As for me, I soon became thoroughly at home in the wood, and could climb as well as either my brother or my sister, though I was at first by no means so adept at taking shelter as the other two. I had grown so accustomed to many sights and sounds ordinarily alarming to one of our tribe, that mother had often to scold me for exposing myself heedlessly to view on the rare occasions when people walked through the wood, and she had to show me all over again the tricks of lying out flat on a bough so that I could not be seen by passers-by, or of supporting myself on a trunk beneath a sheltering branch when danger in the shape of a hawk threatened from above. The good and plentiful food with which I had always been supplied at the Hall had made me fat and strong beyond what squirrels usually are at my age. There was very little difference now between me and Rusty, though originally I had been smaller. It was lucky for me that I had been turned loose just at this special time of year, for autumn is, of course, the squirrel’s harvest, and food was particularly plentiful that season. Nuts were ripening among the yellowing leaves; acorns were to be had for the picking; the beech-trees were full of mast, and when we tired of these there were spruce-seeds and berries of every description. Earlier in the year larch, fir, pine, and spruce tips had been our main sustenance, but these were now getting dry and old, for it was past the season of evergreen growth, and so we left them alone and fed almost entirely on nuts and seeds. About this time we had several days of soft warm rain, and after them part of the horse pasture which adjoined the coppice on the other side from the Hall was thickly dotted each morning with little white buttons, which mother explained to me were mushrooms. We used to steal down across the wet grass in the mornings, brushing through the gossamer spiders’ webs till our chests and paws were white with them, and feast royally on the tenderest and daintiest of the mushrooms, sometimes getting terrible frights when the village children who came to fill their baskets saw us, and clapped their hands to make us run. Mother was a wonderful forager. I remember one morning how she stopped on the bank where the beech-trees grow thickest, and after snuffing a moment or two, began to dig rapidly in the soft, black, loamy soil. Presently she nosed out some little round objects covered with a dark skin, and pushed one over to me. Never have I eaten anything more delectable than my first truffle. I can find them myself now as well as anyone.