; 



82 WINTER 



^ birds and beasts to round out their experience and 

 make them keen and strong. 



Happily, the pain and suffering in nature are .* 

 largely hidden from us. Wild things when stricken 

 " turn their faces to the wall," retreat, slink silently ^ 

 away out of sight to be alone. They do not wish us < 

 to know. But we do know, and we need to know, if 

 we would enter into their lives as a sharer in them ; } ' 



,and if we would enter into and understand the 



, larger, wider, deeper life of which they, and we, and 

 all things, are a part. 



You must pause with me above this little bundle 



.of bones until I tell you their story. 



I had recognized the bones at once as the skele- 

 ton of a muskrat. But it was something peculiar 

 in the way they lay that had caused me to pause. 

 . They seemed outstretched, as if composed by gentle 

 (hands, the hands of sleep. They had not been flung 

 down. The delicate ribs had fallen in, but not a bone 



* was broken nor displaced, not one showed the splin- 



* ter of shot, or the crack that might have been made 

 ) by a steel trap. No violence had been done them. 



They had been touched by nothing rougher than 

 ^the snow. Out into the hidden runway they had 

 ^ crept. Death had passed by them here ; but no one 



else in all the winter months. 



The creature had died a " natural " death. It 

 ]had starved, while a hundred acres of plenty lay 



": 



