natural meadow, made centuries ago by the beavers, I found the
trail of two deer which had been helping themselves to some hay
that had been cut and stacked there the previous summer. My big
buck was not with them; so I left the trail in peace to push
through a belt of woods and across a pond to an old road that led
for a mile or two towards the ridge I was seeking.

Early as I was, the wood folk were ahead of me. Their tracks were
everywhere, eager, hungry tracks, that poked their noses into
every possible hiding place of food or game, showing how the
two-days' fast had whetted their appetites and set them to
running keenly the moment the last flakes were down and the storm
truce ended.

A suspicious-looking clump of evergreens, where something had
brushed the snow rudely from the feathery tips, stopped me as I
hurried down the old road. Under the evergreens was a hole in the
snow, and at the bottom of the hole hard inverted cups made by
deer's feet. I followed on to another hole in the snow (it could
scarcely be called a trail) and then to another, and another,
some twelve or fifteen feet apart, leading in swift bounds to
some big timber. There the curious track separated into three
deer trails, one of which might well be that of a ten-point buck.
Here was luck,--luck to find my quarry so early on the first day
out, and better luck that, during my long absence, the cunning
animal had kept himself and his consort clear of Old Wally and
his devices.

When I ran to examine the back trail more carefully, I found that
the deer had passed the night in a dense thicket of evergreen, on