Chapter 3

There were signs in plenty about the spot that told Dickie Deer Mouse the burrow was deserted. Or perhaps it would be better to say that there was no sign at all of any occupant. Dickie found not a trace of a path nor even a foot-print near the hole nor did his nose discover the faintest scent either of friend or enemy.

Slipping inside the hole, Dickie found himself in the mouth of a big, airy tunnel, which went sharply downwards for a few feet.

And without the slightest fear he plunged down the dark hole, to see what he could see.

XVI

A LUCKY FIND

Though Dickie Deer Mouse was shy, he couldn't have been a coward. For when he had reached the end of that first pitch that led into the old burrow of Billy Woodchuck's uncle and aunt he never once thought of turning back. Before him stretched a dark, dry, level tunnel. And through it Dickie quickly made his way.

It was surprisingly long--that underground passage. But he came to the end of it at last. And creeping upwards, because the tunnel rose suddenly, Dickie Deer Mouse found himself in a roomy chamber, comfortably furnished with a big bed of soft, dried grasses, where Mr. and Mrs. Woodchuck had passed a good many hard winters asleep, while the snow lay deep upon the ground above them.

It took Dickie Deer Mouse no longer than a jiffy to decide that he had found the very place for which he had been looking. He knew that in that secret chamber he had nothing to fear from Solomon Owl nor Simon Screecher, nor Fatty Coon, either. And when midwinter came, and the nights turned bitterly cold, he could cuddle down in that soft bed and dream about summer, and warm, moonlit nights in the woods of the world above.

It was no wonder that Dickie Deer Mouse was pleased. And for a time he forgot everything but his good luck--until he remembered that he had had nothing to eat since the night before.

So he made his way back through the long tunnel, and up into Farmer Green's pasture. Then, looking around under the twinkling stars, he took pains to see exactly where his new home was.

It certainly would have been a great mishap if he had gone away in such a hurry that he could never have found his doorway again. But it was an easy matter to fix the spot in his mind. When he came back he needed only to follow along the rail fence until he came to the corner. Not far from the fence corner, in the woods, stood Farmer Green's sugar house. And about the same distance on the other side of the fence a lone straggler of a maple tree stood on a knoll in the pasture. The departed Mr. and Mrs. Woodchuck had been wise enough to dig the opening to their burrow between the roots of the tree. They knew that if Tommy Fox tried to dig them out of their underground home, he would find the passage between the roots too small to squeeze through.

Dickie Deer Mouse smiled as he saw what the builders of his house had done. They had made everything exactly to suit him. He knew that he could have done no better himself; in fact he knew that he couldn't have done nearly so well. For he was no digger. But he told himself that there was no reason why he should feel sad about that, so long as others were kind enough to dig a fine home and leave it for him to live in.

Then he slipped into the woods, feeling so happy that he had to stop and relate his good fortune to the first person he met.

And that was where Dickie Deer Mouse made a slight mistake.

XVII

A SLIGHT MISTAKE

Scarcely had Dickie Deer Mouse plunged into the woods when he met Fatty Coon coming in the opposite direction.

"Hullo!" Fatty said, looking up at Dickie, who had scrambled into a tree as soon as he caught sight of Fatty's plump form. "What have you been doing in Farmer Green's pasture! I thought you always stayed in the woods--unless you happened to go to the cornfield."

"I've been looking for a winter home," Dickie explained. "And I've just found the finest one you ever saw."

"Where is it!" Fatty asked him. "I might want to pay you a call some night--when I had nothing else to do."

Dickie Deer Mouse was in such a cheerful mood that almost anything Fatty Coon might have said would have pleased him.

"My new house is just beyond the fence," Dickie explained. "But I'm afraid you can't very well visit me there," he added with a smile.

"Why not?" Fatty Coon inquired. "I'm as good a climber as anybody. I can climb the tallest tree you ever saw, without feeling dizzy. But of course I'm a bit heavier than you are. And if you've gone and picked out a nest that's a long way above the ground, among the smallest branches, it might not be safe for me to go all the way up to it."

