he stubble of the wheat-field, but they were not very fleet. I came up
with one of them after a hundred yards' chase, when it suddenly turned
and faced me with a strange loud squeak! Drawing back, I belabored it
with my fork handle until the creature lay helpless, quite dead, in
fact.

Theodora came after me in alarm. "Oh, my, you have killed it!" she
exclaimed. "What can it be?"

I put my hand cautiously down upon its hair, which was coarser than
bristles and sharp-pointed. Turning the body over with the fork handle,
I found that it was really heavy.

We could not, in the darkness, even guess what the animal was, and went
back to the house much mystified. The Old Squire had just arisen, and we
told him the story of our early vigil. "Wood-chucks, I guess," was his
comment, but we knew that they were not wood-chucks. Addison was then
called up, to get his opinion, and when told of the animal's exceedingly
coarse, sharp-pointed hair, he exclaimed, "I know what it is! It's a
hedgehog!"

He bustled around, got on his boots, and went out into the field with
me. It was now light, and he had no sooner bent down over it than he
pronounced it to be a hedgehog fast enough, or rather a Canada
porcupine. Its weight was over thirty pounds, and some of the quills on
its back were four or five inches in length, with needle-like, finely
barbed points.

The other hedgehog escaped to the woods, and did not again trouble us.
The next summer the August Sweetings that fell into the field from the
same tree were quite as mysteriously taken at night by a cosset sheep,
which for more than a fortnight escaped nightly from the farm-yard, and
returned thither of its own accord after it had stolen the apples. Again
Theodora and I watched for the pilferer, and captured the cunning
creature in the act.

During that first year at the farm, the old folks did not pay much
attention to our apple-hoards, but by the time our contests were under
way the second season, they, too, caught the contagion of it, from
hearing us talk so much about it at the breakfast table. At first the
Old Squire merely dropped some remarks to the effect that, when he was a
boy, he could have hidden a hoard where nobody could find it.

"Well, sir, we would like to see you do it!" cried Halse.

The old gentleman did not say at the time that he would, or would not,
attempt such an exploit. Moved by Ellen's serio-comic lamentations over
her losses, Gram also insinuated th