ood. So Clote
Scarpe, to save the little woods-people, made Meeko smaller--small as
he is now. Unfortunately, Clote Scarpe forgot Meeko's disposition; that
remained as big and as bad as before. So now Meeko goes about the woods
with a small body and a big temper, barking, scolding, quarreling and,
since he cannot destroy in his rage as before, setting other animals by
the ears to destroy each other.

When you have listened to Meeko's scolding for a season, and have seen
him going from nest to nest after innocent fledgelings; or creeping
into the den of his big cousin, the beautiful gray squirrel, to kill
the young; or driving away his little cousin, the chipmunk, to steal his
hoarded nuts; or watching every fight that goes on in the woods, jeering
and chuckling above it,--then you begin to understand the Indian legend.

Spite of his evil ways, however, he is interesting and always
unexpected. When you have watched the red squirrel that lives near your
camp all summer, and think you know all about him, he does the queerest
thing, good or bad, to upset all your theories and even the Indian
legends about him.

I remember one that greeted me, the first living thing in the great
woods, as I ran my canoe ashore on a wilderness river. Meeko heard me
coming. His bark sounded loudly, in a big spruce, above the dip of the
paddles. As we turned shoreward, he ran down the tree in which he was,
and out on a fallen log to meet us. I grasped a branch of the old log
to steady the canoe and watched him curiously. He had never seen a
man before; he barked, jeered, scolded, jerked his tail, whistled, did
everything within his power to make me show my teeth and my disposition.

Suddenly he grew excited--and when Meeko grows excited the woods are not
big enough to hold him. He came nearer and nearer to my canoe till
he leaped upon the gunwale and sat there chattering, as if he were
Adjidaumo come back again and I were Hiawatha. All the while he had
poured out a torrent of squirrel talk, but now his note changed; jeering
and scolding and curiosity went out of it; something else crept in.
I began to feel, somehow, that he was trying to make me understand
something, and found me very stupid about it.

I began to talk quietly, calling him a rattle-head and a disturber
of the peace. At the first sound of my voice he listened with intense
curiosity, then leaped to the log, ran the length of it, jumped down and
began to dig furiously among th