Dickie Deer Mouse had to smile once more.

"My new home isn't as high as I am right now," he told Fatty Coon.

Fatty grunted.

"Then I'll certainly come to see you," he said, "when time hangs heavily on my hands."

"My new house isn't as high as you are right now," Dickie remarked.

And at that Fatty Coon looked puzzled. His mouth fell open; and for a few moments he stared at his small friend without saying a word.

"You must be mistaken," he replied at last. "I'm standing on the ground. And I never saw a last year's bird's nest that was lower than that."

"I shall have to explain," said Dickie, "that my new home is much finer than my old one. Now, you may not believe it, but it has a front hall that's a hundred times as long as your tail."

Fatty Coon looked around at his ringed tail, with its black tip; and then he looked up at Dickie Deer Mouse again.

"You must be mistaken!" he cried. "I'll have to take my tail to your house and measure your front hall myself before I'll believe that."

"You can't measure my hall!" Dickie Deer Mouse exclaimed.

"Who's going to stop me?" Fatty Coon growled. He was used to having his own way. And it always made him angry when anybody tried to upset his plans. "I'm going to your house in the pasture now; and I'll soon show you that you're mistaken about your front hall.... You come with me and lead the way, young fellow!"

But Dickie Deer Mouse said he was so hungry that he couldn't go back just then.

"I'm headed for the big beech tree to see if I can find a few nuts," he announced.

At the mention of food Fatty Coon's face took on a different look.

"I'm hungry myself," he said, as if he had just remembered something. "I was on my way to Farmer Green's corn house when I met you. And I really ought to get there before the moon comes up. So if you'll tell me where your house is I'll stop there when I come back."

"My new home----" Dickie Deer Mouse informed him with an air of great pride----"my new home is in the burrow where Mr. and Mrs. Woodchuck used to live. The front door is under the tree that stands on the knoll just beyond the fence. But you can never get inside it, because you're altogether too fat."

The stout person on the ground knew that he spoke the truth. And without saying another word he turned about and disappeared in the direction of the farm buildings.

"Don't forget to take your tail with you!" Dickie Deer Mouse called to him, just before he was out of sight. "You might want to measure the corn house."

But Fatty Coon did not trouble himself to answer.

XVIII

TOO MANY COUSINS

In high spirits Dickie Deer Mouse hurried on through the woods until he came to the big beech tree. And though many others had been there before him, since the nuts had ripened, Dickie had such a sharp eye for a beech nut that even though it was then night, he soon found enough for a hearty meal.

Then he had to have a romp with a few gay fellows whom he met under the beech tree. And so quickly did the time pass that before he knew it the night had turned gray. Day was breaking. And shouting good-bye to his friends Dickie Deer Mouse ran off towards Farmer Green's pasture. He wanted a nap. And having nothing in his summer home that was worth moving, he knew of no reason why he shouldn't begin at once to live in his new quarters.

He never felt happier than he did as he scampered in and out among the trees, slipped under the rail fence, and streaked across the short grass of the pasture. But when he reached his doorway he stopped in dismay.

Where he had expected to see nobody at all, his eyes bulged with surprise at the crowd that had gathered in his dooryard.

As soon as he had taken several good looks at the company, Dickie Deer Mouse discovered that they were distant relations of his, of all ages and sizes. And at last he succeeded in sorting them into families.

There were three big families. And no one in the whole crowd paid any heed to Dickie Deer Mouse. They seemed to be talking about something most important, and too busy to notice the newcomer.

If the truth were known, the sight of his second and third and fourth cousins did not particularly please Dickie Deer Mouse. But he was an agreeable young gentleman. So he stepped forward and called several of his cousins by name. And since he couldn't say honestly that he was delighted to see them, he told them how well they looked and said that he hoped they had passed a happy summer.

"Here he is at last!" everybody cried. "We've been waiting for you for a long time, because we weren't sure whether we'd found the right place."

"What place?" Dickie Deer Mouse asked them as he looked from one to another in dismay.

