+--------------------------------------------+ | By Dallas Lore Sharp | | | | | | THE FACE OF THE FIELDS, 12mo, $1.25, | | _net_. Postage extra. | | | | THE LAY OF THE LAND, 12mo, $1.25, _net_. | | Postage, 15 cents. | | | | | | HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY | | | | BOSTON AND NEW YORK | +--------------------------------------------+ THE FACE OF THE FIELDS BY DALLAS LORE SHARP AUTHOR OF “WILD LIFE NEAR HOME,” “ROOF AND MEADOW,” AND “THE LAY OF THE LAND” BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1911 COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DALLAS LORE SHARP ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published March 1911_ _TO MY GOOD FRIEND_ HINCKLEY GILBERT MITCHELL _HONEST SCHOLAR_ CONTENTS I. THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 1 II. TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ 27 III. THE EDGE OF NIGHT 57 IV. THE SCARCITY OF SKUNKS 81 V. THE NATURE-WRITER 111 VI. JOHN BURROUGHS 141 VII. HUNTING THE SNOW 177 VIII. THE CLAM FARM 193 IX. THE COMMUTER’S THANKSGIVING 217 All but two of these papers made their first appearance in _The Atlantic Monthly_. “The Nature-Writer” was first printed in _The Outlook_ and “Hunting the Snow” in _The Youth’s Companion_. I THE FACE OF THE FIELDS THE FACE OF THE FIELDS There was a swish of wings, a flash of gray, a cry of pain, a squawking, cowering, scattering flock of hens, a weakly fluttering pullet, and yonder, swinging upward into the October sky, a marsh hawk, buoyant and gleaming silvery in the sun. Over the trees he beat, circled once, and disappeared. The hens were still flapping for safety in a dozen directions, but the gray harrier had gone. A bolt of lightning could not have dropped so unannounced, could not have vanished so completely, could scarcely have killed so quickly. I ran to the pullet, but found her dead. The harrier’s stroke, delivered with fearful velocity, had laid head and neck open as with a keen knife. Yet a fraction slower and he would have missed, for the pullet caught the other claw on her wing. The gripping talons slipped off the long quills, and the hawk swept on without his quarry. He dared not come back for it at my feet; and so with a single turn above the woods he was gone.