STONE WALLS 141 



on the hunt. He has forgotten us in the joy of this 

 cover, and we walk on beside the hedge, savouring its 

 wild border of flowers and hearing the rustle of its 

 leaves, till we enter the woods beyond, and presently 

 the dog rejoins us, subdued and domestic again, and 

 pokes an earthy muzzle into our hands. 



In Winter the New England hedgerow, stripped of its 

 undergrowth of weeds and wild flowers, shows more 

 plainly its naked spine of wall, and how interesting a 

 thing it is to follow when the snow is on the ground, for 

 it seems to be both haven and highway for innumerable 

 little creatures of the field and forest. The tracks of 

 weasels and squirrels lead into it; the rabbits often beat 

 down a hard little path beside it, a regular travelled road 

 between feeding grounds; the deer come to it for the 

 sumac; the juncos and other winter birds perch upon it, 

 or in the trees of the hedge, and flutter down to feed on 

 the weed seeds below. How permanent the wall looks, 

 too, rising gray and a little grim above the snow, like an 

 infantry trench imposed against the charge of the 

 cohorts of the snow and storm. Against the northern 

 face the charge has piled itself till it reaches the top of 

 the wall, but in vain it has gone no farther. Defeat 

 is written in the northward sloping drift, which packs 

 down harder and harder as Winter advances. On the 

 face of the open country those drifts are the last to dis- 

 appear in Spring. We walk through the soggy fields 

 late in March and see them everywhere, grown a little 



