thin, keen fangs gleaming white passed less than my own length below me, and I fell into the thick of the bramble, the worst scared squirrel in the wood. How I scrambled out I have no idea, but in another instant I was scuttling back to my mother, full of my direful tale. When I told her what had happened she looked very grave. ‘It was an adder,’ she said, shivering. ‘If it had bitten you, you would have been dead before sunset. Keep close to me, Scud.’ The next day we moved into our new quarters in the fir-tree. Personally, I never liked a fir so well as most other trees. It is so dark and gloomy, and you get so little sun. My own preference has always been for a beech. An old beech has such delightful nooks and crannies, and often deep holes, sometimes deep and large enough to build a winter home in—always capital for the storage of nuts. There was no doubt, however, that the fir which father had chosen had many points to recommend it. It was an immensely tall tree, and thick as a hedge, yet there were no branches close to the ground to tempt evil-minded young humans like our recent invaders to climb up. What was still better, so cunningly had father chosen his site that it was quite impossible for any evil-minded, two-legged creatures to see us from below. Our nest was founded on a large, flat-topped branch close in to the thick red trunk, and only about two-thirds of the way up to the top. Another branch almost equally thick formed a roof over our heads, so that we were very snug and comfortable. CHAPTER II THE GREAT DISASTER The day on which the great disaster befell us was wet in the early morning, and when the sun rose a thick, soft mist, white like cotton-wool, hung over the country-side. Not a breath of air was stirring, and it was so intensely still that it seemed as though one could hear everything that moved from one end of the wood to the other. The plop of a water-rat diving into a pool in the stream on the far side of the coppice came as clearly to my ears as though the water had been at the bottom of our own tree instead of several hundred yards away, and when the wood-pigeons began to move unseen in the smother, the clatter of their wings was positively startling. We squirrel folk are not fond of wet, so we lay still and snug in our cosy retreat until the sun began to eat up the mist. Soon the grey smother thinned and sank, leaving the tree-tops bathed in brilliant light, every twig dripping with moisture, and every drop sparkling with intense brilliance. Then we crept out one by one, and, sitting up straight upon our haunches, began our morning toilet. No other woodland creature is so careful and tidy in its habits as a squirrel, and mother had already thoroughly instructed us in the proper methods of using our paws as brushes and our tongues as sponges, and in making ourselves neat and smart as self-respecting, healthy squirrels should be.