The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-10-22
BURGESS BED-
 TIME STORIES
clIATTEREH MAKES A FIND
By THORNTON w. BURGESS

C1iATTERER MAKES FIND Be not dixhOnest cen in thought, But always honest as you ought.
 Old Mother Nature.
 Chatterer the Red Squirrel was get ting his share of the little, swee, brown three sided beechnuts. What ever faelts Chatterer may have, IazI- ness is not one of them He isn't afraid of woEk. None of the Squirrels are. And he is thrifty. None of the Squirrel cousins Is more thirty than he. II he has to go hungry in winter It won't be because he doesn do his very best to provide against such a possibility.
 Now Chatterer doesn't believe In putting alr his supplies in one place lie always has several storehousess Then if anything happens to one ne will still be sure Of not hav4ng to go hungry. So after he had filled two or three secret storehouses he stopped hunting the little brown nuts long enough to look for another place in which to hide them. lie wanted A place close by where he could hide them only until the harvest was over Then he would take them away to one of his private storehouses nearer his home. It would take too long to go way over there every time he got mouthtul. There were too many looking for those sweet little nuts.
 You see Chatterer was a wee bit greedy He wanted all he could get
 So he seurried about looking for d place to hide some more nuts and presently he discovered an old stump that looked as if it ought to have d hole between the roots. Between two of the roots were some dead leaves. Chatterer pulled them over to see It there might not be a little hole underneath. And when he did that he gave a little squeal of surprise. There was hole there, or at least there had been one. But it had been filled to the very top, and it had been filled with those delicious little beechnuts!
 Chatterer knew at once that he had found a storehouse of one of his 1 cousins. He looked about hastily. No one was near. No one saw him there. He chuckled. Findings keep ings," said he. and chuckled again.
 Now. of course, he knew that he had no real right to those nuts. He knew that they belonged to either Happy Jack the Gray Squirrel >or Rusty the Fox Squirrel. But this didn't bother him at all. Chatterer, am sorry to say, is not at all hon. est. His first thought was to take them away at once Then he de- l cided not to. He knew that whoever owned them would leave them there until after the harvest was over.
 The thing for me to do," said he to himself, "Is to leave these alone l for the present and find another place to hide my own. Then l can get my share of those on the ground and later take these away" l So Chatterer found a new hiding l place and went to work as busily as 1 ever, but all the time he managed to keep watch of that find. He want ed to make sure whose storehouse it was. When he left 1t he put the 1 leaves back just as they were before. so that no one would suspect he had l been there. And as he scurried about this way and that way looking tor under the leaves on the ground he chuckled.
 1 Some one is going to be surprised one of these days. Yes. sir; some one | Is going to be surprised when he l finds an empty storehouse." And not once did he feel the least bit ashamed over what he was planning to do. Findings keepiRgs," he kept saying over and over to himself. Findings keepings."
 Copyright. 1921, by T. ". 8urgess). The next story: Some One Was Surprised"