s swinging toward the east at a
wondrous pace. But it is more than that. The little winds of dawn
are drawn toward the rising column of heated air beneath his glow.
They come out of the nether cold of the night and it is the chill
of their passing which often brings the temperature a little lower
as the sun shows above the horizon, but they go to him to get warm
just as the rest of us do. It may be fancy, but it always seems to
me that the morning birds on their first hunt for breakfast work
eastward. The first flight of the crows is apt to be in that
direction and the chickadees hunt from the south side of one tree
to that of the next, making the sunward side of the grove their
rallying place. The trees in growth reach always toward the sun,
stretching their limbs longest on the sunny side, and it always
seems to me as if in winter they could be seen to yearn in the
same direction with the fond fingers of bare twigs. I have an idea
that measurements made at leaf-fall of one year and again at bud-time
of the next would show this. But there is really no need. We
have but to go forth in the woods of a clear, still winter morning
to feel the impulse ourselves and to know that it is universal.

Out of this protecting snow at dawn come the small folk of the
winter woods and to be with them there is to be at the meeting
place of elves. He who is very wise as to their ways may see them,
once in a while some one of them, or, if he be very fortunate,
more than one. Without doubt to live in the woods always would be
to see them all, to acquire to the full the elfin quality one's
self and be one of the clan. But they become visible only rarely
to the occasional visitor, these real elves and hobgoblins, and
often at the best we must note their presence by the trail they
have left behind. Here has passed the rabbit. Since earliest light
he has been tracking up the woods in his hunt for breakfast, but
who sees him do it? There the white-footed mouse has made a
curious pattern of foot-dots from his home stump to some other
entrance to a way beneath the snow, the straight trail of his tail
showing between the tiny foot tracks. In another place the fox has
left his curious one-two-three, one-two-three footsteps.

[Illustration: Deer in the Winter Woods]

It is sufficient sport for the morning to take the early rabbit
trails and see what has become of their maker. Some woodsman may
have seen the rabbit making these tracks unconscious