lower ground in search of food. One of the terriers disinterred a spiny hedgehog from its warm, leafy retreat, and "Prickles" probably felt much mystified to find himself in a world of dazzling whiteness. There was one other track which it would be long and devious to follow--one which had been abroad under the moon and stars, and from its trail would seem to have known the ways and the haunts of both furred and feathered game by heart--and that was the old poacher. The snow is a great tell-tale, but it causes the poacher's eye to grow keen and his step firm; and nothing but the gaol walls will prevent his being a snow-walker. His life has been one long protest against the game laws; and whatever he is, or is not, he believes them to be unjust. CHAPTER VI. WHEN DARKNESS HAS FALLEN. A time of absolute quiet can never be observed in the country. It matters not as to time and season; there seems to be no general period of repose. There is always something abroad, some creature of the fields and woods, which by its voice or movements is betrayed. Just as in an old rambling house there are always strange noises that cannot be accounted for, so in the by-paths of nature there are innumerable sounds which can never be localised. To those, however, who pursue night avocations in the country--gamekeepers, poachers, and others--there are always calls and cries which bespeak life as animate under the night as that of the day. This is attributable to various animals and birds, to night-flying insects, and even to fish. Let us track some of these sounds to their source. "When comes still evening on, and twilight grey hath in her sober liv'ry all things clad," then it is that the white owl comes abroad. Passing the remains of an old baronial hall, its piercing screech comes from the dismantled tower. Here the owls have lived time out of mind, and we have seen and heard them, asleep and awake, through every hour of the day and night. It is unnatural history to assert, as Mr. Gray does, that the barn-owls ever mope or mourn or are melancholy. Neither are they grave monks nor anchorites nor pillared saints. A boding bird or a dolorous! Nonsense, they are none of these. They issue forth as very devils, and like another spirit of the night, sail about seeking whom they may devour. The barn-owl is the "screech" owl of bird literature; the brown owl the true hooting owl. This species is found in heavily-timbered districts, and it particularly loves the dark and sombre gloom of resinous pine woods. But the barn-owl is only the precursor of new life--life as animate under the night, as that of the birds and butterflies under the day. We follow the path by the river, and on through the meadows. Among the nut-bush tops a bat is hawking for night-flying insects. Great white moths get up from the grass and go looming away through the darkness. A bend in the stream brings us to a quiet river reach with brown pebbles and a shallow.