STILL-HUNTING GROUSE ON SNOW. 215

“Give it to me!” she demanded, withflashing eyes, as he caught it up for in-spection.

“Who the devil is it, anyway?” Hescowled at the beauty of the face.

“A physician in C—–, where you leftme without a cent three years ago. Inursed a patient for him.”

“The devil you did!”“Give it to me!” she cried, stretching

out her hand.“Give me the money first and I will.”She flung the purse unopened at him.

With a brutal laugh he tore the cardacross and tossed the halves into herlap, then went out and slammed the door.

* * * * *To the cities built upon the shore ofthe great inland lakes there comes,sometimes, in mid-August, a chill as ofwinter. The rain falls in torrents andthe wind rages like an uncaged beast.Such a chill, attended by such a storm,came to the city of the World’s Fair thenight after Alma’s interview with herhusband. The stately palaces of theExposition leaked dismally, in spite ofthe efforts of workmen and guards. OnMidway, many a flimsy structure went

THE gray December dawn hadcaught the last whirling flake ofthe first snowstorm of the season,just the very morning for a still-

hunt after ruffed grouse. The tracksin the new fallen snow will betray thewhereabouts of the game, for all signmust needs be fresh and every trailupon the fair white surface as readableas printed page.

Plod up the hillside, to the shadowywoods beyond. How the snow, clingingto the twigs and branches, muffles thewoods. The clear frosty ring of later

down before the gale. The pavilion ofthe Captive Balloon looked like thedrenched deck of an ocean steamer, thecentral office serving for a pilot-house.Over its wet, slippery floors, the waitersdragged chairs and tables to a place ofsafety.

About the shelterless balloon the rainand wind whirled with redoubled fury.“Varnished silk and hempen twine—bah!” said the rain. “Wooden clappersand bags of sand—pouf!” said the wind;and they dashed against it, pulling andpushing, till a cable snapped. Thenhow they pounded the helpless thingover the ground.

“Gone up, that’s a fact!” said Ives,examining the wreck by the morning’ssunshine.

“Gone down, you mean,” said Almawith a faint smile.

“And there’s that blamed concession,”continued the aeronaut, gnawing hismustache. “We can’t stop; we’ll haveto make the restaurant and the stagepay as well as we can. You’ll have tokeep right on, Mrs. Read.”

“Oh, yes,” replied Alma, gravely;“I’ll have to keep right on.”

STILL-HUNTING GROUSE ON SNOW.

BY JAMES R. BENTON.

autumn is gone. The sound of yourvoice is caught before it goes fifty paces.The report of your gun is choked in theechoeless silence. You fall musingmayhap, on the beauty and weirdnessof it all, when a handful of snow, slip-ping down your neck from some well-freighted, carelessly shaken twig, drivesall the “weirdness” out of your mind.

But these hard wood saplings do notafford sufficient shelter for our game,this kind of weather, so we will visit awell-known lace, where a number ofshort, bushy, hemlocks clustered in little

216 OUTING FOR DECEMBER.

family groups, make a relieving spot ofcolor amidst the surrounding white.

How the ruffed grouse love thesesheltering hemlocks. There they findprotection from summer’s heat, autumn’srains, and winter’s snow. What cozynooks to hide in, beneath the fragrantbranches. Only the finest snow siftsthrough, leaving bare spots where thedry needles make the most comfortableof dusting places. The fox knows thesecrets of the hemlocks too. Pushthrough the thickest of the clumps, andyou will find the sly fellow’s foot-prints,with here and there a few wing marksin the snow, where some wary old birdhas sprung up before him. Or perhaps afew scattering feathers tell a sadder tale.

But look! see that sharp, decidedtrack in the snow, No barnyard fowlever left as clean-cut an autograph asthat—how free, and wild, and independ-ent. In it you can see the hardy Vikingspirit of the true child of the North, thebird of the mountain, and evergreenforest. This fellow was apparently outfor a breakfast; here he nipped a birchbud, here the scarlet twinkle of a winter-green berry caught his eye. His trackslead to that clump just beyond the be cited.brook, possibly he has two or threefriends there with him. You go this side,I’ll go that, Twit—Twit! whir—whir—!How the loose snow flies, there he goes!Quick! see the feathers! He made abold attempt, but the old Parker wastoo true for him. There goes another!he ’s too far away! How his c lean,brown form shoots along, as he makesfor the old hemlock grove on the hill-top. We may find him there later.

Now we splash up this brook betweenthe hemlock c lu s t e r s . The ru f f ed

fond of a place whence he has not fargrouse, like many that hunt him, seems

to go for a drink. Careful! There isa likely looking spot, behind that de-cayed knotty log, half-hidden ’mid thesmall evergreens. Buzz! Never mindif you can’t see him! shoot through thebushes anyway. Always take everychance. Missed him? what of that? Theman that never misses a ruffed grouse,is one that never shoots before witnesses.

