104

"BOTHERS AND IRRITATES THE PORCUPINE BY FLIPPING EARTH AT HIM" 118

"THEY WOULD TURN THEIR HEADS AND LISTEN INTENTLY" 145

"PLUNGING LIKE A GREAT ENGINE THROUGH UNDERBRUSH AND OVER
WINDFALLS" 152

"A MIGHTY SPRING OF HIS CROUCHING HAUNCHES FINISHED THE WORK" 183

What the Fawns Must Know

[Illustration]

To this day it is hard to understand how any eyes could have found them,
they were so perfectly hidden. I was following a little brook, which led
me by its singing to a deep dingle in the very heart of the big woods. A
great fallen tree lay across my path and made a bridge over the stream.
Now, bridges are for crossing; that is plain to even the least of the
wood folk; so I sat down on the mossy trunk to see who my neighbors
might be, and what little feet were passing on the King's highway.

Here, beside me, are claw marks in the moldy bark. Only a bear could
leave that deep, strong imprint. And see! there is where the moss
slipped and broke beneath his weight. A restless tramp is Mooween, who
scatters his records over forty miles of hillside on a summer day, when
his lazy mood happens to leave him for a season. Here, on the other
side, are the bronze-green petals of a spruce cone, chips from a
squirrel's workshop, scattered as if Meeko had brushed them hastily from
his yellow apron when he rushed out to see Mooween as he passed. There,
beyond, is a mink sign, plain as daylight, where Cheokhes sat down a
little while after his breakfast of frogs. And here, clinging to a stub,
touching my elbow as I sit with heels dangling idly over the lazy brook,
is a crinkly yellow hair, which tells me that Eleemos the Sly One, as
Simmo calls him, hates to wet his feet and so uses a fallen tree or a
stone in the brook for a bridge, like his brother fox of the
settlements.

Just in front of me was another fallen tree, lying alongside the stream
in such a way that no animal more dangerous than a roving mink would
ever think of using it. Under its roots, away from the brook, was a
hidden and roomy little house with hemlock tips drooping over its
doorway for a curtain. "A pretty place for a den," I thought; "for no
one could ever find you there." Then, as if to contradict me, a stray
sunbeam found the spot and sent curious bright glintings of sheen and
shadow dancing and playing under the fallen roots and trun