44 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



the great talons of the flying death clamped through 

 his soft fur. X is the signature of the owl-folk just 

 as K is of the hawk-kind. The size of the mark in 

 this case showed that the killer was one of the larger 

 owls. Later in the winter it might have been the grim 

 white Arctic owl, which sometimes comes down from 

 the frozen North in very cold weather. So early in 

 the season, however, it would be either the barred or 

 the great horned owl. 



I had hunted and camped and fished and tramped 

 all through this hill-country, and although I had 

 often heard at night the "Whoo, hoo-hoo, hoo, hoo" 

 of the great horned owl, which keeps always the 

 same pitch, I had never heard the call of the barred 

 owl, which ends in a falling cadence with a peculiar 

 deep, hollow note. So I decided that the maker 

 of the track was that fierce king of the deep woods, 

 whose head, with its ear-tufts or horns, may be seen 

 peering from his nest of sticks on the mountainside 

 in a high tree-top as early as February. On wings so 

 muffled by soft downy feathers as to be absolutely 

 noiseless, he had swooped down in the darkness, and 

 the tiny bubble of the shrew's life had broken into 

 the void. 



Beyond this point the road wound upward toward 

 the slope of the Cobble, a steep, sharp-pointed little 

 hill which suddenly thrust itself up from a circle of 

 broad meadows and flat woodlands. Time was when 

 all the Cobble was owned and ploughed clear to its 

 peak by Great-great-uncle Samuel, who had a hasty 

 disposition and a tremendous voice, and ploughed 



