that the coast was clear, Chippy at last scurried up to the top of the wall, where he could see on all sides, with a wide cranny conveniently near; for a chipmunk who desires to live out all his days must never be more than two jumps from a hole. Sitting up on the stone, he produced from one of the pockets which he wore in either cheek a large hickory nut, which had been pouched there all through his fight and flight. Holding it firmly in both his little three-fingered, double-thumbed forepaws, he nibbled an alternate hole in either side, through which he extracted every last fragment of the rich, brown kernel within. While he ate, there was never a second during which his sharp black eyes were not scanning every inch of the circumference of which his stone was the centre. There was not an instant that his sharp ears were not pricked up to catch the slightest sound, and his keen nostrils to sniff the faintest scent, that would indicate the approach of death in any of the many forms in which it comes to chipmunks.
His meal finished, Chippy turned his instantaneous mind to the next most important item of life. On his list of necessities, Home stared at him in capitals just under the item Food. A stone wall makes a good lodging-house but a poor home, for it has too many doors. Wherefore Chippy scampered along the top of the wall, his tail erect like a plume, scanning the hillside as he ran for a good building-site. At last, he came to a dry bank covered with short twisted ringlets of tough grass, which sloped up from the stone wall and ended in a clump of sweet fern.
