SNOW STORIES 45 
with two yoke of oxen which required a considerable 
amount of conversation. Tradition has it that, when 
discoursing to them, he could be heard in four differ- 
ent towns. That was more than one hundred years 
ago, and the Cobble has been untouched by plough or 
harrow since, and to-day is wooded to the very top. 
Just ahead of me on the wood-road showed a deep 
track which only in recent years has been seen in 
Connecticut. In my boyhood a deer-track was as 
unknown as that of a wolf, and the wolves have been 
gone for at least a century. Within the last ten years 
the deer have come back. Last summer I met two 
on the roads with the cows, and later saw seven make 
an unappreciated visit to my neighbor’s garden, 
where they seemed to approve highly of her lettuce. 
Straight up the hillside ran the line of deeply stamped 
little hoof-marks. The trail looks like a sheep’s; but 
the front of each track ends in two beautifully curved 
sharp points, while the track of a sheep is straighter 
and blunter. Nor could any sheep negotiate that 
magnificent bound over the five-foot rail fence. From 
take-off to where the four small hoofs landed together 
on the other side was a good twenty feet. 
On the other side of the fence the snow had drifted 
over a patch of sweet fern by the edge of the wood- 
road in a low hummock. As I plodded along, I hap- 
pened to strike this with my foot. There was a tre- 
mendous whirring noise, the snow exploded all over 
me, and out burst a magnificent cock partridge, as 
we call the ruffed grouse in New England, and 
whizzed away among the laurels like a lyddite shell. 
