68 WINTER NEIGHBORS. 



pressed, and every motion and look said, " Hands off, 

 at your peril." Finding this game did not work, he 

 soon began to " play 'possum " again. I put a cover 

 over my study wood-box and kept him captive for a 

 week. Look in upon him any time, night or day, and 

 he was apparently wraj^ped in the profoundest slum- 

 ber ; but the live mice which I put into his box from 

 time to time found his sleep was easily broken ; there 

 would be a sudden rustle in the box, a faint squeak, 

 and then silence. After a week of captivity I gave 

 him his freedom in the full sunshine : no trouble for 

 him to see which way and where to go. 



Just at dusk in the winter nights, I often hear his 

 soft hur-r-r-r^ very pleasing and bell-like. W^hat a 

 furtive, woody sound it is in the winter stillness, so 

 unlike the harsh scream of the hawk. But all the 

 ways of the owl are ways of softness and duskiness. 

 His wings are shod with silence, his plumage is edged 

 with down. 



Another owl neighbor of mine, with whom I pass 

 the time of day more frequently than with the last, 

 lives farther away. I pass his castle every night on 

 my way to the post-office, and in winter, if the hour 

 is late enough, am pretty sure to see him standing in 

 his doorway, surveying the passers-by and the land- 

 scape through narrow slits in his eyes. For four suc- 

 cessive winters now have I observed him. As the 

 twilight begins to deepen he rises out of his cavity 

 in the apple-tree, scarcely faster than the moon rises 

 from behind the hill, and sits in the opening, com- 

 pletely framed by its outlines of gray bark and dead 

 wood, and by his protective coloring virtually invisible 

 to every eye that does not know he is there. Prob' 

 ably my own is the only eye that has ever penetrated 



