Page:TheSquirrel.djvu/3

872 them Squirrels have been stealing them all this time!"

The old man hesitated. He was as thrifty as his Wife, and had as great a pleasure in possessions, but he had more points of view. "Seems kind of too bad when they've worked so hard," he remarked.

"Why is it too bad? Ain't they our nuts?" said his Wife, with wonder in her soft eyes. "They've stole our nuts."

"Well," said the old man.

He got the bushel basket and gathered up the nuts. There was distracted, but wary, comment from the Squirrels. They skirmished about on the stone wall, and watched this run upon their little bank with unavailing chatters of protest. At this time, if they had had faith, they might have lost it. At the beginning of winter the Squirrel and his mate, no longer young, were thrown upon the world penniless, and all their season's labor was lost.

When the nuts were all heaped up on the garret ﬂoor the old man and his Wife looked at them. The old man was still doubtful. "It seems most too bad, when they've worked so hard, don't it?" he said, with a break in his voice.

"Ain't they our nuts, and didn't they steal them?" returned his Wife. She was as kindly as her husband except when it came to questions of sheer justice, then she was pitiless.

But the old man was still anxious. All that day he had an eye upon the frenzied Squirrels darting hither and thither along the wall, with occasional peeps of unbelief that the worst was true, at their violated storehouse. That night he went down to the village store and purchased a bushel of shagbarks, and brought them home, leaning painfully to one side with their weight. He stole out to the wood-pile, all unseen by his Wife, and deposited them in the Squirrels' hiding-place. The next day, and several days after that, he had an attack of rheumatism and was unable to chop wood.

Then a light snow came, the ﬁrst of the season, and he said to his Wife that he didn't know but it might be just as well to leave the rest of that wood-pile for a while, seeing as he was so lame in his joints and the wood was so wet, and the shed nigh about full anyway. And she assented, saying that she guessed there was about enough wood in the shed to last till spring, and she didn't want him to get any more cold, and it cost so much to hire. She suspected nothing about the shagbarks and the Squirrels, and the old man did not tell her, though he felt guilty. He had never been in the habit of concealing anything from his faithful old helpmeet, not even his good deeds. But there are some deeds which are too intimate with one's self and God for even the listening ear of human love, and too much a part of the soul for even wedlock to unveil. Then, too, the old man was afraid that his Wife would think that he had been extravagant.

That winter the Farmer used often to gaze out of the window from behind his Wife's blooming row of geraniums, and think with a sensation which was like a warmth in his soul how the Squirrels were supplied with plenty for their needs until spring. But he crept out one day when his Wife was away and investigated, and not a nut was in the storehouse. He straightened his rheumatic back painfully and stared at the little empty cellar. Then the chatter of a Squirrel struck his dull ears. He looked for a long time, and ﬁnally spied him sitting on the stone wall, eying him with the wariest eyes of incipient motion, his tail already stiffened for ﬂight.

"Wonder if that's one of 'em?" thought the old man. He could not know that the Squirrel and his mate had moved all their new store of nuts to another hiding-place in the woods at the foot of a birch-tree, because they were ﬁlled with suspicion and distrust of him. His restitution was nothing. What were shagbarks to English walnuts? They were of an inferior quality anyway, and how did they alter the fact of the appropriation of the others?

The gentle old man whistled. "Be you the thief?" he asked.

Then the Squirrel began to chatter ﬁercely at the Farmer, though he was always ready to ﬂy at his slightest motion. The frosty air seemed to fairly shiver and shake with that tiny volley of accusation. There was the thief who had stolen the store which had been provided for himself and his mate by the Providence which had created them. There was the