We fell upon the wounded squirrels which we brought down on rare occasions, and put them to death with what I must now call a sickening ferocity. If sometimes the fool dog, the weak-minded Newfoundland pup we were rearing, rushed upon the game first, and the squirrel avenged his death upon the dog’s nose, that was pure gain, and the squirrel had the applause of all his other enemies. Yet we were none of us cruel; we never wantonly killed things that could not be eaten; we should have thought it sacrilege to shoot a robin or a turtle-dove, but we were willing to be amused, and these were the chances of war. The woods were full of squirrels, which especially abounded in the wood-pastures, as we called the lovely dells where the greater part of the timber was thinned out to let the cattle range and graze. They were of all sorts--gray, and black, and even big red fox-squirrels, a variety I now suppose extinct. When the spring opened we hunted them in the poplar woods, whither they resorted in countless numbers for the sweetness in the cups of the tulip-tree blossoms. I recall with a thrill one memorable morning in such woods--early, after an overnight rain, when the vistas hung full of a delicate mist that the sun pierced to kindle a million fires in the drops still pendulous from leaf and twig. I can smell the tulip blossoms and the odor of the tree-bark yet, and the fresh, strong fragrance of the leafy mould under my bare feet; and I can hear the rush of the squirrels on the bark of the trunks, or the swish of their long, plunging leaps from bough to bough in the air-tops. I hope we came away without any of them. The only one I ever killed was a black squirrel, which fell from aloft and lodged near the first crotch of a tall elm. The younger brother, who followed me as I followed my elder, climbed up to get the squirrel, but when he mounted into the crotch he found himself with his back tight against the main branch, and unable either to go up or come down. It was a terrible moment, which we deplored with many tears and vain cries for help. It was no longer a question of getting the dead squirrel, but the live boy to the ground. It appeared to me that to make a rope fast to the limb, and then have him slip down, hand over hand, was the best way; only, we had no rope, and I could not have got it to him if we had. I proposed going for help, but my brother would not consent to be left alone; and, in fact, I could not bear the thought of leaving him perched up there, however securely, fifty feet from the earth. I might have climbed up and pull him out, but we decided that this would only be swifter destruction. I really cannot tell how he contrived to free himself, or why he is not in that tree to this day. The squirrel is.