ahead caught my eye, and I stopped for one of the rare sights of
the woods,--a partridge going to sleep in a warm room of his own
making. He looked all about among the trees most carefully,
listened, kwit-kwitted in a low voice to himself, then, with a
sudden plunge, swooped downward head-first into the snow. I stole
to the spot where he had disappeared, noted the direction of his
tunnel, and fell forward with arms outstretched, thinking perhaps
to catch him under me and examine his feet to see how his natural
snowshoes (Nature's winter gift to every grouse) were developing,
before letting him go again. But the grouse was an old bird, not
to be caught napping, who had thought on the possibilities of
being followed ere he made his plunge. He had ploughed under the
snow for a couple of feet, then swerved sharply to the left and
made a little chamber for himself just under some snow-packed
spruce tips, with a foot of snow for a blanket over him. When I
fell forward, disturbing his rest most rudely ere he had time to
wink the snow out of his eyes, he burst out with a great whirr
and sputter between my left hand and my head, scattering snow all
over me, and thundered off through the startled woods, flicking a
branch here and there with his wings, and shaking down a great
white shower as he rushed away for deeper solitudes. There, no
doubt, he went to sleep in the evergreens, congratulating himself
on his escape and preferring to take his chances with the owl,
rather than with some other ground-prowler that might come nosing
into his hole before the light snow had time to fill it up
effectually behind him.

Next morning I was early afield, heading for a ridge where I
thought the deer of the neighborhood might congregate with the
intention of yarding for the winter. At the foot of a wild little