in front of us, listen for the dog. But not a sound is heard. A
flock of snow buntings pass high above us, uttering their contented
twitter, and their white forms seen against the intense blue give
the impression of large snowflakes drifting across the sky. I hear a
purple finch, too, and the feeble lisp of the redpoll. A shrike (the
first I have seen this season) finds occasion to come this way also.
He alights on the tip of a dry limb, and from his perch can see into
the valley on both sides of the mountain. He is prowling about for
chickadees, no doubt, a troop of which I saw coming through the
wood. When pursued by the shrike, the chickadee has been seen to
take refuge in a squirrel-hole in a tree. Hark! Is that the hound,
or doth expectation mock the eager ear? With open mouths and bated
breaths we listen. Yes, it is old "Singer;" he is bringing the fox
over the top of the range toward Butt End, the _Ultima Thule_ of the
hunters' tramps in this section. In a moment or two the dog is lost
to hearing again. We wait for his second turn; then for his third.

"He is playing about the summit," says my companion.

"Let us go there," say I, and we are off.

More dense snow-hung woods beyond the clearing where we begin our
ascent of the Big Mountain,--a chief that carries the range up
several hundred feet higher than the part we have thus far
traversed. We are occasionally to our hips in the snow, but for the
most part the older stratum, a foot or so down, bears us; up and up
we go into the dim, muffled solitudes, our hats and coats powdered
like millers'. A half-hour's heavy tramping brings us to the broad,
level summit, and to where the fox and hound have crossed and
recrossed many times. As we are walking along discussing the matter,