After the coming of the grey terror you may imagine how careful we were. We took no more risks of any kind, and when we went out for food invariably took the precaution first to post a sentinel in the nearest tall tree to give good notice of danger. The cat came no more, but all the same, this precaution in all probability saved the lives of Rusty and myself. The snow had lasted a long time, but as the weather was sunny and bright we were out most days. One morning, as my brother and I were hunting out some nuts in the centre of a thick part of the hedge, we heard Cob’s cry of warning from an oak near by. Neither of us had any idea from which direction the danger was approaching, but we both were at the top of the hedge in the twinkling of an eye. Only just in time, for almost as we left the ground a gaunt red beast bounded on to the very spot which we had left. He was so close that I distinctly heard his sharp teeth click together like the snapping of a steel trap. He looked up with a hungry gleam in his eyes, but quickly recognizing that he had missed his meal, Master Reynard wasted no time in vain regrets, and trotting sharply off down along the hedge, soon disappeared in the distance. A fox is not particular in snowy weather. All is nuts that comes to his hungry maw.
Yet we were fated to hear once more of our deadliest foe. The snow had gone; cold rain and heavy gales succeeded it, and then one day dawned so mild and soft and sunshiny that even mother and Hazel woke.
‘Come, children,’ said mother; ‘we will go and get some breakfast. Open the door, Scud.’
I was in the very act of doing so, when the heavy report of a gun at some distance made us all jump back. A minute later there was a rattle of heavy claws up the trunk of our beech-tree. The sound was unmistakable.
‘The cat!’ I muttered; and we all sank back shivering with fright.
Right past our closed door came the sound, and up into the boughs above. We could only crouch as still as four mice. If the grey terror found the nest—and her keen nose would tell her that quickly enough—we were absolutely at her mercy.
‘Shall we make a bolt for it?’ muttered Rusty in my ear.
‘What’s the good? She’s above us. She’d be certain to get one of us before we could clear,’ I answered.
All was quiet again, but our suspense was almost unendurable. Ha! what was that? I could distinctly hear heavy footsteps on the ground below. They seemed to be circling round the base of the tree. Then they stopped, and absolute silence reigned.
Crash! A tremendously heavy report, followed by an unearthly scream. Bump, bump! Something was falling from bough to bough above; then a heavy thud.
‘Ha! ye poaching rascal!’ came a voice from beneath.
Curiosity could be restrained no longer, and, lifting the moss a little, I poked my nose through. I could have barked for sheer joy, for there was the tall, ginger-whiskered keeper in the very act of picking up a blood-stained grey form which lay limp and lifeless on the dead leaves at the foot of the tree. The grey terror was no more!
Nothing worth chronicling happened during the rest of that winter. Early March, I remember, was cold out of the common, so we did not emerge from our winter home until later than usual. At last the frost departed, and one morning I woke up, and, instead of waiting as usual for Rusty, sallied out alone. It was exquisitely bright and sunny, with a soft feeling in the air. A gentle westerly breeze stirred the twigs, all red at the tips with new buds, and drove across the blue sky soft rolls of light, smoky cloud. Tiny spikes of green were pushing out through the withered tufts of last year’s grass, and the birds were singing as I had never heard them sing before.
As I ran along the lowest branch of the beech, whom should I meet quite suddenly but Cob’s sister, little Sable. She looked at me in her pretty shy way, murmuring a gentle ‘Good morning,’ and it suddenly occurred to me how extremely pretty she was. I wondered vaguely why I had never before noticed the dainty grace of her shape, the softness of her coat, and the jewel-like brilliancy of her eyes. We sat still, gazing at one another for quite a minute; and then suddenly, with a roguish flick of her brush, she bounded past me and away to another branch, where she stopped short and looked back over her shoulder with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. After her I dashed in full pursuit, but she was gone again before I could reach her.
