HUNTING THE SNOW 5 



ing on the stump, we were only sixty minutes away 

 from Boston Common by the automobile, driving 

 no faster than the law allows. So we were hunting, 

 not in a wilderness, but just outside our dooryard 

 and almost within the borders of a great city. 



And that is the first interesting fact of our morning 

 hunt. No one but a lover of the woods and a careful 

 walker on the snow would believe that here in the 

 midst of hayfields, in sight of the smoke of city fac- 

 tories, so many of the original wild wood-folk still 

 live and travel their night paths undisturbed. 



Still, this is a rather rough bit of country, broken, 

 ledgy, boulder-strewn, with swamps and woody hills 

 that alternate with small towns and cultivated fields 

 for many miles around. 



Here the animals are still at home, as this hole of 

 the skunk's under the stump proved. But there was 

 more proof. As we topped the ridge on the trail of 

 the skunk, we crossed another trail, made up of 

 bunches of four prints, two long and broad, two 

 small and roundish, spaced about a yard apart. 



A hundred times, the winter before, we had tried 

 that trail in the hope of finding the form or the bur- 

 row of its maker; but it crossed and turned and 

 doubled, and always led us into a tangle, out of which 

 we never got a clue. It was the track of the great 

 northern hare, as we knew, and we were relieved to 

 see the strong prints of our cunning neighbor again ; 

 for, what with the foxes and the hunters, we were 



