December 24 + 

Went out with L⁠⸺ to try to see the squirrels again. We could not find one and were just wondering if we should draw blank when L⁠⸺ noticed one clinging to the bark of a tree with a nut in its mouth. We gave it a good chase, but it escaped into the thickest part of the fir tree, still carrying the nut, and we gave up firing at it. Later on, L⁠⸺ got foolishly mischievous⁠—owing, I suppose, to our lack of sport⁠—and unhinged a gate which he carried two yards into a copse, and threw it on the ground. Just then, he saw the Squirrel again and jumped over the hedge into the copse, chasing it from tree to tree with his catty. Having lost it, he climbed a fir tree into a Squirrel’s drey at the top and sat there on the tree top, and I, below, was just going to lift the gate back when I looked up and saw a farmer watching me, menacing and silent. I promptly dropped the gate and fled. L⁠⸺ from his Squirrel’s drey, not knowing what had happened, called out to me about the nest⁠—that there was nothing in it. The man looked up and asked him who he was and who I was. L⁠⸺ would not say and would not come down. The farmer said he would come up. L⁠⸺ answered that if he did he would “gob” [i.e. spit] on him. Eventually L⁠⸺ climbed down and asked the farmer for a glass of cider. The latter gave him his boot and L⁠⸺ ran away. + 