SNOW STORIES 45 



with two yoke of oxen which required a considerable 

 amount of conversation. Tradition has it that, when 

 discoursing to them, he could be heard in four differ- 

 ent towns. That was more than one hundred years 

 ago, and the Cobble has been untouched by plough or 

 harrow since, and to-day is wooded to the very top. 



Just ahead of me on the wood-road showed a deep 

 track which only in recent years has been seen in 

 Connecticut. In my boyhood a deer- track was as 

 unknown as that of a wolf, and the wolves have been 

 gone for at least a century. Within the last ten years 

 the deer have come back. Last summer I met two 

 on the roads with the cows, and later saw seven make 

 an unappreciated visit to my neighbor's garden, 

 where they seemed to approve highly of her lettuce. 

 Straight up the hillside ran the line of deeply stamped 

 little hoof -marks. The trail looks like a sheep's; but 

 the front of each track ends in two beautifully curved 

 sharp points, while the track of a sheep is straighter 

 and blunter. Nor could any sheep negotiate that 

 magnificent bound over the five-foot rail fence. From 

 take-off to where the four small hoofs landed together 

 on the other side was a good twenty feet. 



On the other side of the fence the snow had drifted 

 over a patch of sweet fern by the edge of the wood- 

 road in a low hummock. As I plodded along, I hap- 

 pened to strike this with my foot. There was a tre- 

 mendous whirring noise, the snow exploded all over 

 me, and out burst a magnificent cock partridge, as 

 we call the ruffed grouse in New England, and 

 whizzed away among the laurels like a lyddite shell. 



