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The sun was well above the tree-tops, and the morning was abroad for all the furred and feathered wood-folk, when I forsook the Indian path to make a prudent circle of reconnaissance around the cabin in the maple grove. Happily, there was no need for the cautionary measure.
"You can feel and hear them all about you though they keep well hidden. A million eager eyes are watching, Lilliputian armies lie in ambush beneath the leaves. How quiet they are now that we have stopped moving, but as soon as we go on the hurry and skurry will break out afresh! We are the invading army and the fairies fly to help the wood-folk protect their homes."
No other of our wood-folk has such a facile, emotional tail as the red squirrel.
Impressed by a sense that he was not so utterly alone as he had imagined himself to be, the man now obeyed one of the wary impulses of the wood-folk. He stepped aside from the trail, feeling his way, and leaned his back against a huge birch-tree. The ragged, ancient, sweet-smelling bark felt familiar and friendly to his touch.
Man after man would snatch her up to his knee, lay by his pipe, twist her silky, yellow curls about his great blunt fingers, and whisper wood-folk tales or baby nonsense into her pink little ear. She would listen solemnly for a minute or two, then wriggle down and move on to another of her admirers.
I speak of the weasel, the least of all his family, and yet, for his size, the most bloodthirsty and widely dreaded little demon of all the countryside. His is a name to conjure with among all the lesser wood-folk; the scent of his passing brings an almost helpless paralysis.
She had a savage antipathy to the weasel tribe, whose blood-lust menaces all the lesser wood-folk, and whose teeth delight to kill, after hunger is sated, for the mere relish of a taste of quivering brain or a spurt of warm blood. The raccoon carried more scars from the victory over the weasels than she had to remind her of the scuffle with the dogs.
The trees no longer bear much fruit, but are still the homes of vast numbers of shy wood-folk. What a ringing medley greeted us as we passed. The cuckoo was calling amid his caterpillar feasting. An indigo bunting from a tall maple sang his clear, sweet notes. The silvery phrases of the orchard oriole fell on the ear like a shower of "liquid pearls."
Then they went forth by that same perilous path which Eric had trod, and Skallagrim showed him how he might pass the rock in safety. "A rough road this," said Eric as he gained the deep cleft. "Yea, lord, and, till thou camest, one that none but wood-folk have trodden."
Now he put a price on his head, as was wont to be done with other wood-folk, and thereafter rode home. Many men got saying that this was done rather by the high hand than according to law; but so it stood as it was done; and now nought else happed to tell of till past midsummer. <i>Grettir comes out to Iceland again</i>.
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