8o What Birds Have Done With Me 



business fellow and that leads to the fancy that 

 he may be a commercial traveler undergoing a 

 Ruffed Grouse re-incarnation. 



I remember very distinctly how the forest had 

 been adding tinsel to the fading colors of October 

 that somber Sunday morning when I rushed out 

 into the open, beyond the north edge of the North 

 Woods, for some explanation of the barking of 

 a dog and the sound of guns in a woods to the 

 west, a half a mile away. To many, what was 

 taking place would have been as difficult of inter- 

 pretation as a forgotten dream, but to me it was 

 all horribly distinct, to its last minutiae. The 

 Ruffed Grouse, this bird of mystery, whose drum- 

 ming has bewitched many a boy, is himself be- 

 witched by the barking of a dog under a tree, in 

 which he has taken refuge ; and a whole flock may 

 be shot by gunners in full sight, if they shoot the 

 birds on the lower branches first, without a single 

 one attempting to escape by flight. Bitterly pro- 

 testing, but so far away that I was as helpless as 

 a man in a dream, I could do nothing but curse, 

 for to me it was a foregone conclusion that these 

 fine sportsmen were, as leisurely as they might 

 pick apples, killing my Magician and his entire 

 family. Dog and followers (at least one of them 

 a mongrel), had disappeared before I reached 

 the corner of the fence where the murder, most 



