As I write, the whole picture comes back to me again vividly; the dark, cobwebby old garret, pierced here and there by a pencil of light, in which the motes were dancing; the fierce bird down on the floor in the darkest corner, horns up, eyes gleaming, feathers all a-bristle till he looked big as a bushel basket in the dim light, standing on his game with one foot and tearing it savagely to pieces with the other, snapping his beak and gobbling up feathers, bones and all, in great hungry mouthfuls; and, over the scuttle, two or three small boys staring in eager curiosity, but clinging to each other’s coats fearfully, ready to tumble down the ladder with a yell at the first hostile demonstration.

The next afternoon I was back in the big woods to investigate.  Fifty feet behind the thicket where I had been struck was a tall dead stub overlooking a little clearing.  “That’s his watch tower,” I thought.  “While I was watching the deer, he was up there watching my head, and when it moved he swooped.”

I had no intention of giving him another flight at the same game, but hid my fur cap some distance out in the clearing, tied a long string to it, went back into the thicket with the other end of the string, and sat down to wait.  A low Whooo-hoo-hoo! came from across the valley to tell me I was not the only watcher in the woods.

Towards dusk I noticed suddenly that the top of the old stub looked a bit peculiar, but it was some time before I made out a big owl sitting up there.  I had no idea how long he had been there, nor whence he came.  His back was towards me; he sat up very straight and still, so as to make himself just a piece, the tip end, of the stub.  As I watched, he hooted once and bent forward to listen.  Then I pulled on my string.

With the first rustle of a leaf he whirled and poised forward, in the intense attitude an eagle takes when he sights the prey.  On the instant he had sighted the cap, wriggling in and out among the low bushes, and swooped for it like an arrow.  Just as he dropped his legs to strike, I gave a sharp pull, and the cap jumped from under him.  He missed his strike, but wheeled like a fury and struck again.  Another jerk, and again he missed.  Then he was at the thicket where I stood; his fierce yellow eyes glared straight into mine for a startled instant, and he brushed me with his wings as he sailed away into the shadow of the spruces.

Small doubt now that I had seen my assailant of the night before; for an owl has regular hunting grounds, and uses the same watch towers night after night.  He had seen my head in the thicket, and struck at the first movement.  Perceiving his mistake, he kept straight on over my head; so of course there was nothing in sight when I turned.  As an owl’s flight is perfectly noiseless (the wing feathers are wonderfully soft, and all the laminae are drawn out into hair points, so that the wings never whirr nor rustle like other birds’) I had heard nothing, though he passed close enough to strike, and I was listening intently.  And so another mystery of the woods was made plain by a little watching.