SILVER FIELDS 13 



apparition, bursting from the unsuspected, even 

 whiteness of the wood's soft carpet. In mild win- 

 ter weather he is aloft where his food is or is em- 

 broidering the yielding snow with his pretty foot- 

 prints. Here is some of his work done a week ago 

 now frayed out at the edges by the thaw, but it 

 has the mark of his own pattern, unmistakable, 

 even in this moonlight, very different from the 

 clumsy track of civilized poultry. It runs this way 

 and that, sometimes doubling on itself, and dis- 

 appears in the pallid gloom of an evergreen thicket, 

 where perhaps is his roosting-place. 



The floor of the woods is barred and netted with 

 an intricate maze of blue shadows, here and there 

 splashed with a great blot of shade where the 

 branches of a hemlock intercept the moonlight. 



How still it is ! Even the harps of the pines are 

 silent, and our ears are hungry for some other 

 sound than our own breathing and the crunch of 

 our footsteps. Imagine them suddenly filled with 

 the scream of a panther, stealthily creeping on 

 our track unsuspected, unseen, unheard, till he 

 splits the silence with his devilish yell. But they 

 tell us now that the panther is voiceless, and the 

 tales that thrilled our childhood with an ecstasy 

 of delightful terror, of our grandfathers being led 

 into the woods by the catamount's cry, like that 

 of a woman in distress, were myths our good 

 old grandfathers were liars or they were fools, 



