If I wish to see him I watch well-worn footpaths through matted grass and leaves. Here his tunnels end on one side of the path and begin on the other and he takes the chance of crossing this risky opening to sun and sky as often as he feels he must, but he wrecks the speed limit every time he does it. So quickly does he go that you cannot be sure what has happened; there was the stirring of a leaf on one side and a grass stem on the other and a sudden vanishing touch of brown between the two, but which way it went or whether it went at all is doubtful. So, too, his tunnels come down and open at the water’s edge by the meadow brook and if you are patient and have rare luck you may see him swim across. Here trout and mink are on the watch for him. His numbers need to be great if, with all his caution and agility, he is going to survive all these huntsmen, and they are great. He may breed at two months of age and have many litters a season and his progeny, if unchecked, soon swarm. All the meadows are full of them this year, but it is only when such a snow as we now have comes that we have a chance to see what they may do. In the summer-time they stick close to their meadows, living on succulent roots and stems. They are especially fond of tuberous roots of the wild morning-glory, which they store by the pound in their grass larders near their nests. But under the welcome cover of the snow they push their excursions far afield and their netted-veined trails come even to your house itself, though they rarely dispute the wainscoting with the house mouse. Now and then they do, however, and I fancy they have no trouble in holding their own against their slighter and more aristocratic cousins. When they do come you will know their presence by the extraordinary noise of their gnawing. Once a stone crusher, no less by the sound, got into my garret, and after one sleepless night I set the biggest trap I had, expecting to get the most enormous brown rat that ever happened, if not some new and more elephantine rodent. What I caught was a well-grown field mouse, and the noise passed with him.