ce in a
native, and _boo-hoo_ him out of Concord horizon. "What do you mean by
alarming the citadel at this time of night consecrated to me? Do you
think I am ever caught napping at such an hour, and that I have not got
lungs and a larynx as well as yourself? _Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo!_" It
was one of the most thrilling discords I ever heard. And yet, if you had
a discriminating ear, there were in it the elements of a concord such as
these plains never saw nor heard.

I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bedfellow in
that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain
turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked
by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a
team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth
a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.

Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow crust, in
moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking
raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some
anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling for light and to be dogs
outright and run freely in the streets; for if we take the ages into our
account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well
as men? They seemed to me to be rudimental, burrowing men, still
standing on their defence, awaiting their transformation. Sometimes one
came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked a vulpine curse at
me, and then retreated.

[Illustration: THE RED SQUIRREL]

Usually the red squirrel (_Sciurus Hudsonius_) waked me in the dawn,
coursing over the roof and up and down the sides of the house, as if
sent out of the woods for this purpose. In the course of the winter I
threw out half a bushel of ears of sweet corn, which had not got ripe,
on to the snow crust by my door, and was amused by watching the motions
of the various animals which were baited by it. In the twilight and the
night the rabbits came regularly and made a hearty meal. All day long
the red squirrels came and went, and afforded me much entertainment by
their manoeuvres. One would approach at first warily through the
shrub-oaks, running over the snow crust by fits and starts like a leaf
blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and
waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his "trotters," as if
it were for a wager, and now as many paces tha