The bewildered crows this morning recalled this story, for the poor birds were in a hopeless plight. Perhaps their leaders were at loggerheads, or, being none, it was a case of each for himself and ill-luck catch the hindmost. Be this as it may, their party-cries filled the misty air and relieved me of all feeling of loneliness. From the open meadows I ventured into a gloomy wood, leaving the crows to solve their own problems. Here the fog proved an enormous lens, and, at the same time obscuring the tops of even dwarfed undergrowth, made them appear as trees, and the taller grasses that had withstood the winter were as shrubbery. It was this most strange effect that made my old playground as a land unknown. But as the wild cries of the troubled crows grew faint, the sense of loneliness, against which one naturally rebels, assumed mastery, and I longed for at least sunlight, that the familiar trees might be stripped of their masks. One’s own thoughts should be acceptable company at all times, but mine are not in the gray of a winter morning, and fog-wrapped at that. Nevertheless, longing as I did for others’ voices, I protested then and there against my dependence upon bird-life. “Are there no other creatures astir?” I asked, and pushed on yet deeper, where the old oaks were clustered. Into whatever seemed a shelter I peered, and often thrust my arm, in hopes of feeling some furry yet not too responsive mass. Nothing resented my unmannered intrusion. Then into sundry hollow trees I thrust my cane, thinking at least an owl might be roused from his slumbers; but ill-luck attended me. A little later, as the sun rose fairly high, the upper fog descended, and so far increased the gloom in the forest; but beyond it, as I looked down a long wood-path, I saw the cold gray light that brightened the outer world. Among the trees there was no dispelling force, and the fog became denser, until, overcome by its own weight, it turned to rain, and such a shower! The mists of the open air had fled, while through the woods the rain-drops, touched with a mellow light, shone as molten metal. Rebounding from the interlacing twigs above and the carpet of matted leaves below, these golden drops rang up, as might a myriad of bells, the laggard life about me. Rang up the timid shrews, and one darted among the dead leaves and moss, as though hotly pursued; aroused the squirrels, and creeping stealthily down an oak’s extended arms, a pair passed by, thinking by their cunning to escape my notice; called forth a white-footed mouse, daintiest of all our mammals, that picked its tortuous way to the meadow from its bush-nest in the briers. What folly to suppose there is no life about you because it eludes your search! The quickening rays of the sun have keener vision than any man, however gifted in woodcraft, and these to-day peered directly into every creature’s lair.