wished to be an elf myself, with white feet and 

 a long tail, to creep in with them. 



I had some wood-choppers near the house on 

 the lookout for mice, but, though they often 

 marked the stumps where they had ' cut into 

 nests, the winter nearly passed before I secured 

 a single white-foot. Coming up from the pond 

 one day with a clerical friend, after a vain at- 

 tempt to skate, we lost our way in the knee- 

 deep snow, and while floundering about happened 

 upon a large dead pine that was new to me. It 

 was as stark, as naked, and as dead a tree, ap- 

 parently, as ever went to dust. The limbs were 

 broken off a foot or more from the trunk, and 

 stuck out like stumps of arms ; the top had been 

 drilled through and through by woodpeckers, 

 and now lay several feet away, buried in the 

 snow ; and the bole, like the limbs, was without 

 a shred of bark, but covered instead with a thin 

 coating of slime. This slime Was marked with 

 fine scratches, as would be made by the nails of 

 very small animals. I almost rudely interrupted 

 my learned friend's discussion of the documen- 

 tary hypothesis with the irreverent exclamation 

 that there were mice in the old corpse. The 

 [274] 



