There was something of roguish defiance in his look and I accepted the challenge. I dropped my coat on the grass, that the bat and caterpillar might be uncrushed in the mêlée and swung into the tree toward the squirrel, who promptly scampered up the trunk fifteen feet or so, poked his head over another limb, and undeniably winked at me. The gray squirrel is clever, but even on his own tree his reasoning did not go very far. I was steadily driving him to the top, where he would be cornered, but he did not run out on a limb and drop to a lower one and then scramble down the tree and away, as he so easily might. He went straight on toward the top, and I after him. Hickory is tough, and even its small limbs will hold much weight. I could go as high as the squirrel could. On the topmost bough he poised. I was within arm’s reach. A gray squirrel has long, keen teeth and knows well how to use them in self-defence, yet you may grasp one safely if you will do it right. Take him with the full hand from behind with the thumb and finger round his neck and meeting below his jaw. Thus you may hold him securely, uninjured, and be free from harm yourself. I have often pulled grown squirrels from the nest in this way. But before my hand reached him the squirrel launched himself into the air with a bound that carried him in his flight clear of all limbs. It was forty feet to the drought-hardened pasture turf, and immediately I keenly regretted my frolic. A fall from that height, I thought, could but end in the death or injury of my friend. I looked to see him go to his finish, but he did nothing of the kind. Instead, he spread his legs wide, stiffened his tail, and fairly seemed to flatten himself as he went down, scaling to the ground instead of falling inertly, and though he struck with a considerable thud, he was up and scampering for the wood immediately. The squirrel had won, though I can but think it was a foolhardy trick, and he would have done much better to slip down from tip to tip of the hickory limbs and circumvent me by circumnavigating me. The crimson of the sunset lighted the path home with lambent radiance that made a twilight of the yellow glow beneath the birches and dulled the fire of the sumacs on the upland to a red as of dying embers. The purple wood-grass caught and held the complementaries of these fires reflected in its shadows till I seemed to stride through ashes of roses to the dun shadows of the lilacs in my own dooryard.