Fox-Himtiug in New England. 91 



How still the woods are ! The hounds are out of hearing a mile 

 away. No breeze sighs through the pines or stirs the fallen leaves. 

 The trickle of the brook, the penny-trumpet of a nut-hatch, the light 

 hammering of a downy woodpecker are the only sounds the strained 

 ear catches. All about rise the gray tree-trunks ; overhead, against 

 the blue-gray sky, is spread their net of branches, with here and there 

 a tuft of russet and golden and scarlet leaves caught in its meshes. 

 At your feet, on every side, lie the fading and faded leaves, but 

 bearing still a hundred hues ; and through them rise tufts of green 

 fern, brown stems of infant trees and withered plants ; frost-black- 

 ened beech-drops, spikes of the dull azure berries of the blue cohosh, 

 and milk-white ones, crimson-stemmed, of the white cohosh ; scarlet 

 clusters of wild turnip berries ; pale asters and slender golden-rod, 

 but all so harmoniously blended that no one object stands forth con- 

 spicuously. So kindly does Nature screen her children, that in this 

 pervading gray and russet, beast and bird, blossom and gaudy leaf, 

 may lurk unnoticed almost at your feet. The rising sun begins to 

 glorify the tree-tops. And now, a red squirrel startles you, rustling 

 noisily through the leaves. He scrambles up a tree, and, with nervous 

 twitches of feet and tail, snickers and scolds till you feel almost 

 wicked enough to end his clatter with a charge of shot. A blue- 

 jay has spied you and comes to upbraid you with his discordant 

 voice. A party of chickadees draw nigh, flitting close about and 

 pecking the lichened trunks and branches almost within arm's-length, 

 satisfying curiosity and hunger together. 



At last, above the voices of these garrulous visitors, your ear 

 discerns the baying of the hounds, faint and far away, swelling, 

 dying, swelling, but surely drawing nearer. Louder rings the 

 " musical confusion of hounds and echo in conjunction," as the dogs 

 break over the hill-top. Now, eyes and ears, look and listen your 

 sharpest. Bring the butt of your gun to your shoulder and be 

 motionless and noiseless as death, for if at two gun-shots off Rey- 

 nard sees even the movement of a hand or a turn of the head, he 

 will put a tree-trunk between you and him, and vanish altogether 

 and "leave you there lamenting." 



Is that the patter of feet in the dry leaves, or did the sleeping 

 air awake enough to stir them ? Is that the fox ? Pshaw ! no — 

 only a red squirrel scurrying along a fallen tree. Is that quick, 



