A NIGHTLY PROWLEE. £55 



realize the fact that Nature has somehow or other 

 made a botch of it ; its expression is as grotesque as 

 that which characterizes Mr. Tenniel's Jabberwock in 

 Alice in Wonderland. No wonder then, when we 

 surprise him in the wood shed, his uncanny appear- 

 ance and sluggish movements give us a sort of men- 

 tal shock. He is like some old, 

 suspicious-looking tramp who ^-s£S$M!i'!<^'' 

 is always seen at dusk haunt- 

 ing the outskirts of the farm 

 buildings and scaring people 

 more by his looks than his 

 deeds. "When he appears in 



the daytime he is usually " Nature made a botch 



lodged high up on the limb 



of a tree ; but, as a rule, he remains within his den 

 somewhere beneath a neighboring rocky ledge during 

 the day, and issues forth only at night, when he may 

 be heard gnawing away at the foundations of the old 

 wood shed. He is a nocturnal prowler of the worst 

 kind, doing his deeds of darkness — never anything 

 worse than the gnawing of wood — ^in the immediate 

 vicinity of the farmhouse. But he sometimes has a 

 bad habit of girdling and thus ruining the forest 

 trees, especially the spruce. 



He has a most inordinate appetite for salt, and 

 will devour, in time, the whole floor of the wash shed 



