changed attitude, his sudden creepings and hidings--was that some
other squirrel had hidden them there since his last visit. Whereupon he
carried them all off and hid them in a broken linden branch.

Then I tossed him peanuts, throwing them first far away, then nearer and
nearer till he would come to my window-sill. And when I woke one morning
he was sitting there looking in at the window, waiting for me to get up
and bring his breakfast.

In a week he had showed me all his hiding places. The most interesting
of these was over a roofed piazza in a building near by. He had gnawed a
hole under the eaves, where it would not be noticed, and lived there in
solitary grandeur during stormy days in a den four by eight feet, and
rain-proof. In one corner was a bushel of corncobs, some of them two
or three years old, which he had stolen from a cornfield near by in the
early autumn mornings. With characteristic improvidence he had fallen
to eating the corn while yet there was plenty more to be gathered. In
consequence he was hungry before February was half over, and living by
his wits, like his brother of the wilderness.

The other squirrels soon noticed his journeys to my window, and
presently they too came for their share. Spite of his fury in driving
them away, they managed in twenty ways to circumvent him. It was most
interesting, while he sat on my window-sill eating peanuts, to see the
nose and eyes of another squirrel peering over the crotch of the nearest
tree, watching the proceedings from his hiding place. Then I would give
Meeko five or six peanuts at once. Instantly the old hiding instinct
would come back; he would start away, taking as much of his store as
he could carry with him. The moment he was gone, out would come a
squirrel--sometimes two or three from their concealment--and carry off
all the peanuts that remained.

Meeko's wrath when he returned was most comical. The Indian legend
is true as gospel to squirrel nature. If he returned unexpectedly and
caught one of the intruders, there was always a furious chase and a
deal of scolding and squirrel jabber before peace was restored and the
peanuts eaten.

Once, when he had hidden a dozen or more nuts in the broken linden
branch, a very small squirrel came prowling along and discovered
the store. In an instant he was all alertness, peeking, listening,
exploring, till quite sure that the coast was clear, when he rushed away
headlong with a mouthful.

He did no