a few feet from the ground. I pause within
four or five yards of them and am looking about me, when my eye lights
upon these gray, motionless figures. They sit perfectly upright, some
with their backs and some with their breasts toward me, but every head
turned squarely in my direction. Their eyes are closed to a mere black
line; through this crack they are watching me, evidently thinking
themselves unobserved. The spectacle is weird and grotesque, and
suggests something impish and uncanny. It is a new effect, the night
side of the woods by daylight. After observing them a moment I take a
single step toward them, when, quick as thought, their eyes fly wide
open, their attitude is changed, they bend, some this way, some that,
and, instinct with life and motion, stare wildly around them. Another
step, and they all take flight but one, which stoops low on the branch,
and with the look of a frightened cat regards me for a few seconds over
its shoulder. They fly swiftly and softly, and disperse through the
trees.

* * * * *

A winter neighbor of mine, in whom I am interested, and who perhaps
lends me his support after his kind, is a little red owl, whose retreat
is in the heart of an old apple-tree just over the fence. Where he keeps
himself in spring and summer, I do not know, but late every fall, and at
intervals all winter, his hiding-place is discovered by the jays and
nuthatches, and proclaimed from the tree-tops for the space of half an
hour or so, with all the powers of voice they can command. Four times
during one winter they called me out to behold this little ogre feigning
sleep in his den, sometimes in one apple-tree, sometimes in another.
Whenever I heard their cries, I knew my neighbor was being berated. The
birds would take turns at looking in upon him, and uttering their
alarm-notes. Every jay within hearing would come to the spot, and at
once approach the hole in the trunk or limb, and with a kind of
breathless eagerness and excitement take a peep at the owl, and then
join the outcry. When I approached they would hastily take a final look,
and then withdraw and regard my movements intently. After accustoming my
eye to the faint light of the cavity for a few moments, I could usually
make out the owl at the bottom feigning sleep. Feigning, I say, because
this is what he really did, as I first discovered one day when I cut
into his retreat with the axe. The loud blows and the fal