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    As soon as she was a squirrel again, Tess set out in search of the chipmunk. There was no sign of him in the immediate vicinity, so she scampered in the trees and hunted through the branches. But it soon became hard to keep her mind on what she was doing. All the other squirrels were frantic with activity, gathering the sunflower seeds she had scattered and bringing them home to their nests. For a while she resisted the temptation but in the end it proved too strong for her. She knew that she had brought those seeds and she knew that she had no need to make a winter store, but the instinct of a beast is strong, and soon Tess gave in and joined them.
    It filled her squirrel heart with joy to find food so plentiful. She filled her little cheeks until they bulged, and scurried back to her den time after time. All around her the other squirrels and the birds and the fieldmice were delighted by the unexpected windfall and Tess knew that her pocket money had never been better spent.
    Still there was no sign of the chipmunk. Every now and then Tess would remember him and take a leap up into the treetops to see if she could see him from up there. Then she would go back to work and forget him again.
    The day drew on and Tess had a fine heap of sunflower seeds in her den. She realised that it would soon be time to go home, and it was then that she thought, for the first time, of the silver ring. Hurriedly, she unloaded her cheeks and skipped across to the dark corner where she had left it. The stone was there, big and solid, and she searched around behind it, but there was no sign of the ring. Tess sat down and thought as hard as a squirrel can think, but both squirrel mind and Tess mind were sure that she had left the ring just there, behind the stone. She searched again and, when she still didn’t find it, she searched all the corners of the den, pushing aside the rotten leaves and twigs with her nimble squirrel fingers and feeling around where it was too dark to see. All at once she knew that the chipmunk had taken the ring. She stopped still and tried hard not to believe it but she knew that it was true. He had been such a friend, such a good friend, but now he had let her down, by taking her ring and disappearing. It filled her heart with such sadness that she didn’t want to become Tess again, because she knew that most of the creatures of the earth feel sadness from time to time, but only humans collect it like a store of nuts and feel the need to make it last.
    But she had to be herself again. There was homework to be done for tomorrow, and then another week of school before she could be here again, and free. She changed before she had time to think about it. With a human hand she reached behind the stone and felt around carefully, but there was no doubt now that the ring was gone. The little heap of sunflower seeds which had seemed so huge and satisfying to her squirrel self looked small, now, and pathetic. She brushed them into the palm of her hand and scattered them on the floor of the thicket as she set off for home.

CHAPTER FIVE
    M ONDAY DRAGGED ON, AS always. Tess had brought her rodent book to school, and read it secretly beneath her desk during maths and religion, but since the disappearance of the ring it had lost its appeal. There were no references to wild chipmunks in Ireland, or any suggestion that chipmunks had any interest in collecting baubles.
    The other girls in Tess’s class had come to accept that she preferred to keep herself to herself. She knew that it would be hard to make up all that lost ground if she ever changed her mind and wanted to make friends, but she had created an image for herself in the school and for the moment she was content to leave things as they were. But that evening, when a photocopied letter was handed to each girl to bring home to her parents, she rather wished that she was free to join in the celebrations that followed. The letter read:
‘Dear parent,
    Owing to the