. Roof and meadow . thedog must be running. She could get no fartherthan the top of the slope. Over the fence, underit, and out far and wide she would go, but nevera sniff of the lost scent. Then came a light snow, and on the white,page of the hillside in his own hand was writtenthe story of a large possum, who had been alongthe stream at the head of the pond, had goneup the hill to a fallen pine, out along this byway of the thick top to the fence-post, and downthe rails. The writing was plain in the sticky snow, andso was the mystery of the broken trail. I hur-ried along the fence and saw ahe
. Roof and meadow . thedog must be running. She could get no fartherthan the top of the slope. Over the fence, underit, and out far and wide she would go, but nevera sniff of the lost scent. Then came a light snow, and on the white,page of the hillside in his own hand was writtenthe story of a large possum, who had been alongthe stream at the head of the pond, had goneup the hill to a fallen pine, out along this byway of the thick top to the fence-post, and downthe rails. The writing was plain in the sticky snow, andso was the mystery of the broken trail. I hur-ried along the fence and saw ahead that a sag-ging post leaned in against one of the largechestnut-oaks. Instinctively I knew that mypossum was in that tree. Sure enough, the snow was brushed from thepost; there were signs on the trunk, and downbetween the twin boles was the hole, smooth,clean, and possumy. The crafty old fellow hadsqueezed hard to get in and had left a hair ortwo on the rim of his entrance. [212] ONE FLEW EAST AISTD ONE FLEW WEST. OIv^E FLEW EAST AND ONE FLEWWEST EAELY dusk of a cold March night was fall-ing. The two red maples in the littlealder swale beyond the pasture stood penciledon the gray sky. A robin had been singing ; butnow the deep winter hush had crept back overthe fields. Suddenly there was a hiss and winnow ofwings close above my head. I dodged. Pastme, lined for the swale, with an erratic, rotaryflight as if fired from a rifle, sped a bird. Hes back! I exclaimed. He escaped!And through my cold, rain-soaked world of wood[215] and field and swale shot a new, wild thrill oflife. It was the return of a woodcock that hadnested for several seasons along a slender, alder-hidden stream about half a mile from my home. I was not expecting him back this the gunning season opened the previousJuly, at least a score of men knew that a singlepair of woodcocks had nested in the swale; andup and down, over and over, one after anotherthey beat it, beat it by clump, by tussock, bysq
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1904
