H FOLLOWING 
THE DEER 
116 
WINTER 1TRAILS 
the hard-packed leaves had become as 
innocent of footmarks as the beach 
where plover feed when a great 
wave has chased them away. On 
the twentieth of December a change 
came. Outside the snow fell heavily, 
two days and a night; inside books 
were packed away, professors said 
Merry Christmas, and students were 
scattering, like a bevy of flushed 
quail at twilight, to all points of the 
compass for the holidays. The after- 
noon of the twenty-first found me 
again in my room under the eaves 
of the old farmhouse. 
Before dark I had taken a wide run 
over the hills and through the woods 
the place of my summer camp. 