"Why, the great house that you've found!" somebody cried. "We've heard that it has a front hall a hundred times as long as Fatty Coon's tail. So of course there must be lots of rooms in it; and we've come to keep you company and spend the winter."

When he heard that news Dickie Deer Mouse became almost faint. He did not want to hurt his cousins' feelings. But his plan of spending the winter quietly hardly made him welcome the idea of having a dozen half-grown children in his home.

"Who told you about my house?" he demanded with just a trace of disappointment.

"It was Fatty Coon," several of his cousins explained at once.

And then Dickie Deer Mouse knew that he had made a mistake when he told Fatty of his good fortune.

"I'm sorry to say that he has misled you," Dickie informed his relations. "It's true that my front hall is very long. But the trouble is, there's only one chamber."

XIX

THE WRONG TURN

For a few moments Dickie Deer Mouse's cousins looked terribly disappointed. He had told them that his new house had only one chamber. And each of the three big families had expected to have at least one bedroom.

The elder cousins gathered in a group and talked in low tones. Dickie could not hear what they said. He hoped that they were going to bid him farewell and go back where they came from. But he soon saw that they had no such idea.

The eldest of all, whom Dickie knew as Cousin Dan'l, said to him presently:

"Cheer up! We know you'd be sorry not to have us with you during the winter. So we'll take a look at your chamber. Perhaps it's big enough for all of us."

Dickie tried to tell Cousin Dan'l Deer Mouse that he was afraid the chamber would be too crowded with so many in it. But when he opened his mouth the words, somehow, would not come. And at last he nodded his head and crept through his doorway, while his cousins followed him one by one.

The younger cousins pushed and crowded and quarreled, making such a commotion that Dickie Deer Mouse could hear them plainly, though he was some distance ahead of them.

"Those youngsters will have to keep still," he said over his shoulder to the cousin that was nearest him.

Everybody passed the message down the line. And when the youngsters heard it they began to laugh.

"Tell Cousin Dickie to stop us if he can," they shouted.

Their rude answer reached Dickie Deer Mouse just as he came to a place in his front hall to which he had paid little heed before. Right at the spot where he stood the tunnel divided itself into two passages. Before, he had taken the one on the right. But now something told him to go the other way. So he turned to the left, still followed closely by the cousin that was behind him.

The whole procession came trailing after them. And the first thing Dickie--or anybody else--knew, they all found themselves standing in the grassy pasture once more, in the gray light of the morning.

They had passed out through the back door of the house, without entering the chamber at all!

As soon as Dickie's relations saw where they were they looked at one another in a puzzled fashion.

"What's the matter?" Cousin Dan'l demanded of Dickie. "I followed the crowd. But I saw no chamber anywhere."

Dickie Deer Mouse didn't know exactly what to say. So he merely shook his head, hoping that the company would go away.

"Can it be possible that you've lost your bedroom?" Cousin Dan'l Deer Mouse asked him. "Is it so small that you could have overlooked it?"

"The bedroom's none too big," Dickie replied.

"Then maybe we passed through it without noticing it," his elderly cousin observed.

"We can't stand around here in the pasture all day, Dan'l," the cousin's wife complained. "If Mr. Hawk happened to come this way he'd be sure to see us."

"What do you suggest?" Cousin Dan'l asked Dickie Deer Mouse. "You see the women are nervous." And he cocked an eye up at the sky, as if he did not feel any too safe himself when he thought of Mr. Hawk.

"It seems to me," Dickie told him, "that we'd all of us better go back to our summer homes."

And then, after saying that he hoped everybody would get home without an accident, and wouldn't meet Mr. Hawk, Dickie Deer Mouse turned towards the woods and hurried away.

His parting words did not make his numerous cousins feel any happier. And since they wanted to get out of sight as soon as they could, they quickly followed Dickie's example and scurried off as fast as they could go, to spend another day in the summer houses in which they had been living.

Now, Dickie Deer Mouse had paused as soon as he had reached the rail fence at the edge of the woods. And unseen by his cousins he peeped back to find out what they might do.

When the three families scattered in three different directions Dickie Deer Mouse believed that he was well rid of them.

