THE PASTURE IN NOVEMBER 259 



of the two forces. In the one I know best, as in 

 most of our New England pastures, the cattle 

 have long- ceased to browse and men come only 

 because nature draws them thither. The wild 

 creatures seem to sense this and to lose much of 

 their woodland fear of me. Last night, in the 

 first promise of the gray of dawn a fox barked 

 at my camp door, scratching at the threshold as 

 if he were the house dog, asking to be let in out 

 of the cold and lie at the fire. I heard the barn- 

 yard roosters faintly crowing in the distance, but 

 a little screech owl called clearly on a limb just 

 beyond the ridge-pole. The roosters' cry had in 

 it nothing but self-gratulatory bombast, I kno.w 

 town-dwarfed men that talk like that. The owl's 

 call was to his mate, as was the roosters', but 

 there was no bombast in its plaint, just a mourn- 

 fulness of endearment, a touch of tears at the 

 silence and delay. After a little the other came 

 and all the mournfulness went out of the tone. 

 Instead there was cooing in its quality as the 

 two talked reassuringly a moment. The first call 

 is of six or eight notes that start high and tremulo 

 down the owl's diatonic scale to a low one that has 

 a round, flute-like quality though the whole 

 sounds as if it were made somewhere else and 



