the faint light of the
cavity for a few moments, I could usually make out the owl at the
bottom feigning sleep. Feigning, I say, because this is what he really
did, as I first discovered one day when I cut into his retreat with
the axe. The loud blows and the falling chips did not disturb him at
all. When I reached in a stick and pulled him over on his side,
leaving one of his wings spread out, he made no attempt to recover
himself, but lay among the chips and fragments of decayed wood, like a
part of themselves. Indeed, it took a sharp eye to distinguish him.
Not till I had pulled him forth by one wing, rather rudely, did he
abandon his trick of simulated sleep or death. Then, like a detected
pickpocket, he was suddenly transformed into another creature. His
eyes flew wide open, his talons clutched my finger, his ears were
depressed, and every motion and look said, "Hands off, at your peril."
Finding this game did not work, he soon began to "play 'possum" again.
I put a cover over my study wood-box and kept him captive for a week.
Look in upon him at any time, night or day, and he was apparently
wrapped in the profoundest slumber; but the live mice which I put into
his box from time to time found his sleep was easily broken; there
would be a sudden rustle in the box, a faint squeak, and then silence.
After a week of captivity I gave him his freedom in the full sunshine:
no trouble for him to see which way and where to go.

Just at dusk in the winter nights, I often hear his soft _bur-r-r-r_,
very pleasing and bell-like. What a furtive, woody sound it is in the
winter stillness, so unlike the harsh scream of the hawk! But all the
ways of the owl are ways of softness and duskiness. His wings are shod
with silence, his plumage is edged with down.

[Illustration: THE OLD APPLE-TREE]

Another owl neighbor of mine, with whom I pass the time of day more
frequently than with the last, lives farther away. I pass his castle
every night on my way to the post-office, and in winter, if the hour
is late enough, am pretty sure to see him standing in his doorway,
surveying the passers-by and the landscape through narrow slits in his
eyes. For four successive winters now have I observed him. As the
twilight begins to deepen, he rises up out of his cavity in the
apple-tree, scarcely faster than the moon rises from behind the hill,
and sits in the opening, completely framed by its outlines of gray
bark and dead wood, and by his p