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through a stand of pine trees and on to a level grassy area, ignoring the rabbits which just looked up from their nibbling as he passed, showing no fear.  Blood crossed an overgrown meadow and entered a wood, climbing into the trees to avoid the dense rhododendron bushes that covered the ground and moving upwind all the time.
    It was in the swamp that he found a squirrel, asleep on the ground close to a pile of steaming leaves.  In killing and eating it he both satisfied and inflamed the squirrel-lust burning inside him.
    This place, he thought, is a sweetmart’s dream.  He searched for and found a perfect hiding place in a large, disused Man-cave, around which brambles and ivy grew, covering much of the stonework.  After entering the arched entrance where the sun-bleached, wooden door stood ajar, he picked his way over the droppings from the huge and unknown birds he had seen outside, who clearly slept perched on the backs of the mouldering pews.  At one end of the great cave he found a hanging rope, and climbed up it into the tower of St Mary’s Church, Brownsea, there to sleep and dream of squirrels, and yet more squirrels.
     
     
     

 
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    The Sun-day at the Blue Pool was nearly over.  Well into autumn, the daily flood of human Visitors had ceased, and the squirrels had enjoyed a day of feasting, chasing and hiding.  There has been a great deal of squirrelation, and now tired and happy animals were making their way to the Council Tree to hear Dandelion tell one of the stories of Acorn, the first squirrel in the world.  Squirrel-mates sat together and unmated youngsters sat with their friends, giggling and jostling for the best positions.
    It was here that the Portland squirrels found them, following the scent and the unfamiliar sounds of enjoyment that had drifted downwind towards the barn that afternoon.
     
    Crag, Rusty and Chip had waited in the boat for an hour before cautiously emerging from their hiding place and dropping over the side on to the barn floor.  Wriggling under the huge black wooden doors, they had blinked at the light, then clambered up the stone wall to where they felt safer, on the roof.
    From there Chip had looked about him ecstatically.  All around him were trees, trees of every size and shape – their colours ranged from a light green to a bright red, and the leaves had the strangest variety of patterns.  The Mainland scents had made his head reel. The salty sea-smell of the Portland air was gone, and in its place was an atmosphere of moist leaves, resin and autumn fungus, underlaid by the warm hay-smell from bales stacked at one end of the barn beneath them.  His nostrils had been assailed from every side and he had sniffed in pleasure and wonderment.  Rusty was doing the same, though Crag was more soberly scenting around and analysing odours.
    ‘There’s a group of squirrels upwind,’ he had said, ‘probably a mile away.  We’ll go there and maybe make contact.  There might be a worthy mate for you among them.’
    Chip had tried to hide his excitement, but a little trickle of urine had run down the roof-slates below him.
    Crag looked at him coldly.  ‘Follow me,’ he had said, and they had followed him back down the barn wall, before crossing the grass and climbing an ash tree.
    Chip had never known such a satisfying feeling in his life.  Instead of searching the cold rock for a hold, everywhere that he put his paws his claws sank sweetly into the bark and it held him just where he wanted to be.
    Crag had allowed them to practise climbing up and down the tree-trunk and running out along the branches.
    This must be what my claws were really made for, Chip had thought, as he scratched at the bark and smelt the essence of the tree, moist under his paws.
    Then it had been time to leap to the next tree.  This was another new and thrilling experience – to leap across space with nothing beneath you and to land in a leafy, twiggy mass, full of paw holds,