I have seen this season) finds occasion to come this way also.
He alights on the tip of a dry limb, and from his perch can see into
the valley on both sides of the mountain. He is prowling about for
chickadees, no doubt, a troop of which I saw coming through the
wood. When pursued by the shrike, the chickadee has been seen to
take refuge in a squirrel-hole in a tree. Hark! Is that the hound,
or doth expectation mock the eager ear? With open mouths and bated
breaths we listen. Yes, it is old "Singer;" he is bringing the fox
over the top of the range toward Butt End, the _Ultima Thule_ of the
hunters' tramps in this section. In a moment or two the dog is lost
to hearing again. We wait for his second turn; then for his third.

"He is playing about the summit," says my companion.

"Let us go there," say I, and we are off.

More dense snow-hung woods beyond the clearing where we begin our
ascent of the Big Mountain,--a chief that carries the range up
several hundred feet higher than the part we have thus far
traversed. We are occasionally to our hips in the snow, but for the
most part the older stratum, a foot or so down, bears us; up and up
we go into the dim, muffled solitudes, our hats and coats powdered
like millers'. A half-hour's heavy tramping brings us to the broad,
level summit, and to where the fox and hound have crossed and
recrossed many times. As we are walking along discussing the matter,
we suddenly hear the dog coming straight on to us. The woods are so
choked with snow that we do not hear him till he breaks up from
under the mountain within a hundred yards of us.

"We have turned the fox!" we both exclaim, much put out.

Sure enough, we have. The dog appears in sight, is puzzled a moment,
then turns sharply to the left, and is lost to eye and to ear as
quickly as if he had plunged into a cave. The woods are, indeed, a
kind of cave,--a cave of alabaster, with the sun shining upon it. We
take up positions and wait. These old hunters know exactly where to
stand.

"If the fox comes back," said my companion, "he will cross up there
or down here," indicating two points not twenty rods asunder.

We stood so that each commanded one of the runways indicated. How
light it was, though the sun was hidden! Every branch and twig
beamed in the sun like a lamp. A downy woodpecker below me kept up a
great fuss and clatter,--all for my benefit, I suspected. All about
me were great, soft mounds, where the rocks lay bur