In those days I rather fancied myself at running and jumping, but I don’t mind saying that I never had a harder chase to catch any squirrel in my life. She was so extraordinarily quick at dodging and turning that we were both quite out of breath when at last I came up with her.
That was the beginning of my courting of my dear wife, but I can tell you that I had no easy task before me. She was the most coquettish little thing, and just when I was beginning to whisper tender speeches in her pretty pointed ears, off she would go with a flick and a spring, and lead me such a dance that I would angrily declare to myself that she did not care a bit for me. You see, I was very young in those days, and not learned in the ways of the fair sex. At other times she would hide herself in some cleft or knot-hole, and leave me to search for her by the hour; then, when at last I found her, she would say with an air of the greatest surprise:
‘Were you looking for me, Scud? Oh, I didn’t know. What a pity!’
There was worse to follow. One fine morning, some days later, Sable actually consented to come and play down on the grass. We were enjoying a fine game when, all of a sudden, a strange squirrel, one I had hardly seen before—he came from a family who lived quite at the other end of the coppice—appeared on the scene, and, running up to my lady as coolly as you please—
‘Good morning, Sable,’ he said, without so much as looking at me. ‘Won’t you come up to the fir-trees? I know where there are some specially tender shoots.’
This was a little too much for me.
‘Who in hazel-nuts are you?’ I inquired, coming up with my brush straight over my head and all my teeth showing. The beggar pretended not to see me, and began talking to Sable again. Well, if he didn’t see me he felt me, and pretty quickly, too. I went for him on the spot, rolled him over, and got my front teeth well home in his ear. For a minute it was hammer and tongs. We whirled round and round, the fur flying in every direction. He was strong, and snapped viciously, but I never let go, and though he marked me once, the end of it was that he was only too glad to break away and run. I chased him for some distance, and then came back, only to find that Sable had calmly gone home. I was so cross with her that I left her alone for the rest of that day, sulking by myself up in the fir-trees. What made it worse was that Rusty came and laughed at me mercilessly.
‘You don’t catch me playing the fool like that,’ he jeered. ‘A bachelor life’s good enough for me, thank you.’
Next day Sable was as sweet as sugar, and we agreed to be married and set up house together.
The next great question was the location of our future home. During the past winter I had seen so plainly how great were the advantages of a hole in a trunk that I quite determined to find similar quarters. As I have said before, I knew the coppice from end to end, and it struck me that there was a beech-tree not far from the gate which might suit us. So off we went to have a look at it.
On the way we noticed two squirrels fighting savagely on the ground, with a third sitting demurely by, and watching the combat. I had seen half a dozen such fights in the past few days, and did not pay much attention, but Sable suddenly stopped and sat up straight.
‘Don’t you see who it is, Scud?’ she exclaimed, intensely amused.
I looked again, and to my utter astonishment, who should the topmost of the two be but my brother Rusty.
‘My whiskers, but I’m sorry for the other!’ I laughed.
Rusty was a terrific fighter, and, indeed, we had not long to wait before his rival broke and ran for dear life, Rusty after him.
Everything went well that happy day. We found a hole high up in the beech-tree bole which, with a little hollowing out, made a simply perfect residence. It was close under a large branch, which gave splendid protection from the weather. We wasted no time in setting to work, and by evening had scraped out enough of its rotten sides to make a chamber about nine inches each way. Next day we lined it with dry leaves and grey moss, which we stripped from the lower part of the trunk.
But our labours were by no means at an end. Squirrels are rarely content with one residence, and my experience, short as it had been, had made me plainly understand the advantage of having several. Crossing over into a larch on the opposite side of the path, we built a drey on a large flat bough at a good height above the ground. This was all of selected sticks, and was well roofed in. It had a hollow floor and a conical roof, the sticks composing the roof being carefully interlaced in order to keep out the rain. It had an entrance on the east side and a bolt-hole on the west, and to close the doors at night, or in cold weather, we provided plenty of moss and soft grass fibre to make stoppers. The only incident of note during these pleasant days was my getting a horrid fright through accidentally digging up a slow-worm which had not yet left its winter-quarters in the hedge bank where I was pulling up grass roots. Ever since my adventure with the viper I have had a perfect horror of snakes. Not, of course, that a slow-worm is a snake, or in any way dangerous, but still, it looks detestably like one.
