he scatters in tunneling his grass-fringed hole. No such marvel appealed to Leon Chase! With lightning rapidity he was wrenching a thin, rodlike stick from a near-by white birch, and tearing the leaves off. Before one of the other boys could stop him, he had inserted this as a long probe in the hole, working the cruel goad ruthlessly from side to side, scattering earth enough now and torn grass on either side of the spic-and-span entrance. "Ha! you haven't seen the last of him, Blink!" he cried. "I'll soon 'podge' him out of that! This hole runs in under a rock; so there can't be a sharp turn in it, as is the case with the chip-squirrel's hole generally! I guess I can reach him with the stick; then he'll be so frightened that he'll pop out right in your face," forming a quick deduction that did credit to his powers of observation and made it seem a bruising pity as well for persecutor as persecuted that such boyish ingenuity should be turned to miserable ends.