And now we follow the birds thathave escaped, up the slope to yonderhill-top, where a grove of giant hemlockshave murmured to one another, in far-away voices, through generations—shrieking and cracking with the tem-

pest, moaning with the autumn windor mingling their whisper with theinsects’ hum on summer evenings. Buthere we are among them. Quite aclimb. It isn’t such a cold day after all.Now watch closely the lower limbs andstubs of the large trees. Oh, you thoughtthat was an upright knot until it skim-med away? Never mind! he ’ l l t reeagain. There he goes! you’d have hithim that time, if he hadn’t put that bigtree between you? Probably, but thatis a frequent trick of his. His grouseinstinct seems to tell him that the op-posite side of a tree is the safer, anotherlesson he has likely learned from humanexample. Look up in that shaggy, oldhemlock, fifty yards away! Third limbup, close to the trunk. Half-screenedfrom view by that small twig, there hesits, straight and immovable, as thougha part of the branch. Softly! that im-movable appearance changes, at slight-est notice, to the most exaggerated mo-tion. Well done! That was a shot tobe proud of. The flight of a ruffedgrouse, as he hums from a high limband darts down a hillside, is about thebest example of unexampled celerity to

But now we come to a steep-sidedravine, where a small but swift brookdashes along between two high woodedridges. My companion plunges intothe thick undergrowth, along the top ofthe ridge, while I follow a sort of wood-path that winds along the bank of thestream. Wood-life is always thickestnear the springs and streams. To-daythe new fallen snow is a sheet whereonthe va r ious a c t s and deeds o f theprowlers of the night and early morningare most plainly recorded. Who wouldhave thought the old woods contained sogreat a variety of winter residents.When did you ever see one of thosewood-mice, whose tracks are stitchedacross the snow in every direction? Butfor this mark of their existence youwould never know you had such neigh-bors. Reynard knows them, however.His carefully-made footprints yonderindicate the deep interest he takes intheir welfare, possibly he also had aneye on that series of incipient isoscelestriangles, that some little gray rabbitleft behind him in the snow. Ah!there is the place where two orthree old crows came down to geta d r ink , r emarked conce rn ing the

T H E L A S T R I D E O F T H E S E A S O N . 217

chances of a severe winter, and thentook a view of the landscape, fromthe dead top of that maple on thehill (yonder, in order to see if theirpresence was required at the inquest ofsome defunct cow, or other unburiedvictim of age or circumstance. But mymind is suddenly diverted from thisfascinating sort of “track inspecting,”by the report of my companion’s gunhigh up on the ridge. If he missed hisbird there is a chance it may come thisway—there—one hundred feet in air—wings set—feathers compressed, appar-ently to make as small a mark of itselfas possible, shooting across the ravinelike a bullet. Well! here goes for luck.Fifteen feet ahead is not an inch toomuch. Hurrah! that brought him.His speed was such that he drops halfway up the opposite hill, while a hand-ful of fine feathers drifting down throughthe fading light show how hard he wash i t . A h i t l i ke tha t makes up fo rtwenty misses. What sportsman knowsnot the wild joyous thrill that followssuch a clean shot! A minute before youwere tired, your feet seemed bound tostumble against every root and stub in

the woods, you began to think huntingwas losing its interest, you didn’t seejust what you came to-day for anyway.Then the whir—the successful shot, andyour muscles are springs, your feetscarce touch the ground, your triumphbreaks forth in a shout. Could thephilosophers but grasp and make tangi-ble this passing thrill, they need seekno further for the elixir of life. Thisexultation of a moment made enduringthrough an eternity of time must be theecstatic existence the Red Man’s imagin-ation pictures to him in his visions ofthe Happy Hunting Grounds.

But as I scramble up the hillside andpick up my victim (a cock grouse whoselong glossy ruffs and goodly proportionsproclaim him an old inhabitant of thecover) the last rays of the setting sunfade away, and the gray chill of thewinter twilight brings our hunt to aclose. The farmhouse windows beginto twinkle across the snow, and, as withgame bags far more comfortably filledthan our stomachs, we tramp homeward,from some dark corner of the woodsbehind us a weird-voiced owl “does tothe moon complain.”

THE LAST RIDE OF THE SEASON.

BY GRACE E. DENISON.

IT was on one of A merry duetto of laughter respondedthose unusual- to the impossible beautitude of thely mild sunnym o r n i n g s

thought, as we, he and I, raced up stairsfor broad-soled shoes, cycling costume,

which came at etc., and in leas time than it seems pos-the end of the sible, were standing on the boulevardy e a r , t h a t w e beside our wheels, dusting, oiling, tight-stood on the door- ening, testing, pulling and pushing, asstep and deliber- is the fashion among wheelmen andated as to how women, preparatory to a long countrywe should spend excursion.our holiday. Two leaves dangled dejectedly on the

“Shall we go to bare maple tree, the brown boulevardthe matinée?” suggested the better-half. was swept clean for winter, the air was

“Not much; too nice outdoors.” faintly cooled with a suggestion of com-“Say, let’s go for a good long country

ride.”ing frigidity, the sun—all far a-south—shone gallantly, bird-notes were silent,

“Ah!” (the little woman’s face bright- summer joy was done but the smoothened like a spring sunrise) “just the hard road stretched out enticingly,thing! I believe we shall wheel right and the dear wheels glinted smilesthrough Christmas this year, eh?” from every nickel-plated nut and bar.

Painted for Outing by Hermann Simon. See article, “Still-Hunting Grouse on Snow.” (p. 215.)

“well done.”