66 WINTER NEIGHBORS. 
here and is out larking at night, she is not much of a 
bedfellow after all. It is probable that I disturb her 
slumbers more than she does mine. I think she is 
some support to me under there —a silent wild-eyed 
witness and backer; a type of the gentle and harm. 
less in savage nature. She has no sagacity to give me 
or lend me, but that soft, nimble foot of hers, and 
that touch as of cotton wherever she goes, are worthy 
of emulation. I think I can feel her good-will through 
the floor, and I hope she can mine. When I have a 
happy thought I imagine her ears twitch, especially 
when I think of the sweet apple I will place by her 
doorway at night. I wonder if that fox chanced 
to catch a glimpse of her the other night when he 
stealthily leaped over the fence near by and walked 
along between the study and the house? How clearly 
one could read that it was not a little dog that had 
passed there. There was something furtive in the 
track ; it shied off away from the house and around it, 
as if eying it suspiciously ; and then it had the caution 
and deliberation of the fox —bold, bold, but not too 
bold; wariness was in every footprint. If it had been 
a little dog that had chanced to wander that way, 
when he crossed my path he would have followed it 
up to the barn and have gone smelling around for 
a bone; but this sharp, cautious track held straight 
across all others, keeping five or six rods from the 
house, up the hill, across the highway towards a 
neighboring farmstead, with its nose in the air and its 
eye and ear alert, so to speak. 
A winter neighbor of mine in whom I am inter. 
ested, and who perhaps lends me his support after his 
kind, is a little red owl, whose retreat is in the heart 
of an old apple-tree just over the fence. Where he 
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