tree sparrows, juncos, nuthatches, chickadees, and cedar-birds cheeped
among the trees and bushes; and from the farm lands at the top of the
slope rang the calls of meadowlarks.

Halfway up the hill I stopped under a blackjack oak where, in the thin
snow, there were signs of something like a Christmas revel. The ground
was sprinkled with acorn shells and trampled over with feet of several
kinds and sizes,--quail, jay, and partridge feet; rabbit, squirrel, and
mice feet, all over the snow as the feast of acorns had gone on.
Hundreds of the acorns were lying about, gnawed away at the cup end,
where the shell was thinnest, many of them further broken and cleaned
out by the birds.

As I sat studying the signs in the snow, my eye caught a tiny trail
leading out from the others straight away toward a broken pile of cord
wood. The tracks were planted one after the other, so directly in line
as to seem like the prints of a single foot. "That's a weasel's trail,"
I said, "the death's-head at this feast," and followed it slowly to the
wood. A shiver crept over me as I felt, even sooner than I saw, a pair
of small sinister eyes fixed upon mine. The evil pointed head, heavy but
alert, and with a suggestion of fierce strength out of all relation to
the slender body, was watching me from between the sticks of cordwood.
And so he had been watching the mice and birds and rabbits feasting
under the tree!

I packed a ball of snow round and hard, slipped forward upon my knees,
and hurled it. "Spat!" it struck the end of a stick within an inch of
the ugly head, filling the crevice with snow. Instantly the head
appeared at another crack, and another ball struck viciously beside it.
Now it was back where it first appeared, and did not flinch for the