Page:Wild folk - Samuel Scoville.djvu/174

148 same little beach from which he had dived days before. As he scurried across an open space in the woods, a dark shadow drifted down from the tree tops and two great wings hovered over him, so muffled by soft feathers that not even the shrew heard a single beat or flutter from them. A second longer above ground, and all his fierceness and courage and swiftness would have availed him nothing against the winged death that overshadowed him.

At that instant, far and faint came a little twittering note from under the leaf carpet. It was only the shadow of a sound, but in a wink the shrew was gone, following the love call of his mate underground. Overhead sounded the deep and dreadful voice of a barred owl, as it floated back to its tree top, disappointed for once of its prey.

At midnight Ben Gunnison, the peddler, reached the little glade where the shrew had disappeared. Trying for a short cut through the Barrens, Ben had followed the old cattle-trail from Perth Amboy, unused for more than a century. At first it stretched straight and plain through the pitch-pine woods. Beyond Double Trouble and Mount Misery, it began to wind, and by the time he had reached Four Mile he was lost. For long he staggered under his heavy pack through thickets of scrub oak, white-cedar swamps, and tangles of greenthorn. By the time he had reached the little opening, he was exhausted, and putting his pack under his head for a pillow, lay down under a great sweet-gum tree to sleep out the night.