WINTER PICTURES 217 



or eight feet up. At the upper one, which is only 

 just the size of a mouse, a squirrel has been trying 

 to break in. He has cut and chiseled the solid 

 wood to the depth of nearly an inch, and his chips 

 strew the snow all about. He knows what is in 

 there, and the mice know that he knows; hence 

 their apparent consternation. They have rushed 

 wildly about over the snow, and, I doubt not, have 

 given the piratical red squirrel a piece of their 

 minds. A few yards away the mice have a hole 

 down into the snow, which perhaps leads to some 

 snug den under the ground. Hither they may have 

 been slyly removing their stores while the squirrel 

 was at work with his back turned. One more 

 night and he will effect an entrance : what a good 

 joke upon him if he finds the cavity empty ! These 

 native mice are very provident, and, I imagine, 

 have to take many precautions to prevent their 

 winter stores being plundered by the squirrels, who 

 live, as it were, from hand to mouth. 



We see several fresh fox-tracks, and wish for the 

 hound, but 'there are no tidings of him. After 

 half an hour's floundering and cautiously picking 

 our way through the woods, we emerge into a 

 cleared field that stretches up from the valley below, 

 and just laps over the back of the mountain. It is 

 a broad belt of white that drops down and down 

 till it joins other fields that sweep along the base of 

 the mountain, a mile away. To the east, through 

 a deep defile in the mountains, a landscape in an 

 adjoining county lifts itself up, like a bank of white 

 and gray clouds. 



