IN DIM OCTOBER 



and then he was more plainly outlined. We 

 shouted at him and threw sticks at him, which 

 fell short of his retreat by many yards, but 

 he did not mind our efforts in the least. We 

 left him riding in the wind, his bushy tail 

 flaunted tauntingly down. 



Cattle grazing in the woods stared at us 

 as we went along, and some of the more curi- 

 ous of the cows attended us to the next fence. 

 The quality of curiosity is very strongly de- 

 veloped in the lower animals, and a colt, a 

 cow, or a pig will often follow a person 

 patiently for a long time merely on that ac- 

 count. As we crossed a marshy strip of 

 ground between two reaches of timber, a 

 lank heron scrambled up from the reeds and 

 started away, its awkward flight and hanging 

 legs making a quaint picture as it went. On 

 the edges of this wet spot there were a num- 

 ber of small frogs, and it did not need a 

 shrewd guess to warrant the assumption that 

 the heron had been a-frogging. The grass 

 here was still thick and green, showing the 

 mildness of the season so far, and only here 

 and there was it tinged with russet or tawny 

 splotches. There was not a sign of a dragon- 

 219 



