Christmas in the Woods 
oak, where, in the thin snow, there were signs of 
something like a Christmas revel. The ground was 
sprinkled with acorn shells and trampled over with 
feet of several kinds and sizes, — quail, jay, and par- 
tridge feet ; rabbit, squirrel, and mice feet, all over 
the snow as the feast of acorns had gone on. Hun- 
dreds of the acorns were lying about, gnawed away 
at the cup end, where the shell was thinnest, many 
of them further broken and cleaned out by the birds. 
As I sat studying the signs in the snow, my eye 
caught a tiny trail leading out from the others 
straight away toward a broken pile of cord-wood. 
The tracks were planted one after the other, so 
directly in line as to seem like the prints of a single 
foot. “That ’s a weasel’s trail,” I said, “the death’s- 
head at this feast,” and followed it slowly to the 
wood. A shiver crept over me as I felt, even sooner 
than I saw, a pair of small sinister eyes fixed upon 
mine. The evil pointed head, heavy but alert, and 
with a suggestion of fierce strength out of all rela- 
tion to the slender body, was watching me from 
between the sticks of cord-wood. And so he had been 
watching the mice and birds and rabbits feasting 
under the tree! 
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