It seemed odd at first, only two of us in our new home, instead of the four who had snuggled together during the long winter in the old beech-tree. But we were far too busy to be dull, and we often saw mother and the rest of our relations. Mother was very pleased with our match, and equally so with the two others in our family, for not only had Rusty found a wife, but Cob and my sister Hazel had set up housekeeping together.
It used to amuse me, the air of proprietorship which Sable exhibited in our tree. I really believe that she considered the whole of it belonged to her, root, trunk, and branch. Any stranger squirrel who ventured to intrude had a bad time indeed. He or she was promptly chased off the premises without any ceremony whatever.
It was one day in April that our four babies were born. Ugly little beasts, I called them, quite hairless, blind and helpless. But when I ventured to remark as much to my wife there was a regular upset. You might hardly believe it, but she turned me out neck and crop, and for the next few days I never ventured home for more than a few minutes at a time. It was difficult even to persuade Sable to leave the little beggars long enough to take her meals. Early spring is none too easy a time for squirrels to find food in any case, and we were forced to subsist principally on the young shoots and bark of pine and fir trees. It is this habit which gets us such a bad name with keepers and foresters, but we do not do half so much damage as we are credited with.
One day, when I was out alone foraging, I met Rusty looking very fat and happy.
‘Hulloa, Scud,’ he said. ‘You’re getting thin. Cares of matrimony, eh?’
‘They don’t appear to worry you very much, anyhow,’ I retorted. ‘How do you keep so fat?’
‘Oh, I find plenty of food,’ he answered lightly; but there was a sort of guilty air about him which puzzled me at the time.
A day or two later, when I caught him devouring a nestful of the little blue eggs of the hedge-sparrow, I understood.
Now, eating eggs is a thing which is considered by well-bred squirrels to be thoroughly bad form; but, after all, it was no business of mine. Rusty was old enough to take his own course, so I said nothing about it. I have often blamed myself since, for one bad habit leads to another; and no doubt my brother’s indulgence in eggs that spring was the first step which led to the sad end which afterwards befell him.
To return to my own affairs—our kittens grew with astonishing rapidity, and once they opened their eyes began to prove decidedly more interesting. They were three bucks and a doe. In a month they were half as big as myself, and their hair had grown to quite a respectable length. Being April kittens, their coats were entirely different from the one which I had worn during my first summer. Mine had been reddish-brown, and I had had no tufts on my ears, but our young ones had greyish-brown coats like the winter one which I was just beginning to discard, and they wore smart little tufts on each ear as well as hair on their palms. One of them, however, was much darker than the other three.
Sable was the best of mothers, and took the greatest care of her young family, keeping them beautifully neat and clean. Before long they grew big enough to be taken out of the nest, and then began a very busy time for their mother and myself. Jumping and climbing lessons were the order of the day. Remembering how well my mother had instructed me, I took the greatest pains to show them how to spring from one branch to another, how to swing by one hand or foot, to fall without hurting themselves, and how to hide instantly when any danger approached. Sometimes we took them down on to the turf below, which was always kept close cropped by the rabbits, and the children enjoyed nothing better than rolling about there, tumbling head over heels, and indulging in all kinds of wild antics.
It amused me to see how inquisitive they all were. Curiosity is, of course, the besetting sin of the whole of our tribe, and many a one of us has it brought to grief. Anything the least bit out of the way had to be examined at once, and no amount of reproof ever seemed to restrain them. Curiosity very nearly cost Walnut—for so I called the little dark chap, who was my special favourite—his life.
