ly about over the
snow, and, I doubt not, have given the piratical red squirrel a
piece of their minds. A few yards away the mice have a hole down
into the snow, which perhaps leads to some snug den under the
ground. Hither they may have been slyly removing their stores while
the squirrel was at work with his back turned. One more night and he
will effect an entrance: what a good joke upon him if he finds the
cavity empty! These native mice are very provident, and, I imagine,
have to take many precautions to prevent their winter stores being
plundered by the squirrels, who live, as it were, from hand to
mouth.

We see several fresh fox-tracks, and wish for the hound, but there
are no tidings of him. After half an hour's floundering and
cautiously picking our way through the woods, we emerge into a
cleared field that stretches up from the valley below, and just laps
over the back of the mountain. It is a broad belt of white that
drops down and down till it joins other fields that sweep along the
base of the mountain, a mile away. To the east, through a deep
defile in the mountains, a landscape in an adjoining county lifts
itself up, like a bank of white and gray clouds.

When the experienced fox-hunter comes out upon such an eminence as
this, he always scrutinizes the fields closely that lie beneath him,
and it many times happens that his sharp eye detects Reynard asleep
upon a rock or a stone wall, in which case, if he be armed with a
rifle and his dog be not near, the poor creature never wakens from
his slumber. The fox nearly always takes his nap in the open fields,
along the sides of the ridges, or under the mountain, where he can
look down upon the busy farms beneath and hear their many sounds,
the barking of dogs, the lowing of cattle, the cackling of hens, the
voices of men and boys, or the sound of travel upon the highway. It
is on that side, too, that he keeps the sharpest lookout, and the
appearance of the hunter above and behind him is always a surprise.

[Illustration: THE FOX-HUNTER AND HIS HOUND]

We pause here, and, with alert ears turned toward the Big Mountain
in front of us, listen for the dog. But not a sound is heard. A
flock of snow buntings pass high above us, uttering their contented
twitter, and their white forms seen against the intense blue give
the impression of large snowflakes drifting across the sky. I hear a
purple finch, too, and the feeble lisp of the redpoll. A shrike (the
first