Part 1

+--------------------------------------------+ | 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.

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.

The scurrying hens stopped to look about them. There was nothing in the sky to see. They stood still and silent a moment. The rooster chucked. Then one by one they turned back into the open pasture. A huddled group under the hen-yard fence broke up and came out with the others. Death had flashed among them, but had missed them. Fear had come, but had gone. Within two minutes--in less time--from the fall of the stroke, every hen in the flock was intent at her scratching, or as intently chasing the gray grasshoppers over the pasture.

Yet, as they scratched, the high-stepping cock would frequently cast up his eye toward the treetops; would sound his alarum at the flight of a robin; and if a crow came over, he would shout and dodge and start to run. But instantly the shadow would pass, and instantly chanticleer--