16 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 



On this March day we shall be admitted by my y 

 owls. They take possession late in winter and oc- / 

 cupy the tree, with some curious fellow tenants, un- [ , 

 til early summer. I can count upon these small 

 screech owls by February, - the forlorn month, the 

 seasonless, hopeless, lifeless month of the year, but 

 for its owls, its thaws, its lengthening days, its 

 cackling pullets, its possible bluebirds, and its being i 

 the year's end! At least the ancients called Feb-r 

 ruary, not December, the year's end, maintaining, \ \ 

 with some sense, that the making of the world was f 

 / begun in March, that is, with the spring. The owls 

 do not, like the swallows, bring the spring, but they / 

 nevertheless help winter with most seemly haste into f 

 an early grave. 



If, as the dusk comes down, I cannot go over to ./ 

 the tree, I will go to my window and watch. I can- 

 not see him, the grim-beaked baron with his hooked ( 

 talons, his ghostly wings, his night-seeing eyes, but 

 I know that he has come to his window in the apple- ( 

 tree turret yonder against the darkening sky, and \ 

 that he watches with me. I cannot see him swoop i 

 downward over the ditches, nor see him quarter the \ 

 meadow, beating, dangling, dropping between the) jl 

 flattened tussocks; nor can I hear him, as, back on 

 the silent shadows, he slants upward again to his\ 

 tower. Mine are human eyes, human ears. Even j 

 the quick-eared meadow mouse did not hear until 

 the long talons closed and it was too late. 







