How Animals Talk 



go away. Before sunset he headed off toward the 

 mountain, going early to roost with all his kind. 



Dawn found me back on the old road, as much 

 to test the matter of vision as to put an end to the 

 game-destroyer. As a precaution I had changed 

 clothes, and now shifted position, avoiding the log 

 because the wary bird would surely take a look 

 at it before coming down. My stand was a 

 weathered stump beside the road, against which 

 I sat on a carpet of moss, without concealment of 

 any kind. At a short distance lay the grouse, a 

 poor crumpled thing, just as he had wilted under 

 the hawk's swoop. 



Thus a half-hour or more passed comfortably. 

 A gorgeous cock-partridge sauntered into the open, 

 saw me when I nodded to him, and went slowly off 

 with that graceful, balancing motion which a 

 grouse affects when he is well satisfied with him- 

 self. Then, as the sun rose, there was a swift- 

 moving shadow, a rustle of pinions ; the goshawk 

 swept down the road in front of me and lit beside 

 his game. He was a handsome bandit, in full 

 adult plumage; his gray breast was penciled in 

 shadowy lines, while his back was a foggy blue, as 

 if in his northern home he had caught the sheen of 

 the heavens above and of rippling waters beneath 

 his flight. His folded wings stood out squarely 

 from his shoulders with an impression of power, 



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