WINTER NEIGHBORS 



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 some- 

 thing 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 

 footprint. 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 smelling 

 around for a bone ; but this sharp, cautious 

 track held straight across all others, keep- 

 ing five or six rods from the house, up the 

 hill, across the highway toward a neighbor- 

 ing farmstead, with its nose in the air, and 

 its eye and ear alert, so to speak. 



A winter neighbor of mine, in whom I 

 am interested, and who perhaps lends me 

 his support after his kind, is a little red 

 owl, whose retreat is in the heart of an old 

 apple-tree just over the fence. Where he 

 keeps himself in spring and summer, I do 

 not know, but late every fall, and at inter- 



