The upland woods, too, are awakened from the slumber of their late summer days. How silent they had grown when their songsters had departed, rarely stirred but by the woodpecker's busy hammer, the chatter and bark of squirrels, and the crows making vociferous proclamation against some winged or furred enemy. The grouse have waxed fat among the border patches of berry bushes, rarely disturbed in the seclusion of the thickets but by the soft footfall of the fox, the fleeting shadow of a cruising hawk, and the halloo of the cowboy driving home his herd from the hillside pasture. Now come enemies more relentless than beast or bird of prey, a sound more alarming than the cowboy's distant call--man and his companion the dog, and the terrible thunder of the gun. A new terror is revealed to the young birds, a half-forgotten one brought afresh to the old. The crows have found fresh cause for clamor, and the squirrels lapse into a silence of fear. Peace and the quietness of peace have departed from the realm of the woods, and henceforth while the green leaves grow bright as blossoms with the touch of frost, then brown and sere, and till long after they lie under the white shroud of winter, its wild denizens shall abide in constant fear and unrest. So fares it with the wood-folk, these days of September, wherein the sportsman rejoiceth with exceeding gladness. XXXI A PLEA FOR THE UNPROTECTED Why kill, for the mere sake of killing or the exhibition of one's skill, any wild thing that when alive harms no one and when killed is of no worth? The more happy wild life there is in the world, the pleasanter it is for all of us.