There was so much to note and learn and remember in those days! A
bit of moss with that curiously measured angular cut in it, as if
the wood folk had taken to studying Euclid,--how wonderful it was
at first! The deer had been here; his foot drew that sharp
triangle; and I must measure and feel it carefully, and press
aside the moss, and study the leaves, to know whether it were my
big buck or no, and how long since he had passed, and whether he
were feeding or running or just nosing about and watching the
valley below. And all that is much to learn from a tiny triangle
in the moss, with imaginary a, b, c's clinging to the dried moss
blossoms.

How careful one had to be! Every shift of wind, every cloud
shadow had to be noted. The lesson of a dewdrop, splashed from a
leaf in the early morning; the testimony of a crushed flower, or
a broken brake, or a bending grass blade; the counsel of a bit of
bark frayed from a birch tree, with a shred of deer-velvet
clinging to it,--all these were vastly significant and
interesting. Every copse and hiding place and cathedral aisle of
the big woods in front must be searched with quiet eyes far
ahead, as one glided silently from tree to tree. That depression
in the gray moss of a fir thicket, with two others near it--three
deer lay down there last night; no, this morning; no, scarcely an
hour ago, and the dim traces along the ridge show no sign of
hurry or alarm. So I move on, following surely the trail that,
only a few days since, would have been invisible as the trail of
a fish in the lake to my unschooled eyes, searching, searching
everywhere for dim forms gliding among the trees, till--a scream,
a whistle, a rush away! And I know that the bluejay, which has
been gliding after me curiously the last ten minutes,--has