186 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



But that is a poem. Burns discovered that — 

 Burns, the farmer! The woods and fields are 

 poem-full, and it is largely because we do not 

 know, and never can know, just all that the tiny 

 snow-prints of a wood-mouse may mean, nor 

 understand just what 



root and all, and all in all, 



the humblest flower is. 



The pop-corn cobs, however, were a known 

 quantity, a tangible fact, and falling in with a 

 gray squirrel's track not far from the red oak, we 

 went on, our game-bag heavier, our hearts lighter 

 at the thought that we, by the sweat of our brow, 

 had contributed a few ears of corn to the com- 

 fort of this snowy winter world. 



The squirrel's track wound up and down the 

 hillside, wove in and out and round and round, 

 hitting every possible tree, as if the only road for 

 a squirrel was one that looped and doubled and 

 tied up every stump and zigzagged into every tree 

 trunk in the woods. 



But all this maze was no ordinary journey. 

 The squirrel had not run this coil of a road for 

 breakfast, because when he travels, say, for dis- 

 tant nuts, he goes as directly as you go to your 



