Passing from the wood, we now pick our way through a neglected by-path shut in on either side with birches, whose brown and slender branches spring from a trunk so white as to be almost lost in the background tint of snow. At every step we dislodge the glistening wreaths of snowy flakes from the bluish raspberry canes. The little withered nests on the tips of the wild-carrot stems hurl their fleecy burden to the ground; and each in turn the phantom shapes give place to homely yarrows, golden-rods, or thistles. Further on we see a wild-rose branch with scarlet berries, and further st--What’s that? A fleet-footed little creature darts out almost from under our very feet, and bounds away into the dark recess. That little cotton tail! what a tempting target it always was for me! Lucky for you, my dear little fellow, that I am not a boy again, or I’d set a snare for you in about ten minutes. This always was a favorite haunt for hares, and if we had only kept our eyes open we might have known it, for, see! all around us the snow is dotted with hollows from their four little jumping foot-pads. [Illustration: “WHO’S THAT?”] Now we enter the old swamp lot, thick-set with bristling bulrushes and bare and spindling brooms of iron-weed. Here is the little turtle pond, from whose animated mud we fished the bugs and polly-wogs for our aquarium. Now it is shrunken and cold with crackling ice. Around its borders a thicket of black alder grows, its close-clinging scarlet berries, half hid in summer by the overhanging foliage, now seen in all their brilliancy and profusion, the brightest touches of color in nature’s winter landscape. Soon we are walking over the soft and silent carpet in the pine grove’s sombre shelter, stopping for one brief moment to listen to the sighing wind overhead, and to inhale one long and lasting whiff of the delicious invigorating aroma of the trees. Once more out in the open, our attention is arrested by a little stain of blood upon the snow. Leading to the spot we see a row of tiny imprints of some little field-mouse, and the white surface in close vicinity is ruffled and disturbed. A cruel tragedy has been committed here, and its evidence is plain, for there is but one line of wee footprints from the little hole beneath the stump near by--no return. Poor little fellow! I wish I had beneath my foot the sharp-eyed owl that surprised you in your little antics on the snow. [Illustration: SUNSHINE AND SHADOW IN THE WOODS.]