of woods, whither I had seen the last
laggard of the brood vanish like a brown streak, and began to look for
them carefully. After a time I found one. He was crouched flat on a
dead oak leaf, just under my nose, his color hiding him wonderfully.
Something glistened in a tangle of dark roots. It was an eye, and
presently I could make out a little head there. That was all I could
find of the family, though a dozen more were close beside me, under the
leaves mostly. As I backed away I put my hand on another before seeing
him, and barely saved myself from hurting the little sly-boots, who
never stirred a muscle, not even when I took away the leaf that covered
him and put it back again softly.

Across the pathway was a thick scrub oak, under which I sat down to
watch. Ten long minutes passed, with nothing stirring, before Mother
Grouse came stealing back. She clucked once--"Careful!" it seemed to
say; and not a leaf stirred. She clucked again--did the ground open?
There they were, a dozen or more of them, springing up from nowhere and
scurrying with a thousand cheepings to tell her all about it. So she
gathered them all close about her, and they vanished into the friendly
shadows.

It was curious how jealously the old beech partridge watched over the
solitudes where these interesting little families roamed. Though he
seemed to care nothing about them, and was never seen near one of his
families, he suffered no other cock partridge to come into his woods,
or even to drum within hearing. In the winter he shared the southern
pasture peaceably with twenty other grouse; and on certain days you
might, by much creeping, surprise a whole company of them on a sunny
southern slope, strutting and gliding, in and out and round about, with
spread tails and drooping wings, going through all the movements of a
grouse minuet. Once, in Indian summer, I crept up to twelve or fifteen
of the splendid birds, who were going through their curious performance
in a little opening among the berry bushes; and in the midst of
them-more vain, more resplendent, strutting more proudly and clucking
more arrogantly than any other--was the old beech partridge.

But when the spring came, and the long rolling drum-calls began to throb
through the budding woods, he retired to his middle range on the ridge,
and marched from one end to the other, driving every other cock grouse
out of hearing, and drubbing him soundly if he dared resist. Then, after
a triumph