and will not be misled by any other scent. You hear him rattling
through the corn, hither and yon, with great speed. The coons prick
up their ears, and leave on the opposite side of the field. In the
stillness you may sometimes hear a single stone rattle on the wall
as they hurry toward the woods. If the dog finds nothing, he comes
back to his master in a short time, and says in his dumb way, "No
coon there." But if he strikes a trail, you presently hear a louder
rattling on the stone wall, and then a hurried bark as he enters the
woods, followed in a few minutes by loud and repeated barking as he
reaches the foot of the tree in which the coon has taken refuge.
Then follows a pellmell rush of the cooning party up the hill, into
the woods, through the brush and the darkness, falling over
prostrate trees, pitching into gullies and hollows, losing hats and
tearing clothes, till finally, guided by the baying of the faithful
dog, the tree is reached. The first thing now in order is to kindle
a fire, and, if its light reveals the coon, to shoot him; if not, to
fell the tree with an axe. If this happens to be too great a
sacrifice of timber and of strength, to sit down at the foot of the
tree till morning.

But with March our interest in these phases of animal life, which
winter has so emphasized and brought out, begins to decline. Vague
rumors are afloat in the air of a great and coming change. We are
eager for Winter to be gone, since he, too, is fugitive and cannot
keep his place. Invisible hands deface his icy statuary; his chisel
has lost its cunning. The drifts, so pure and exquisite, are now
earth-stained and weather-worn,--the flutes and scallops, and fine,
firm lines, all gone; and what was a grace and an ornament to the
hills is now a disfiguration. Like worn and unwashed linen appear
the remains of that spotless robe with which he clothed the world as