One morning I had been over to the other end of the coppice, to a horse-chestnut tree which I knew of. Young horse-chestnut buds, I may remark, make as good a breakfast as almost anything I know of. When I came back I found Sable running about on the ground in a most distracted fashion. So soon as she caught sight of me she came flying to tell me that Walnut was missing. She was so excited that I had some difficulty at first in making out the facts of the case. It appeared that she had had the whole family out for a game on the grassy sward which bordered the wood path when, all of a sudden, she became conscious that only three of them were in sight. Walnut had completely disappeared. The others explained that they had been playing hide and seek, and that Walnut had been hiding. They had looked everywhere for him, but could neither find nor hear him.
Sending them all three back home out of mischief, their mother had set to work to make a vigorous search, but after half an hour’s hard hunting, had found no sign of her missing son. I joined her; and we began to quarter out the ground systematically, she taking one side of the path, I the other. But not so much as a hair of Walnut’s brush could we see; and when the shadows had nearly reached their shortest, I began to feel almost certain that some prowling weasel had caught our poor son. At last it occurred to me that the adventurous young rascal might have gone through the hedge into the open field, and I myself crossed the hedge and ditch. I think I have mentioned before that near the coppice gate on the meadow side was a strip of sandy ground with patches of hawthorn, blackberry bushes, and gorse, which was riddled with rabbit holes. As I wandered sadly across this, occasionally stopping to give a slight bark or a stamp, I suddenly heard a distinct reply. In great delight I hurried forward to a thick clump of gorse from which the sound seemed to come. But when I reached the spot there was no sign of life. I stamped again, and this time there was no doubt whatever about the answer. But it came from underground! Then I knew what had happened. Walnut had evidently tumbled into a rabbit-earth and was unable to get out. Very soon I found the hole, and there, sure enough, in the darkness some feet below me I saw my son’s eyes.
The burrow was a wide and very steep one, and its sides were of extremely soft and loose sand. It was quite plain that Walnut, having once fallen in, could get no footing to jump or scramble out; indeed, so he told me in tones that shook with fatigue and fright.
I called up Sable at once, and she, clever creature that she is, suggested that the best thing to do was to throw down pieces of grass and stick in order to give Walnut a footing from which he might jump. It was a long operation, but we finished it at last, and our foolish son once more emerged to the light of day.
‘How, in the name of pine-cones, did you ever come to get into such a place?’ was my first angry question.
‘I saw something white sticking out of it, father,’ he replied very coolly, ‘and I wanted to find out what it was.’
I burst out laughing.
‘Haven’t you ever seen a rabbit’s scut before?’
Walnut looked rather foolish.
‘I suppose I have,’ he answered, ‘but it didn’t strike me at the time.’
Things went very quietly and peacefully during the early part of that summer. There were no human intruders whatever. As I found out afterwards, the new people at the Hall had stopped all the old footpaths, including the field-path which led to the coppice gate. They had great ideas on the subject of high-farming and high-preserving, but for the present we luckily lived in comparative ignorance of these. One or two things certainly seemed strange. Almost all the hedges in the neighbourhood had been cut down and pleached during the winter, making the country-side look singularly bare. Also several grass fields had been ploughed up and planted with roots or wheat.
The ginger-haired keeper and a boy—his son, I believe—were often in the coppice, messing about among the undergrowth and collecting whole baskets full of pheasants’ eggs. Mother was horrified at this performance, but, as we found out later, they took them to the Hall to be hatched in incubators. I have spoken of the amount of timber-cutting which went on around the Hall. One day in the early spring a number of men invaded the coppice and cut away the underbrush and tree branches, so as to make several open rides across the wood from end to end. We were annoyed to see so many good hazel-bushes destroyed, but as they did not cut down the heavy timber we were not particularly inconvenienced.
