18 OUT WITH THE BIRDS 



on the plains and no landscape is too bleak and 

 wind-swept for him. One does not need to fol- 

 low his shapely, pattern tracks far to note that 

 he is not such a pruning-knife as the bush hare, 

 but that he prefers rather to nibble the grasses 

 and weeds. He does, however, consume a good 

 quantity of twigs. Here he has visited the silver 

 berry thicket on the knoll and cut off a number 

 of twigs, and next he has called at the dwarfish, 

 half-buried, snow-berry clumps, and nibbled off 

 the bunches of sweetish, frost-ripened berries. 



Here — but slow, twenty yards away on the 

 south side of a scrubby knoll, is something that 

 might be Jack himself. It is just a small 

 rounded mound, even whiter than the snow, and 

 a hundred snow-shoers might pass it, but the 

 two round black eyes and the black ear-tips, 

 pulled down tight along his back, give him 

 away. He knows, too, that he has been spotted, 

 and having no faith in a visitor with such large 

 feet, he makes off with that flip-skip-run com- 

 bination gait which none but a Mark Twain can 

 fittingly describe. And the best that the kodak 

 can do is to picture the oval, half-melted form 

 where he has been sitting since morning. 



Next is found the trail of one of Jack's great- 



