walking-stick, and made to hop down to the river, into whose waters
he splashed, and we saw him no more. We regret to say that the
popular indignation was so precipitate in its results; otherwise the
special artist who sketched Hum, the son of Buz, intended to have
made a sketch of the old villain, as he sat with his luckless
victim's hind legs projecting from his solemn mouth. With all his
moral faults, he was a good sitter, and would probably have sat
immovable any length of time that could be desired.

Of other woodland neighbours there were some which we saw
occasionally. The shores of the river were lined here and there with
the holes of the muskrats; and in rowing by their settlements, we
were sometimes strongly reminded of them by the overpowering odour of
the perfume from which they get their name. There were also owls,
whose nests were high up in some of the old chestnut-trees. Often in
the lonely hours of the night we could hear them gibbering with a
sort of wild, hollow laugh among the distant trees. But one tenant
of the woods made us some trouble in the autumn. It was a little
flying-squirrel, who took to making excursions into our house in the
night season, coming down the chimney into the chambers, rustling
about among the clothes, cracking nuts or nibbling at any morsels of
anything that suited his fancy. For a long time the inmates of the
rooms were awakened in the night by mysterious noises, thumps, and
rappings, and so lighted candles, and searched in vain to find whence
they came; for the moment any movement was made, the rogue whipped up
the chimney, and left us a prey to the most mysterious alarms. What
could it be?

But one night our fine gentleman bounced in at the window of another
room, which had no fireplace; and the fair occupant, rising in the