THE WOODCHUCK

Chancing to pass a besmirched April snowbank on the border of a hollow, you see it marked with the footprints of an old acquaintance of whom for months you have not seen even so much as this.

It is not that he made an autumnal pilgrimage, slowly following the swift birds and the retreating sun, that you had no knowledge of him, but because of his home-keeping, closer than a hermit's seclusion. These few cautious steps, venturing but half way from his door to the tawny naked grass that is daily edging nearer to his threshold, are the first he has taken abroad since the last bright lingering leaf fluttered down in the Indian summer haze, or perhaps since the leaves put on their first autumnal tints.

He had seen all the best of the year, the blooming of the first flowers, the springing of the grass and its growth, the gathering of the harvests and the ripening of fruits, and possibly the gorgeousness of autumn melting into sombre gray. He had heard all the glad songs of all the birds and the sad notes of farewell of bobolink and plover to their summer home; he had seen the swallows depart and had heard the droning of the bumblebee among the earliest and latest of his own clover blossoms. All the best the world had to give in the round of her seasons, luxuriant growth to feed upon, warm sunshine to bask in, he had enjoyed; of her worst, he would have none.

So he bade farewell to the gathering desolation of the tawny fields and crept closer to the earth's warm heart to sleep through the long night of winter, till the morning of spring. The wild scurry of wind-tossed leaves swept above him unheard, and the pitiless beat of autumnal rain and the raging of winter storms that heaped the drifts deeper and deeper over his forsaken door. The bitterness of cold, that made the furred fox and the muffled owl shiver, never touched him in his warm nest. So he shirked the hardships of winter without the toil of a journey in pursuit of summer, while the starved fox prowled in the desolate woods and barren fields, the owl hunted beneath the cold stars, and the squirrel delved in the snow for his meagre fare.

By and by the ethereal but potent spirit of spring stole in where the frost-elves could not enter, and awakening the earth awakened him. Not by a slow and often impeded invasion of the senses, but as by the sudden opening of a door, he sees the naked earth again warming herself in the sun, and hears running water and singing birds. No wonder that with such surprise the querulous tremolo of his whistle is sharply mingled with these softer voices.

Day by day as he sees the sun-loved banks blushing greener, he ventures further forth to visit neighbors or watch his clover, or dig a new home in a more favored bank, or fortify himself in some rocky stronghold where boys and dogs may not enter. Now, the family may be seen moving, with no burden of furniture or provision, but only the mother with her gray cubs, carried as a cat carries her kittens, one by one to the new home among the fresher clover.

On the mound of newly digged earth before it, is that erect, motionless, gray and russet form a half decayed stump uprising where no tree has grown within your memory? You move a little nearer to inspect the strange anomaly, and lo! it vanishes, and you know it was your old acquaintance, the woodchuck, standing guard at his door and overlooking his green and blossoming domain.

Are you not sorry, to-day at least, to hear the boys and the dog besieging him in his burrow or in the old stone wall wherein he has taken sanctuary? Surely, the first beautiful days of his open-air life should not be made so miserable that he would wish himself asleep again in the safety and darkness of winter. But you remember that you were once a boy, and your sympathies are divided between the young savages and their intended prey, which after all is likelier than not to escape.

He will tangle the meadow-grass and make free with the bean patch if he chances upon it, yet you are glad to see the woodchuck, rejoicing like yourself in the advent of spring.