But by that time it had grown so light that he did not want to show himself in the pasture, not even long enough to scamper the short distance from the fence back to the front door of his new house.

So he passed another day in the last year's bird's nest.

XX

BEDFELLOWS

During his rambles on the following night Dickie Deer Mouse took great care to keep out of sight of the three families of cousins that had tried to quarter themselves in his new house in the pasture. Moreover he said nothing to anybody about his future home. Fatty Coon had taught him in one lesson that it is sometimes wise to keep a secret.

The night was not ended when Dickie sought the burrow in the pasture once more. He hardly dared hope, as he neared the dooryard, that he would not find a crowd waiting there again. But when he reached his doorway he saw not a soul anywhere around.

He felt happy beyond words. And he popped through his doorway, hurried through the hall--which was a hundred times as long as Fatty Coon's tail--and burst into the cozy chamber.

Dickie had hardly entered the room when he stumbled over something soft. And a voice that sounded exactly like Cousin Dan'l's called out in rather a peevish tone that he'd better look out where he stepped.

"Who's here?" Dickie asked in a faint whisper.

"We are!" the voice replied. "There are eighteen of us in all. And you'd better be careful not to trample on anybody."

Dickie's heart sank. He understood, in a flash, what had happened. The three families of cousins were all there, sleeping in his soft bed of dried grasses! They had come back to the house in the pasture ahead of him, and had found the chamber without his help.

At first he almost turned around and left that place forever, without saying another word. But the night had turned cold and a drizzling rain was falling. And he knew that the roof of his summer home must be leaking badly. That underground chamber was delightfully dry and warm. And if the twelve children didn't wake up and begin to cry he saw no reason why he shouldn't spend one night there, anyway.

So he felt his way carefully about the room. There was no denying that it was dreadfully crowded. But at last Dickie Deer Mouse found a vacant spot that was big enough to lie upon. And burrowing down into the bed of grasses he soon fell asleep.

When Dickie Deer Mouse awoke, after his first sleep in the underground chamber, he thought that summer had come. He hadn't felt so comfortable for weeks. And for a little time he lay quite still, half dozing, enjoying the delightful warmth.

And then all at once he came to his senses. He remembered that he was in the burrow where Mr. and Mrs. Woodchuck had lived, in Farmer Green's pasture. And he recalled unpleasantly the misfortune that had happened: he had been forced to share his snug bedroom with eighteen of his distant cousins.

They were still sleeping soundly all around him. And Dickie Deer Mouse made a strange wish.

"They're here," he said to himself. "And I don't know of any way to get rid of them. I only wish they wouldn't wake up till spring."

XXI

ONE WAY TO KEEP WARM

After making his strange wish about his eighteen cousins--that they would sleep straight through the winter--Dickie Deer Mouse crawled out of bed. The sleepers filled the chamber so full that Dickie had to step into the hall before he could stretch himself.

For some reason he seemed to feel unusually _stretchy_. Generally when he waked up he sprang up at once and dashed out of his house, to find something to eat. But now he had half a mind to go back to bed again.

He did not do that, however, because he wanted to get away from his unwelcome guests for a time. So he crept through his long hall and crawled out through his front door, into the world above.

To Dickie's great surprise a startling change had come over the pasture. The weather had cleared while he slept and the stars twinkled in the heavens above him. And the hillside pasture was white with a thick blanket of snow.

It was cold, too--much colder than it had been when Dickie went to sleep.

Luckily a crust had formed upon the snow--a crust that was just strong enough to support Dickie's weight. And he made swiftly for the spruce woods, to hunt for his supper, for he knew he could find nothing on the ground, covered as it was by the snow.

Dickie felt even hungrier than he usually did when starting out of an evening to look for something to eat. But that was not strange, for without knowing it, he had slept several days and nights in the snug chamber with his cousins.

Dickie did not stay out all night long. Yet he took time, before he went home, to hide a small store of spruce seeds in a hollow rail of the pasture fence. He knew that before the long winter came to an end he would find that food in the woods would grow alarmingly scarce.

