hedge of snares for a couple of hundred yards, finding three
more strangled grouse and a brown rabbit. Then I sat down in
a beautiful spot to watch the life about me, and to catch the
snarer at his abominable work.

The sun climbed higher and blotted out the four trails in the
field below. Red squirrels came down close to my head to chatter
and scold and drive me out of the solitude. A beautiful gray
squirrel went tearing by among the branches, pursued by one of
the savage little reds that nipped and snarled at his heels. The
two cannot live together, and the gray must always go. Jays
stopped spying on the squirrels--to see and remember where their
winter stores were hidden--and lingered near me, whistling their
curiosity at the silent man below. None but jays gave any heed to
the five grim corpses swinging by their necks over the deadly
hedge, and to them it was only a new sensation.

Then a cruel thing happened,--one of the many tragedies that pass
unnoticed in the woods. There was a scurry in the underbrush, and
strange cries like those of an agonized child, only tiny and
distant, as if heard in a phonograph. Over the sounds a crow
hovered and rose and fell, in his intense absorption seeing
nothing but the creature below. Suddenly he swooped like a hawk
into a thicket, and out of the cover sprang a leveret (young
hare), only to crouch shivering in the open space under a
hemlock's drooping branches. There the crow headed him, struck
once, twice, three times, straight hard blows with his powerful
beak; and when I ran to the spot the leveret lay quite dead with
his skull split, while the crow went flapping wildly to the tree
tops, giving the danger cry to the flock that was gossiping in