Now and then they eat one, but for the most part they are busy storing them up for future use. In hollow trees, under stumps, they pile them in little hoards. But beside that they dig little holes in the ground here and there and put a nut at the bottom of them and pat the brown leaves down on top. I have always inferred that these were for special luncheons, stored ready to hand when the owner did not care to go to the main larder. I know that they do go to these in the winter on occasions, for I have often seen the hole through the crusted snow where the squirrel resolutely dug his way in and left behind him the chipped shells of the nut which he found there. But I do not believe that one nut out of a hundred that is thus buried is ever resurrected by the squirrels; it is nature’s method of getting her chestnut trees properly planted, and I half believe that the squirrels realize this; that they do not mean to dig these nuts up again, and only do so when hard pressed by hunger. My path to the chestnut wood to-day lay through a shallow sea of purple wood-grass. It is a wild grass, scorned of the farmer and left ungarnered of his scythe, standing now in clumps in all waste places of the pasture,--an amber wine of autumn tint that intoxicates you as you pass through. It is a stirrup cup for your expedition. Old as the hills, amber-purple and clear, yet with a fine bubbling of hoary leaf tips, it warms the heart as wine of the grape does, and already you begin to be drunk with the beauty of the day. Afterward you pass through aisles of birch wood, where the once green leaves are a translucent yellow, fining the gold of the sunlight down to a soft radiance, a richness of pale effulgence that I have seen matched only in one gem. Some years ago there came from South African mines a wonderful lump of crystallized carbon,--a great diamond that, cut and polished, yet weighed one hundred and twenty-five carats,--the famous Tiffany yellow diamond, in whose heart glows the same yellow radiance which wells throughout the birch wood of a sunlit October day. The Tiffany gem is worth its hundreds of thousands, and you might lose it from a hole in your vest pocket. The birch wood is a half-mile wide, and once you have felt its soft radiance flood your soul it is yours forever. Neither deserts nor cities can take it from you. Sitting secure in a crotch of the chestnut tree of my choice, beating the chestnuts from the half-open burs with a birch pole and listening to their patter on the dry leaves far beneath, I was conscious after a time of a little gritting squeak,--a squeak that sounded much like a small, unoiled joint that was very mad about it. It might have been two tree limbs rubbing together, only that it was too personal. Creaking limbs are always mournful in tone; this squeak was full of impotent, nervous rage.