"I took it up just as a fancy, but as the years went by it became a habit that grew on me more and more.

Yes, I have had an amazing lot of pleasure out of my observations.

As the good wife here will tell you, I've spent hours on hours at night, hidden in the woods, with a light fixed on some nest of a muskrat or gopher or fox, just to learn what the cunning little varmint did betimes; when of rights I should have been in my bed getting rested for another hard day's labor at my forge." "His holidays have always been taken up in the same way," interrupted Mrs.Winslow, smiling lovingly at her husband, whose heart she evidently could read as though it were a printed book.

"At first I begrudged him the time, but later on I knew it was taking his thoughts away from subjects that we were trying to keep out of our minds, and I never tried to hold him back." "It was my study of the habits of these small animals and birds that gave me what little faculty I may possess for prophesying the weather ahead," continued the old man.

"They seldom, if ever, go wrong.