HUNTING THE SNOW 185 



of mice living under the slashing pile, who for 

 some good reason kept their stores here in the 

 recesses of this ancient red oak. Or was this 

 some squirrel's barn being pilfered by the mice, 

 as my barn is the year round ? It was not all 

 plain. But this question, this constant riddle of 

 the woods, — small, indeed, in the case of the 

 mouse, and involving no great fate in its solu- 

 tion, — is part of our constant joy in the woods. 

 Life is always new, always strange, always fasci- 

 nating. 



It has all been studied and classified accord- 

 ing to species. Any one knowing the woods at 

 all would know that these were mice-tracks, 

 the tracks of the white-footed mouse, even, and 

 not the tracks of the jumping mouse, the house 

 mouse, or the meadow mouse. But what is the 

 whole small story of these prints? What pur- 

 pose, intention, feeling do they spell ? What and 

 why ? — a hundred times ! 



But the scientific books are dumb. Indeed, 

 they do not consider such questions worth an- 

 swering, just as under the species Mus they make 

 no record of the fact that 



The present only toucheth thee. 



