shall do you the honour of breakfasting with you to-day."

"We breakfasted hours ago, while you lazy fellows were fast asleep,"
replied an old chitmunk, poking his little nose out of a hole in the
ground.

"Then we shall dine with you: so make haste and get something good for
us," said Nimble-foot. "I have no doubt you have plenty of butter and
hickory-nuts laid up in your holes."

The old chitmunk told him he might come and get them, if he could.

At this the grey squirrels skipped down from the branches, and began to
run hither and thither, and to scratch among the moss and leaves, to find
the entrance to the chitmunks' grain stores. They peeped under the old
twisted roots of the pines and cedars, into every chink and cranny, but no
sign of a granary was to be seen.

Then the chitmunks said, "My dear friends, this is a bad season to visit
us; we are very poor just now, finding it difficult to get a few dry
pine-kernels and berries, but if you will come and see us after harvest, we
shall have a store of nuts and acorns."

"Pretty fellows you are!" replied Nimble, "to put us off with promises,
when we are so hungry; we might starve between this and harvest."

"If you leave this island, and go down the lake, you will come to a mill,
where the red squirrels live, and where you will have fine times," said
one of the chitmunks.