ertainly. So I got the gun and
waited--and waited--and waited. Did you ever wait with a gun until a
woodchuck came out of his hole? I never did. A woodchuck has just sense
enough to go into his hole--and stay in.

There were too many woodchucks about and my days were too precious for me
to spend any considerable part of my summer watching with a gun for this
one. Besides, I have been known to fire and miss a woodchuck, anyway.

So I gave up the gun. It was while thinking what I could do next that I
came down the row of young peach-trees and spied the woodchuck out in the
orchard, fifty yards away from his hole. He spied me at the same instant,
and rose upon his haunches.

At last we were face to face. The time had come. It would be a fight to
the finish; and a fair fight, too, for all that I had about me in the way
of weapons was a pair of heavy, knee-high hunting-boots, that I had put
on against the dew of the early morning. All my thought and energy, all my
hope, centered immediately in those boots.

The woodchuck kept his thoughts in his head. Into his heels he put what
speed he had; and little as that was, it counted, pieced out with the
head-work.

Back in my college days I ran a two-mile race--the greatest race of the
day, the judges said--and just at the tape lost two gold medals and the
glory of a new intercollegiate record because I didn't use my head. Two of
us out of twenty finished, and we finished together, the other fellow
twisting and falling forward, breaking the string with his side, while I,
pace for pace with him--didn't think.

For a moment the woodchuck and I stood motionless, he studying the
situation. I was at the very mouth of his burrow. It was coming to sure
death for him to attempt to get in. Yet it was sure death if he did not
get in, for I should run him down.

Had you been that woodchuck, gentle reader, I wonder if you would have
taken account of the thick-strewn stones behind you, the dense tangle of
dewberry-vines off on your left, the heavy boots of your enemy and his
unthinking rage?

I was vastly mistaken in that woodchuck. A blanker, flabbier face never
looked into mine. Only the sudden appearance of death could have brought
the trace of intelligence across it that I caught as the creature dropped
on all fours and began to wabble straight away from me over the area of
rough, loose stones.

With a jump and a yell I was after him, making five yards to his one. He
tumbled alon