All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better.  At night I hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain.  In summer it is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but in winter always the same low, sullen growl.

A severe artist!  No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel.  When the nights are calm and the moon full, I go out to gaze upon the wonderful purity of the moonlight and the snow.  The air is full of latent fire, and the cold warms me—­after a different fashion from that of the kitchen stove.  The world lies about me in a “trance of snow.”  The clouds are pearly and iridescent, and seem the farthest possible remove from the condition of a storm,—­the ghosts of clouds, the indwelling beauty freed from all dross.  I see the hills, bulging with great drifts, lift themselves up cold and white against the sky, the black lines of fences here and there obliterated by the depth of the snow.  Presently a fox barks away up next the mountain, and I imagine I can almost see him sitting there, in his furs, upon the illuminated surface, and looking down in my direction.  As I listen, one answers him from behind the woods in the valley.  What a wild winter sound, wild and weird, up among the ghostly hills!  Since the wolf has ceased to howl upon these mountains, and the panther to scream, there is nothing to be compared with it.  So wild!  I get up in the middle of the night to hear it.  It is refreshing to the ear, and one delights to know that such wild creatures are among us.  At this season Nature makes the most of every throb of life that can withstand her severity.  How heartily she indorses this fox!  In what bold relief stand out the lives of all walkers of the snow!  The snow is a great tell-tale, and blabs as effectually as it obliterates.  I go into the woods, and know all that has happened.  I cross the fields, and if only a mouse has visited his neighbor, the fact is chronicled.

The red fox is the only species that abounds in my locality; the little gray fox seems to prefer a more rocky and precipitous country, and a less rigorous climate; the cross fox is occasionally seen, and there are traditions of the silver gray among the oldest hunters.  But the red fox is the sportsman’s prize, and the only fur-bearer worthy of note in these mountains.[1] I go out in the morning, after a fresh fall of snow, and see at all points where he has crossed the road.  Here he has leisurely passed within rifle-range of the house, evidently reconnoitring the premises with an eye to the hen-roost.  That clear, sharp track,—­there is no mistaking it for the clumsy footprint of a little dog.  All his wildness and agility are photographed in it.  Here he has taken fright, or suddenly recollected an engagement, and in long, graceful leaps, barely touching the fence, has gone careering up the hill as fleet as the wind.

     [Footnote 1:  A spur of the Catskills.]