That is another point to remember: all the Wood Folk are more curious about you than you are about them. Sit down quietly in the woods anywhere, and your coming will occasion the same stir that a stranger makes in a New England hill town. Control your curiosity, and soon their curiosity gets beyond control; they must come to find out who you are and what you are doing. Then you have the advantage; for, while their curiosity is being satisfied, they forget fear and show you many curious bits of their life that you will never discover otherwise. As to the source of these sketches, it is the same as that of the others years of quiet observation in the woods and fields, and some old notebooks which hold the records of summer and winter camps in the great wilderness. My kind publishers announced, some time ago, a table of contents, which included chapters on jay and fish-hawk, panther, and musquash, and a certain savage old bull moose that once took up his abode too near my camp for comfort. My only excuse for their non-appearance is that my little book was full before their turn came. They will find their place, I trust, in another volume presently. STAMFORD, CONN., June, 1901. Wm. J. LONG. CONTENTS TOOKHEES THE 'FRAID ONE A WILDERNESS BYWAY KEEONEKH THE FISHERMAN KOSKOMENOS THE OUTCAST MEEKO THE MISCHIEF-MAKER THE OL' BEECH PA'TRIDGE FOLLOWING THE DEER SUMMER WOODS STILL HUNTING WINTER TRAILS SNOW BOUND GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES SECRETS OF THE WOODS TOOKHEES THE 'FRAID ONE Little Tookhees the wood mouse, the 'Fraid One, as Simmo calls him, always makes two appearances when you squeak to bring him out. First, after much peeking, he runs out of his tunnel; sits up once on his hind legs; rubs his eyes with his paws; looks up for the owl, and behind him for the fox, and straight ahead at the tent where the man lives; then he dives back headlong into his tunnel with a rustle of leaves and a frightened whistle, as if Kupkawis the little owl had seen him. That is to reassure himself. In a moment he comes back softly to see what kind of crumbs you have given him. No wonder Tookhees is so timid, for there is no place in earth or air or water, outside his own little doorway under the mossy stone, where he is safe. Above him the owls watch by night and the hawks by day; around him not a prowler of the wilderness, from Mooween the bear down through a score of gradations, to Kagax the bloodthirsty little weasel, but will sniff under every old log in the hope of finding a wood mouse; and if he takes a swim, as he is fond of doing, not a big trout in the river but leaves his eddy to rush at the tiny ripple holding bravely across the current. So, with all these enemies waiting to catch him the moment he ventures out, Tookhees must needs make one or two false starts in order to find out where the coast is clear.