Of all the wild birds that still haunt our remaining solitudes,
the ruffed grouse--the pa'tridge of our younger days--is perhaps
the wildest, the most alert, the most suggestive of the primeval
wilderness that we have lost. You enter the woods from the
hillside pasture, lounging a moment on the old gray fence to note
the play of light and shadow on the birch bolls. Your eye lingers
restfully on the wonderful mixture of soft colors that no brush
has ever yet imitated, the rich old gold of autumn tapestries,
the glimmering gray-green of the mouldering stump that the fungi
have painted. What a giant that tree must have been, generations
ago, in its days of strength; how puny the birches that now grow
out of its roots! You remember the great canoe birches by the
wilderness river, whiter than the little tent that nestled
beneath them, their wide bark banners waving in the wind, soft as
the flutter of owls' wings that swept among them, shadow-like, in
the twilight. A vague regret steals over you that our own
wilderness is gone, and with it most of the shy folk that loved
its solitudes.

Suddenly there is a rustle in the leaves. Something stirs by the
old stump. A moment ago you thought it was only a brown root; now
it runs, hides, draws itself erect--Kwit, kwit, kwit! and with a
whirring rush of wings and a whirling eddy of dead leaves a
grouse bursts up, and darts away like a blunt arrow,
flint-tipped, gray-feathered, among the startled birch stems. As
you follow softly to rout him out again, and to thrill and be
startled by his unexpected rush, something of the Indian has come
unbidden into your cautious tread. All regret for the wilderness
is vanished; you are simply glad that so much wildness still