66 WINTER NEIGHBORS. 



here and is out larking at night, she is not much of a 

 bedfellow after all. It is probable that I disturb her 

 slumbers more than she does mine. I think she is 

 some support to me under there — a silent wild-eyed 

 witness and backer ; a type of the gentle and harm* 

 less in savage nature. She has no sagacity to give me 

 or- lend me, but that soft, nimble foot of hers, anc| 

 that touch as of cotton wherever she goes, are worthy 

 of emulation. I think I can feel her good-will through 

 the floor, and I hope she can mine. When I have 3 

 happy thought I imagine her ears twitch, especially 

 when I think of the sweet apple I will place by hei 

 doorway at night. I wonder if that fox chanced 

 to catch a glimpse of her the other night when he 

 stealthily leaped over the fence near by and walked 

 along between the study and the house? How clearly 

 one could read that it was not a little dog that had 

 passed there. There was something furtive in the 

 track ; it shied off away from the house and around it, 

 as if eying it suspiciously ; and then it had the caution 

 and deliberation of the fox — bold, bold, but not too 

 bold ; wariness was in every footprint. If it had been 

 a little dog that had chanced to wander that way, 

 when he crossed my path lie would have followed it 

 up to the barn and have gone smelling around fop 

 a bone ; but this sharp, cautious track held straight 

 across all others, keeping five or six rods from the 

 house, up the hill, across the highway towards a 

 neighboring farmstead, with its nose in the air and it? 

 eye and ear alert, so to speak. 



A winter neighbor of mine in whom 1 am inter- 

 ested, and who perhaps lends me his support after his 

 kind, is a little red owl, whose retreat is in the heart 

 \o£ an old apple-tree just over the fence. Where he 



