Of the wild-cat, the terror of the neighbouring wood, we heard nothing at all; and though I often talked of her with Cob and his sister, we did not imagine that there was much chance of her raiding so far from home. Cob gradually recovered from his wound, and, as food was still fairly plentiful, he grew fat and strong again. Nothing occurred to disturb the even tenor of those last few days before winter set in in earnest; and the silence that reigned in the coppice was broken only by the cheery song of the robin, the low twitter of the tits, and occasionally the clear pipe of the missel-thrush. Then came a day when the wind turned to the north-east, and a new biting, penetrating chill filled the bleak air. For the first time in my experience mother absolutely refused to leave the nest. ‘Children,’ she said drowsily, ‘it’s going to snow. I feel it in my bones. Close the door with moss and let us sleep.’ Pushing a bunch of moss into the opening, she curled herself into the deepest, darkest corner of our snug retreat, and almost instantly fell into a sleep deeper than ever we had seen or dreamed of. Squirrels, you must know, are never still for more than a few minutes at a time in their ordinary sleep. I know that, whenever I wake at night, and that is very often, especially now that I am no longer young, some of my family are always moving their legs, twitching about like a dog that lies before the fire and hunts rabbits in its dreams. But this was a different thing, this sleep of mother’s—she lay like a dead thing on her side, her splendid brush curled round and over her, and, as we watched, her breathing seemed to slow until it became almost imperceptible.