Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/200

182 With one or two exceptions, indeed, the nests could be set down in advance—from their color and evident dilapidation—as being at least a year old.

Once we started a rabbit, and here and there a few chickadees accosted us. Once, I think, we heard the voice of a golden-crowned kinglet. For the rest, the woods seemed to be deserted, and at the end of our long détour we came back to the road half a mile above the point at which we had left it.

And still the world is not depopulated, even in winter, nor are all the pretty wild animals asleep. The snakes are, to be sure, and the frogs (though hylas were peeping late in December), and the chipmunks and the woodchucks; but there is abundant life stirring, nevertheless.

Yesterday I called on my friend again, and together we walked up the road—a back-country thoroughfare. This time, also, a light snow had just fallen, and my companion, better informed than I in such matters, began to discuss footprints with me.

"You know this one?" he asked.