r to his liking. Possibly he had been too reticent. He was a
languid fellow in speech, anyhow, and, excellent woodsman as he was,
generally languid in his movements. There was vigor enough underneath
this exterior, but only his intimates knew that. The lady had been
gracious, certainly, and she must have seen in his eyes, as women can
see so well, that he was in love with her, and that a proposal was
impending; but she had not given him the encouragement he wanted. Now he
was determined to stake his chances. There was to be a visit one
forenoon to the place where the sugar-making was in progress, and he
asked her to go with him ahead of the others, that he might show her how
full the forest was of life at all times. He had resolved. He was going
to ask her to be his wife.

There was written upon the white sheet of freshly fallen snow the story
of the night and morning, of the comedies and tragedies and adventures
of the wild things. Their tracks were all about. Here the grouped paws
of the rabbits had left their distinct markings as the animals had fed
and frolicked among the underwood; and there, over by the group of
evergreens, a little mass of leaves and fur showed where the number of
the frolickers had been decreased by one when the great owl of the north
dropped fiercely upon his prey; there showed the neat tracks of the fox
beside the coverts. The twin pads of the mink were clearly defined upon
the snow-covered ice which bordered the tumbling creek, and at times the
tracks diverged in exploration of the recesses of some brush heap.
Little difference made it to the mink whether his prey were bird or
woodmouse. Far into the morning, evidently, his hunting had extended,
for his track in one place was along that of the ruffed grouse; and the
signs showed that he had almost reached his prey, for a single brown
black-banded tail-feather lay upon the wing-swept snow, where it could
be seen the bird had risen almost as the leap came. The sun was shining,
and squirrel tracks were along the whitened crest of every log, and the
traces of jay and snowbird were quite as numerous. There was clamor in
the tree-tops. The musical and merry "chickadee-dee-dee" of the tamest
of the birds of winter and the somewhat sadder note of the wood pewee
mingled with the occasional caw of a crow, the shrill cry of a jay, or
the tapping of woodpeckers upon the boles of dead trees. A flock of
snow-bunting fluttered and fed in a patch of dry seed-