r
one night's huntin', an' there ain't goin' to be no more 'coons
messin' in the corn _this_ summer!"

In a few minutes the procession was again plodding, Indian file,
through the still, dew-fragrant, midnight woods. The little raccoon,
its heart now beating quietly, nestled in secure contentment under
the young schoolmaster's arm, untroubled even by the solemn and
deep-toned menace of a horned-owl's cry from the spiky top of a dead
hemlock near at hand. From the lake behind the hill came the long
laughter of a loon, the wildest and saddest of all the wilderness
voices. And a lonely silence settled down about the old sycamore on
the hill, solitary under the white, high-sailing moon.

Horns and Antlers

The young red and white bull was very angry. He stood by the pasture
bars grumbling, and blowing through his nostrils, and shaking his
short, straight horns, and glaring fiercely after the man, who was
driving three cows down the hill to the farmyard in the shadowy
valley. Every evening for weeks the man had come about sunset and
taken away the cows in that fashion, rudely suppressing the young
bull's efforts to accompany his herd, and leaving him to the sole
companionship of two silly and calf-like yearlings whom he scorned to
notice. For the past few evenings the bull had been trying to work
himself up to the point of fairly joining issue with the man, and
having it out with him. But there was something in the man's cool
assurance, in his steady, compelling eye, in the abrupt authority of
his voice, which made the angry animal hesitate to defy him. Certainly
the bull could see that the man was very much smaller than he,--a
pigmy, indeed, in comparison; but he felt that within that erect and
fragile-looking shape there dwelt an unknown force which no
four-footed beast could ever hope to withstand. Every evening, after
the man and cows had gone half-way down the hillside, the bull would
fall to bellowing and pawing the ground, and rolling his defiance
across the quiet valley. But when next the man came face to face with
him, and spoke to him, he would assume, in spite of himself, an
attitude of lofty and reluctant deference.

The high hill pasture, with its decaying stumps, its rounded hillocks,
its patches of withering fern and harsh dwarf juniper, was bathed in
all the colours of the autumn sunset, while the farmyard down in the
valley was already in the first purple of the twilight. The centre of
the past