t ceases all
struggling as you come up, and behaves in a manner that stamps him a
very timid warrior,--cowering to the earth with a mingled look of shame,
guilt, and abject fear. A young farmer told me of tracing one with his
trap to the border of a wood, where he discovered the cunning rogue
trying to hide by embracing a small tree. Most animals, when taken in a
trap, show fight; but Reynard has more faith in the nimbleness of his
feet than in the terror of his teeth.

Entering the woods, the number and variety of the tracks contrast
strongly with the rigid, frozen aspect of things. Warm jets of life
still shoot and play amid this snowy desolation. Fox-tracks are far less
numerous than in the fields; but those of hares, skunks, partridges,
squirrels, and mice abound. The mice-tracks are very pretty, and look
like a sort of fantastic stitching on the coverlid of the snow. One is
curious to know what brings these tiny creatures from their retreats;
they do not seem to be in quest of food, but rather to be travelling
about for pleasure or sociability, though always going post-haste, and
linking stump with stump and tree with tree by fine, hurried strides.
That is when they travel openly; but they have hidden passages and
winding galleries under the snow, which undoubtedly are their main
avenues of communication. Here and there these passages rise so near the
surface as to be covered by only a frail arch of snow, and a slight
ridge betrays their course to the eye. I know him well. He is known to
the farmer as the deer-mouse, to the naturalist as the _Hesperomys
leucopus_,--a very beautiful creature, nocturnal in his habits, with
large ears, and large, fine eyes, full of a wild, harmless look. He
leaps like a rabbit, and is daintily marked, with white feet and a white
belly.

It is he who, far up in the hollow trunk of some tree, lays by a store
of beech-nuts for winter use. Every nut is carefully shelled, and the
cavity that serves as storehouse lined with grass and leaves. The
wood-chopper frequently squanders this precious store. I have seen half
a peck taken from one tree, as clean and white as if put up by the most
delicate hands,--as they were. How long it must have taken the little
creature to collect this quantity, to hull them one by one, and convey
them up to his fifth-story chamber! He is not confined to the woods, but
is quite as common in the fields, particularly in the fall, amid the
corn and potatoes. When