when she climbs up big and round and bright, there is no surety of a
fruitful excursion before the frosts fall. In the summer the animals
are worn with home cares and doubly wary for their young; the grass is
high, the trees dark, and the yielding green is silent under even so
clumsy a crawler as the box-turtle. But by October the hum of insects
is stilled, the meadows are mown, the trees and bushes are getting
bare, the moon pours in unhindered, and the crisp leaves crackle and
rustle under the softest-padded foot.
[Illustration: leaves]
End of Project Gutenberg's A Watcher in The Woods, by Dallas Lore Sharp