ell, because it got in his eyes,
and up his nose, and made him sneeze. It was the same sort of powder
into which he had fallen one time at Farmer Green's house. It was
flour, of course--you must have guessed that.

The gristmill was a quiet sort of building. There seemed to be nobody
there at all. And Frisky helped himself freely to wheat-kernels, for
it was very early in the morning and he had not had his breakfast. He
was just telling himself what a delightful place the gristmill was,
and how glad he was that he had heard about it, when suddenly there
was a terrible noise--a grinding, and whirring, and buzzing, and
pounding. The very floor trembled and shook, and Frisky expected that
in another instant the roof would come crashing down on him.

He leaped away from the bag of wheat-kernels on which he had been
breakfasting and he bounded through the great doorway and ran along
the rail-fence, far up the road, thinking that each moment would be
his last. For Frisky believed that the end of the world had come. And
he never stopped running until he was safe inside his mother's house.

Mrs. Squirrel was not at home. And it was so long before she came in
and found Frisky that he had begun to think he would never see her
again.

"Whatever is the matter?" Mrs. Squirrel asked. Frisky was making a
dreadful noise, for he was crying as if he would never stop.

"It's the end of the world!" Frisky sobbed. "I didn't think you were
coming back."

Bit by bit Mrs. Squirrel managed to learn where Frisky had been and
what had happened to him. And she smiled when she found out what had
frightened him. Since it was quite dark inside their home in the
hollow limb of the big hickory tree, Frisky could not see his mother
smiling. But her voice sounded very cheerful when she said--

"Now stop crying, my son. There's nothing to cry about. The end of the
world hasn't come. And _that's_ something you and I don't need to
worry about, anyhow."

"What you heard was only the mill-wheels turning. You must have
reached the gristmill before the miller had come to begin his day's
work. That was why everything was so still. I don't wonder you were
frightened when all that noise began. But gristmills are always like
that. They make a terrible noise when they grind the wheat."

Frisky Squirrel stopped sobbing then. He was glad that his mother knew
exactly what had happened. But he made up his mind that whenever he
wanted any wheat-kernels to eat