watching patiently, for hours it need be, until he knows that
Deedeeaskh is gathering corn from a certain field. Then he
watches the line of flight, like a bee hunter, and sees
Deedeeaskh disappear twice by an oak on the wood's edge, a
hundred yards away. Meeko rushes away at a headlong pace and
hides himself in the oak. There he traces the jay's line of
flight a little farther into the woods; sees the unconscious
thief disappear by an old pine. Meeko hides in the pine, and so
traces the jay straight to one of his storehouses.

Sometimes Meeko is so elated over the discovery that, with all
the fields laden with food, he cannot wait for winter. When the
jay goes away Meeko falls to eating or to carrying away his
store. More often he marks the spot and goes away silently. When
he is hungry he will carry off Deedeeaskh's corn before touching
his own.

Once I saw the tables turned in a most interesting fashion.
Deedeeaskh is as big a thief in his way as is Meeko, and also as
vile a nest-robber. The red squirrel had found a hoard of
chestnuts--small fruit, but sweet and good--and was hiding it
away. Part of it he stored in a hollow under the stub of a broken
branch, twenty feet from the ground, so near the source of supply
that no one would ever think of looking for it there. I was
hidden away in a thicket when I discovered him at his work quite
by accident. He seldom came twice to the same spot, but went off
to his other storehouses in succession. After an unusually long
absence, when I was expecting him every moment, a blue jay came
stealing into the tree, spying and sneaking about, as if a nest
of fresh thrush's eggs were somewhere near. He smelled a mouse