es a straight streak for kingdom-come and the hunter with the
gun waits in vain.

But on days when there is no gunning going on the fox will
sometimes walk right onto a man. Recently my next-door neighbor,
tramping his oak woods with no thought of stealth, rustling
through fallen leaves and snapping twigs, walked round a corner of
a woodpile and met a fox trotting along in the opposite direction.
The animal gazed at him in astonishment for a second and then
fled. My neighbor accounts for it in this way: The fox has brains.
Consequently he gets into a brown study as a man will, planning
affairs and studying out situations. Woodland creatures whose
living is conducted largely automatically are automatically alert
and do not walk straight up to danger which rustles and thuds
warnings of its presence. It takes a thinker to get so immersed in
his own affairs of the brain as to get caught that way.

The potency of the sun on clear mid-winter days in the woods is
wonderful. His rays seem to put a reviving, warming quality into
the air which has little relation to the actual temperature as
recorded by the thermometer. The forest catches this unrecorded
warmth and with it envelops all creatures. It holds back the wind
which seeks to chill, and by the time the sun is high and one is
weary of swinging along the levels on snowshoes he may rest in
comfort in the radiance. The recorded temperature may be far below
freezing. The actual feel of the air in a cozy, snow-mantled nook
is so genial and comforting that one wonders that the buds do not
start. To go to the southward of a clump of dense evergreens is as
good as a trip to Bermuda. On such a day the noon fire is a
pastime rather than a necessity, though the making of a luxurious
lunch may require heat. To tramp a spot on the snow with the
snowshoes and then start a fire on it is to demonstrate the
non-conductivity of this ermine mantle of the woods. The fire will
burn long before it melts a hole through to the ground beneath,
and if the snow is fairly deep it will remain unmelted beneath a
gray mantle of ashes after the fire is out. There is unquestionably
a primal joy in a fire thus built in the snow of the deep
woods. Wherever man sets up the hearth there is home, and
the first flare, the first pungent whiff of wood smoke, touch a
deep sense of comfort and make the wayfarer at peace with all the
world. To toast bread upon a pointed stick and to broil a bit of
meat in the bl