We owed that ginger-whiskered keeper a debt of gratitude for slaying our enemy, the grey cat, but some of his performances no self-respecting coppice-dweller could approve of. He began to set horrible gins and snares in every direction. So far as killing off the stoats and weasels went, this was all very well; but it was a sad and dreadful thing to see an unlucky brown owl, the foe of nothing except mice and such-like vermin, struggling miserably half the night in the foul jaws of a pole-trap, with both its legs broken. Jays and magpies suffered also. I had seen traps at the Hall, and took particular pains to point them out to my youngsters as objects to be avoided with the utmost care. Other young families were not so fortunate. One of Rusty’s promising sons was missed one day, and found by his mother with his head crushed between cruel iron teeth, stone dead. There is nothing in the world so barbarous as the steel-spring trap.
That spring and all the early summer were extraordinarily dry. The hay-crop was very short, but of excellent quality, while the grain was curiously dwarfed. Many of the flowers came out before their time, particularly the white convolvulus and the purple scabious. The brook in the field, I remember, ran altogether dry, and failed to fill a large excavation which the new tenant of the Hall had had dug with the intention of making a fish-pond. I went to look at it one day, and found it a bare expanse of red clay, netted all over with deep cracks, in the largest and dampest of which a few small, unhappy frogs had found precarious refuge.
Mother told us that she had never seen weather like it before, and shook her head a good deal, prophesying that food would be as scanty during the coming autumn as it had been plentiful the previous year. Certainly there seemed good ground for her forebodings, for the oaks had hardly set any acorns, and there was little sign of mast upon the beech-trees. It looked as though the birds, also, would be likely to suffer, for the hips and haws dropped before setting from the drought, the hollies and yews had no berries, and the blackberry crop seemed as though it would be a complete failure.
Towards the end of July we had a spell of intense heat. We all took up our abode in our summer drey, opening both doors in order to let the draught, when there was any, blow through, and never stirred out except in the early morning and late evening. We felt the heat severely; but, after all, were far better off than the ground creatures. The grass in the meadows outside the gate had turned quite brown, and the unlucky rabbits were forced to travel long distances to find grazing.
There are few things, by the bye, which a rabbit dislikes more greatly than venturing any considerable distance from his home. The poor young ones paid a heavy toll to the stoats and weasels during that famine-time, for the vermin had them at their mercy when the little chaps visited the hedgerows to look for a little greenstuff.
The birds ceased singing almost completely, and the only place where much bird-life was still to be seen in our neighbourhood was around the pool down at the end of the coppice. This was almost dry, but a few square yards of stagnant, shallow water still remained in the centre, surrounded by a wide space of mud dotted all over with the footprints of dozens of different species of birds, and not a few four-legged creatures as well.
It must have been about the twelfth day of the heat, which turned out the most sultry I ever experienced in my life. The sun rose crimson in a crimson sky. No breath of air was abroad, and the leaves hung down straight without a flicker of movement. The coppice was uncannily silent, a silence broken only by the hum of insects, which rose drowsily through the foliage; the only moving things were butterflies, flaunting on painted wings, and a few lizards and snakes—reptiles for which no weather seems too hot.
All six of us lay out on the branches under the thickest shade we could find, tongues lolling out, too listless to trouble about food or even to talk. As the afternoon drew on, and the shadows lengthened towards the east, I suggested to Sable that we should go off in search of supper. I mentioned an oat-field just across the road, where I had an idea that the grain would be ripe enough to provide an easily-won meal.
But Sable said no; that it was still too hot for the children. That I had better go alone. If the oats were really ripe, we would all journey there next morning for breakfast. I never argue with my wife. My first week of wedded life taught me that such a proceeding is an entire waste of time and energy. So answering, ‘Very well, my dear,’ I rose, stretching and yawning lazily, and went leisurely away towards my destination. After all, Sable was quite right When I reached the open, the sun still stung with hardly abated power, and the heat mist shimmered over the baking ground.
