FUN AND FINANCE OF BOYHOOD 17 



partridge through the woods and setting across 

 them the old-fashioned twitchup snares. 



Sometimes other things than partridges got 

 in my snares. Occasionally a rabbit was caught, 

 and once I found my own little dog in one. His 

 weight would have broken the snare but for the 

 elasticity of the sapling to which it was fastened. 

 I often thought of him in later years, when play- 

 ing a big trout with a fly-rod and a line that 

 wouldn't have borne his weight. 



When winter came I waded through the snow 

 in the same woods and studied the many tracks, 

 from the tiny footprints of a mouse, squirrel, or 

 cottontail rabbit to the trail of a great white 

 hare, so big that a cow might have made it. In 

 the most beaten path I placed a box trap of my 

 own construction, but of orthodox make, of the 

 pattern known to boys since the days of Nimrod. 

 It was baited with a slice of apple or part of 

 an ear of corn, and dawn often found me peer- 

 ing through the gloom beneath the pines to see 

 if the trap were sprung. If it were, I lifted the 

 door of the trap just a little, and with my eyes 



