142 WINTER NEIGHBORS. 



For my part, my nearest approach to a strange 

 bedfellow is the little gray rabbit that has taken up 

 her abode under my study floor. As she spends the 

 day here and is out larking at night, she is riot much 

 of a bedfellow, after all. It is probable that I dis- 

 turb her slumbers more than she does mine. I think 

 she is some support to me under there a silent, 

 wide-eyed witness and backer ; a type of the gentle 

 and harmless in savage nature. She hag 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 foot- 

 print. 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 smell- 

 ing around for a bone ; but this sharp, cautious track 

 held straight across all others, keeping five or six rods 