Long before daybreak Dickie Deer Mouse was glad to return to the underground chamber. And as he crept into the crowded room he thought it the coziest home he had ever had. He knew, at last, what made the place so warm. The soft, round bodies of his eighteen cousins heated it almost as well as if he had had a real stove.

It was lucky for him, after all, that Fatty Coon had told them about Dickie's new house. And now Dickie only hoped that none of them would leave before spring.

That snowstorm proved to be only the first warning of winter. In a few days the weather grew quite warm again. And to Dickie's dismay the three families of cousins waked up and went out of doors to get the air, and gather seeds and such thin-shelled nuts as they could find.

They did not eat all that they picked up. Like Dickie Deer Mouse, they stored some of the food in secret nooks and crannies, against a time of need.

That first early snowstorm had been a good thing for the dwellers in the underground chamber. It had warned them that winter was coming. And during the weeks that passed before the whole countryside became snow-bound they managed to gather enough nuts and seeds to last them through any ordinary winter--if they didn't eat too heartily.

When the real winter finally descended upon Pleasant Valley it found the Deer Mouse cousins quite ready for it. And even if Dickie's relations did wake up now and then, when the weather wasn't too cold, they slept soundly enough at other times, so that they did not disturb him greatly.

Even the children, who had pushed and crowded when they first entered the front hall of the house--even they were surprisingly quiet, when they were asleep.

XXII

QUEER MR. PINE FINCH

Perhaps the winter was longer than usual; or perhaps Dickie Deer Mouse ate too freely of his hidden store of good things. At any rate, Dickie's hoard slowly grew smaller and smaller. And long before the day came when he bolted the last seed that remained in the hollow fence-rail he had begun to wonder where he should find more food.

While he had been sleeping the birds that stayed in Pleasant Valley during the winter had been feasting greedily upon the very kind of fare that Dickie Deer Mouse needed. Jasper Jay and his noisy cronies had taken good care that there shouldn't be a beechnut left. And when they had eaten the last sweet nut they turned to such dried berries as still clung to the withered stocks on which they had grown.

No longer could Dickie Deer Mouse spend so much time asleep in his cozy chamber. Instead, he had to wander far through the woods at night, thankful to pick up a bit here and there as best he might.

On those crisp, cold nights he had to scamper fast in order to keep warm. And often, when dawn came, he crept home still hungry.

At last Dickie's night runs lapped well over into the day. For his search for food became more and more disappointing. And afterward he often wondered what would have happened to him if he hadn't met Mr. Pine Finch early one morning.

Mr. Pine Finch was an odd fellow. He had a peculiar way of talking as if he spoke through his nose. Though Dickie Deer Mouse had seen him before, he had paid scant attention to Mr. Pine Finch. But when he caught sight of him on a certain chilly morning there were so few birds stirring that Dickie stopped short and watched Mr. Pine Finch, who was so busy in a tree-top that he didn't know anybody else was near him.

He was talking to himself. And as nearly as Dickie Deer Mouse could tell, he was remarking--through his nose--that he was having a good breakfast.

That news made Dickie Deer Mouse prick up his big ears. A good breakfast was something that he had not enjoyed for a long, long time.

At first Dickie couldn't quite see what Mr. Pine Finch was about. It was he, beyond a doubt. There could be no more mistaking his odd voice than his plump, black-streaked back, with its splashes of yellow at the base of his tail, and his yellow-edged wings. Dickie had a good view of Mr. Pine-Finch's back, because its owner hung upside down from the tips of the branches of the tree where Dickie spied him.

To Dickie Deer Mouse the sight, at first, was somewhat of a puzzle. He stood quite still, gazing upward in wonder. And then all at once he discovered what Mr. Pine Finch was doing. Something struck Dickie Deer Mouse lightly on his back--something that made him jump.

He looked all around to see what had hit him. And there, on the snow beside him, lay a bud off the tree above him.

Then Dickie Deer Mouse understood what Mr. Pine Finch was about. He was eating the buds that clung to the tips of the branches.