SNOW STORIES 55 
apart and the back ones near apart. Occasionally, 
instead of four holes, five would show in the snow, 
and the position of the marks was reversed. A little 
farther on, and the trail changed. The two near- 
apart tracks were now in a perpendicular line instead 
of side by side. To Chingachgook, or Deerslayer, 
or Daniel Boone, or any other well-known tracker, 
the trail would have, of course, been an open book. 
But it had taken an amateur trailer like myself some 
years to be able to read that snow record aright. 
The trail was that of a cottontail rabbit. At first 
he had been hopping contentedly along, with an eye 
open for anything eatable in the line of winter 
vegetables. The far-apart tracks were the paw-marks 
of the big hind-legs, which came in front of the marks 
made by the fore-paws as they touched the ground 
at every hop. The five marks were where he had sat 
down to look around. The fifth mark was the mark 
of his stubby tail, and when he stopped, the little 
fore-paws made the near-apart marks in front of 
the far-apart marks of his hind-feet, instead of be- 
hind them as when he hopped. 
Suddenly the rabbit detected something alarming 
coming from behind, for the sedate hops changed 
into startled bounds. A little farther on the trail 
said that the rabbit had caught sight of its pursuer 
as it ran; for a rabbit by the position of its eyes sees 
backward and forward equally well. The tracks 
showed a frantic burst of speed. In an effort to get 
every possible bit of leverage, the fore-legs were 
twisted so that they struck the ground one behind 
