34 WINTER 



him, and where no crow will dare come to tear his 

 house to pieces. 



There he will swing in the winter gales with the 

 snow swirling around and beneath him ; there he 

 will dream through the rain and the slanting sleet 

 when his high sapling stairway is coated with ice 

 and impossible for him to climb ; there he will live, 

 and whenever I thump with the tongs at his outer 

 gate, up there in the little round doorway will ap- 

 pear his head his eyes, I should say, for he looks 

 all eyes up there, so large, so black, so innocent, so 

 inquiring are they, so near to rolling off down the 

 tip of his nose with sheer surprise. 



I shall have many a cheering glimpse of White- 

 Foot, many a comforting thought of him, out there, 

 his thatch snow-covered, his thick-walled nest in the 

 slender hickory riding the winter seas that sweep 

 the hilltop, as safe as the ships anchored yonder in 

 the landlocked harbor; and he will be much more 

 comforting to me out there than here in the house 

 with me; for, strangely enough, while White-Foot 

 never seems to join the common mice in the barn, 

 never a winter goes by without one or more of his 

 kind coming into the house for the cold weather. 



This would be very pleasant if they could keep 

 out of the pop-corn and the nuts and the apples and 

 the linen-drawers. But only recently one got into 

 the linen in the china-closet, and chewed together the 

 loveliest damask nest that any being ever slept in. 



