Rats and rabbits are his favorite food, by the way, and he never lets a chance go by of taking them into camp.  I think I never climbed to his nest without finding plenty of the fur of both animals to tell of his skill in hunting.

One evening in the twilight, as I came home from hunting in the big woods, I heard the sound of deer feeding just ahead.  I stole forward to the edge of a thicket and stood there motionless, looking and listening intently.  My cap was in my pocket, and only my head appeared above the low firs that sheltered me.  Suddenly, without noise or warning of any kind, I received a sharp blow on the head from behind, as if some one had struck me with a thorny stick.  I turned quickly, surprised and a good bit startled; for I thought myself utterly alone in the woods—­and I was.  There was nobody there.  Not a sound, not a motion broke the twilight stillness.  Something trickled on my neck; I put up my hand, to find my hair already wet with blood.  More startled than ever, I sprang through the thicket, looking, listening everywhere for sight or sound of my enemy.  Still no creature bigger than a wood mouse; no movement save that of nodding fir tips; no sound but the thumping of my own heart, and, far behind me, a sudden rush and a bump or two as the frightened deer broke away; then perfect stillness again, as if nothing had ever lived in the thickets.

I was little more than a boy; and I went home that night more puzzled and more frightened than I have ever been, before or since, in the woods.  I ran into the doctor’s office on my way.  He found three cuts in my scalp, and below them two shorter ones, where pointed things seemed to have been driven through to the bone.  He looked at me queerly when I told my story.  Of course he did not believe me, and I made no effort to persuade him.  Indeed, I scarcely believed myself.  But for the blood which stained my handkerchief, and the throbbing pain in my head, I should have doubted the reality of the whole experience.

That night I started up out of sleep, some time towards morning, and said before I was half awake:  “It was an owl that hit you on the head—­of course it was an owl!” Then I remembered that, years before, an older boy had a horned owl, which he had taken from a nest, and which he kept loose in a dark garret over the shed.  None of us younger boys dared go up to the garret, for the owl was always hungry, and the moment a boy’s head appeared through the scuttle the owl said Hoooo! and swooped for it.  So we used to get acquainted with the big pet by pushing in a dead rat, or a squirrel, or a chicken, on the end of a stick, and climbing in ourselves afterwards.