The oat-field had turned quite golden in the past few days, but it was pitiful to see how short was the straw, how light the heads, and how small the grain. I had it all to myself, and wandered about, picking out the heaviest heads and nibbling in leisurely fashion. Suddenly a low distant mutter of thunder boomed through the stagnant air, and it struck me that it might be wise to make for home. But before I could even reach the hedge there sounded a second and louder peal, and to my amazement a quarter of the northern sky was already swallowed by a huge mass of vapour, purplish-black in colour, and rimmed with a tumbling edge of boiling mist white as snow. The cloud was advancing with amazing rapidity, and as I sprang into a pollard oak at the corner of the hedge, to get a better view, it swallowed up the sun, and a sudden darkness fell upon the thirsty land. Then I saw that the deep bosom of the ponderous storm-cloud was laced by constant streaks of blue and silver fire. Such a sight is not seen once in a generation of squirrels, and it so deeply interested me that for the moment I entirely forgot my intention of returning home, and sat there watching the gathering tempest with fascinated eyes.
A great tongue of blue flame licked downwards, and a moment later the thunder crashed in real earnest. There was a hoarse murmur in the far distance, and I saw the tree-tops, fields away across the level country-side, bend their tall heads as the first gust struck them. Presently a breath of air, cold, damp, and delicious, ruffled my fur, and, as the lightning flared again through the gloom, the first drop of rain, the size of a wren’s egg, struck me full in the face.
With a sudden start I realized that it was now too late to dream of returning, and that, if I wished to avoid the worst ducking of my life, I must seek shelter of some kind. Racing round the club-like top of the pollard I discovered a knot hole just large enough to hold me, and into this I forced my way—barely in time, for almost instantaneously the full force of the tempest was upon me. One gust of wind, so fierce that I felt the sturdy old oak quiver to its very roots, then a smashing downpour of hail. Not ordinary hail, but lumps of ice as large as walnuts, which almost instantaneously levelled the field of oats flat with the ground, stripped the foliage from the trees, and danced into white drifts which lay inches deep against the hedge bank.
In between the hail clouds pennons of blue and white electric fire sprang and vanished; but the clamour of the pounding ice and the roar of the wind almost drowned the bellowing thunder. Closer and closer glared the lightning. The hail turned to rain, which fell in solid sheets. The sharp alternations between darkness and intense white light dazzled me so greatly that I could hardly see. I felt stunned, deafened, and horribly frightened.
Of a sudden the rain ceased absolutely. Instantly the whole world was bathed in white fire, and simultaneously the very heavens seemed to crack with a crash that, I think, actually stunned me for the moment. When I came to myself again it was raining almost as fiercely as ever. Flash and crash still followed for some minutes with hardly abated rapidity and intensity, but very soon it began to grow lighter. The storm, like most such, was of small area, and travelling so rapidly that it passed almost as quickly as it had come.
DOWN THE NEAR SIDE OF THE TRUNK WAS A DEEP AND WIDE NEW SCAR
‘My poor Sable!’ I thought as I started hurriedly homewards. ‘What a terrible fright she and the kittens will have had!’ As I crossed the road into the coppice signs of the storm were everywhere visible. The ground was covered with green leaves, among which the fast-melting hail-drifts gleamed oddly white. Every puddle brimmed, every branch dripped, and from the meadow below the voice of the swollen brook rose hoarsely.
I made along the hedge, crossed into the coppice trees, and rattled rapidly homewards among the soaking foliage. A slight smoke rising in the distance startled me, but it was without the slightest premonition of coming misfortune that I quickened my pace, uttering a slight bark to signal my approach.
There was no reply, and the last part of my way I covered at full speed. Reaching the nearest side of the path, I stopped, stared, staggered, and nearly lost my hold. It was from our own beech-tree that the smoke was rising. The ground below was strewn with white fragments of splintered wood. Down the near side of the trunk was a deep and wide new scar, blackened in the centre.
Shaking and trembling all over, I crept up. But, no, I cannot tell you what I saw. They had all taken refuge in the nest, and their death must have been mercifully instantaneous.
