WINTER NEIGHBORS 



chanced to catch a glimpse of her the other 

 night when he stealthily leaped over the 

 fence near by and walked along between 

 the study and the house ? How clearly 

 one could read that it was not a little dog 

 that had passed there ! There was some- 

 thing furtive in the track ; it shied off away 

 from the house and around it, as if eying it 

 suspiciously; and then it had the caution 

 and deliberation of the fox, — bold, bold, 

 but not too bold ; wariness was in every 

 footprint. If it had been a little dog that 

 had chanced to wander that way,, when he 

 crossed my path he would have followed it 

 up to the barn and have gone smelling 

 around for a bone ; but this sharp, cautious 

 track held straight across all others, keep- 

 ing five or six rods from the house, up the 

 hill, across the highway toward a neighbor- 

 ing farmstead, with its nose in the air, and 

 its eye and ear alert, so to speak. 



A winter neighbor of mine, in whom I 

 am interested, and who perhaps lends me 

 his support after his kind, is a little red 

 owl, whose retreat is in the heart of an old 

 apple-tree just over the fence. Where he 

 keeps himself in spring and summer, I do 

 not know, but late every fall, and at inter- 

 im 



