.

V

Food grew scarce as winter wore on. Redruff clung to the old ravine and
the piney sides of Taylor's Hill, but every month brought its food and
its foes. The Mad Moon brought madness, solitude, and grapes; the Snow
Moon came with rosehips; and the Stormy Moon brought browse of birch and
silver storms that sheathed the woods in ice, and made it hard to keep
one's perch while pulling off the frozen buds. Redruff's beak grew
terribly worn with the work, so that even when closed there was still an
opening through behind the hook. But nature had prepared him for the
slippery footing; his toes, so slim and trim in September, had sprouted
rows of sharp, horny points, and these grew with the growing cold, till
the first snow had found him fully equipped with snowshoes and
ice-creepers. The cold weather had driven away most of the hawks and
owls, and made it impossible for his four-footed enemies to approach
unseen, so that things were nearly balanced.

His flight in search of food had daily led him farther on, till he had
discovered and explored the Rosedale Creek, with its banks of
silver-birch, and Castle Frank, with its grapes and rowan berries, as
well as Chester woods, where amelanchier and Virginia-creeper swung
their fruit-bunches, and checkerberries glowed beneath the snow.

He soon found out that for some strange reason men with guns did not go
within the high fence of Castle-Frank. So among these scenes he lived
his life, learning new places, new foods, and grew wiser and more
beautiful every day.

He was quite alone so far as kindred were concerned, but that scarcely
seemed a hardship. Wherever he went he could see the jolly chickadees
scrambling merrily about, and he remembered the time when they had
seemed such big, important creatures. They were the most absurdly
cheerful things in the woods. Before the autumn was fairly over they had
begun to sing their famous refrain, '_Spring Soon_,' and kept it up with
good heart more or less all through the winter's direst storms, till at
length the waning of the Hungry Moon, our February, seemed really to
lend some point to the ditty, and they redoubled their optimistic
announcement to the world in an 'I-told-you-so' mood. Soon good support
was found, for the sun gained strength and melted the snow from the
southern slope of Castle Frank Hill, and exposed great banks of fragrant
wintergreen, whose berries were a bounteous feast for Redruff, and,
ending the