Bowser was not afraid to be out at night as some folks are.  Goodness, no!  In fact, on many a moonlight night Bowser had hunted Reddy Fox or Granny Fox all night long.  Never once had he felt lonesome then.  But now it was very, very different.  You see, on those nights when he had hunted he always had known where he was.  He had known that at any time he could go straight home if he wanted to.  That made all the difference in the world.

It would have been bad enough, being lost this way, had he been feeling at his best.  Being lost always makes one feel terribly lonesome.  Lonesomeness is one of the worst parts of the feeling of being lost.  But added to this was the fact that Bowser was really not in fit condition to be out at all.  He was wet, tired, lame and hungry.  Do you wonder that he whimpered and whined as he limped along over the hard snow, and hadn’t the least idea whether he was headed towards home or deeper into the great woods?

For a long time he kept on until it seemed to him he couldn’t drag one foot after another.  Then quite suddenly something big and dark loomed up in front of him.  It really wasn’t as big as it seemed.  It was a little house, a sugar camp, just such a one as Farmer Brown has near his home.  Bowser crept to the door.  It was closed.  Bowser sniffed and sniffed and his heart sank, for there was no scent of human beings.  Then he knew that that little house was deserted and empty.  Still he whined and scratched at the door.  By and by the door opened ever so little, for it had not been locked.

Bowser crept in.  In one corner he found some hay, and in this he curled up.  It was cold, very cold, but not nearly as cold as outside that little house.  So Bowser curled up in the hay and shivered and shook and slept a little and wished with all his might that he never had found the tracks of Old Man Coyote.

CHAPTER VI

THE SURPRISE OF BLACKY THE CROW

    The harder it is to follow a trail
    The greater the reason you should not fail.

    Bowser the Hound.

At all seasons of the year Blacky the Crow is something of a traveler.  But in winter he is much more of a traveler than in summer.  You see, in winter it is not nearly so easy to pick up a living.  Food is quite as scarce for Blacky the Crow in winter as for any of the other little people who neither sleep the winter away nor go south.  All of the feathered folks have to work and work hard to find food enough to keep them warm.  You know it is food that makes heat in the body.

So in the winter Blacky is in the habit of flying long distances in search of food.  He often goes some miles from the thick hemlock-tree in the Green Forest where he spends his nights.  You may see him starting out early in the morning and returning late in the afternoon.

Now Blacky knew all about that river into which Bowser the Hound had fallen.  There was a certain place on that river where Jack Frost never did succeed in making ice.  Sometimes things good to eat would be washed up along the edge of this open place.  Blacky visited it regularly.  He was on the way there now, flying low over the tree-tops.