WINTER NEIGHBORS 131 



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 landscape through narrow slits in his eyes. 

 For four successive winters now have I observed 

 him. As the twilight begins to deepen, he rises 

 up out of his cavity in the apple-tree, scarcely 

 faster than the moon rises from behind the hill, 

 and sits in the opening, completely 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. Probably my own 

 is the only eye that has ever penetrated his secret, 

 and mine never would have done so had I not 

 chanced on one occasion to see him leave his retreat 

 and make a raid upon a shrike that was impaling 

 a shrew-mouse upon a thorn in a neighboring tree, 

 and which I was watching. Failing to get the 

 mouse, the owl returned swiftly to his cavity, and 

 ever since, while going that way, I have been on 

 the lookout for him. Dozens of teams and foot- 

 passengers pass him late in the day, but he regards 

 them not, nor they him. AVhen I come along and 

 pause to salute him, he opens his eyes a little wider, 



