€i}t &a^ of t^t &Cinb 



the shepherd dog barking at him from my neigh- 

 bor's yard below. 



This run up the ridge to the pasture is the high- 

 way from west to east. When the pack is baying off 

 to the eastward, and coming nearer, I can stand by 

 the fence between the yard and my neighbor's pasture 

 with the certainty of seeing the fox once in half a 

 dozen times, and the dogs almost every time, for the 

 fox breaks from the sprout land back of the henyard, 

 crosses the neighboring pasture, jumps the wall, and 

 runs my driveway to the public road and on to the 

 woods beyond the river. 



All of this sounds very wild, indeed, and so it is — 

 at night; in the daylight it is all tame enough. Only 

 the patient watcher knows what wild feet run these 

 open roads; only he who knows the lay of every 

 foot of this rocky, pastured land knows that these 

 winding cow paths lead past the barnyards on into 

 the ledges and into dens. And no one can find all of 

 this out in a single June. 



Many of our happiest glimpses of nature are ac- 

 cidental. We stumble upon things, yet it happens 

 usually when we are trying to find something. The 

 finding of a hummingbird's nest is always an acci- 



208 



