132 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



the most curious and interesting track of all, exactly like 

 the print of a tiny baby's shrivelled foot. Mr. Coon 

 hibernates, of course, but Spring is in the air long before 

 the snow melts in the mountain woods, and he often 

 comes forth in time to leave his quaint f ootprints on the 

 remnants of a drift. Coon-hunts at night, with dogs, 

 lanterns, and guns, are sometimes exciting and always 

 exhausting, but they never yield me quite the satisfac- 

 tion of finding that little snow-print record not two 

 miles from my home, of searching in muddy spots near 

 by for further tracks, of living in fancy the scene of the 

 night before the still, dark woods, just budding with 

 Spring, the sleepy boom of the hours from the distant 

 steeple in the village, the sharp-nosed little face emerg- 

 ing from a rotten tree trunk, then the scramble down, 

 with the soft thud, perhaps, of a piece of dislodged bark, 

 and the midnight hunting. 



Even our tamest woods and fields, even our own 

 suburban backyards, shelter their wild life. We have 

 neighbours in the night, though we know it not. They 

 leave their records behind them in the snow for seeing 

 eyes, and to read those records aright is to read a little 

 deeper into the book of Nature. The man who goes to 

 walk with his nose to the snow is sometimes thought a 

 crank, sometimes a bore. Perhaps he is both. But 

 you can never make him believe it; or, we might better 

 say, you cannot make him care if he is! It is not you 

 but his wild neighbours he is thinking of. 



