ust have that trout.'
She almost riz right up, 'I knew you wa'n't sayin' your catechism
hearty. Is this the way you answer the question about keepin' the Lord's
day? I'm ashamed, Deacon Marble,' says she. 'You'd better change your
road, and go to meetin' on the road over the hill. If I was a deacon, I
wouldn't let a fish's tail whisk the whole catechism out of my head;'
and I had to go to meetin' on the hill road all the rest of the
summer."--_Norwood._

THE DOG NOBLE AND THE EMPTY HOLE

The first summer which we spent in Lenox we had along a very intelligent
dog, named Noble. He was learned in many things, and by his dog-lore
excited the undying admiration of all the children. But there were some
things which Noble could never learn. Having on one occasion seen a red
squirrel run into a hole in a stone wall, he could not be persuaded that
he was not there forevermore.

Several red squirrels lived close to the house, and had become familiar,
but not tame. They kept up a regular romp with Noble. They would come
down from the maple trees with provoking coolness; they would run along
the fence almost within reach; they would cock their tails and sail
across the road to the barn; and yet there was such a well-timed
calculation under all this apparent rashness, that Noble invariably
arrived at the critical spot just as the squirrel left it.

On one occasion Noble was so close upon his red-backed friend that,
unable to get up the maple tree, the squirrel dodged into a hole in the
wall, ran through the chinks, emerged at a little distance, and sprang
into the tree. The intense enthusiasm of the dog at that hole can hardly
be described. He filled it full of barking. He pawed and scratched as if
undermining a bastion. Standing off at a little distance, he would
pierce the hole with a gaze as intense and fixed as if he were trying
magnetism on it. Then, with tail extended, and every hair thereon
electrified, he would rush at the empty hole with a prodigious
onslaught.

This imaginary squirrel haunted Noble night and day. The very squirrel
himself would run up before his face into the tree, and, crouched in a
crotch, would sit silently watching the whole process of bombarding the
empty hole, with great sobriety and relish. But Noble would allow of no
doubts. His conviction that that hole had a squirrel in it continued
unshaken for six weeks. When all other occupations failed, this hole
remained to him. When there were no m