Thus I was not alone; here was good company and plenty of it.  I never lack a companion in the woods when I can pick up a trail.  The ’possum and I ate together.  And this was just the fellowship I needed, this sharing the persimmons with the ’possum.  I had broken bread, not with the ’possum only, but with all the out-of-doors.  I was now fit to enter the woods, for I was filled with good-will and persimmons, as full as the ’possum; and putting myself under his gentle guidance, I got down upon the ground, took up his clumsy trail, and descended toward the swamp.  Such an entry is one of the particular joys of the winter.  To go in with a fox, a mink, or a ’possum through the door of the woods is to find yourself at home.  Any one can get inside the out-of-doors, as the grocery boy or the census man gets inside our houses.  You can bolt in at any time on business.  A trail, however, is Nature’s invitation.  There may be other, better beaten paths for mere feet.  But go softly with the ’possum, and at the threshold you are met by the spirit of the wood, you are made the guest of the open, silent, secret out-of-doors.

I went down with the ’possum.  He had traveled home in leisurely fashion and without fear, as his tracks plainly showed.  He was full of persimmons.  A good happy world this, where such fare could be had for the picking!  What need to hurry home, except one were in danger of falling asleep by the way?  So I thought, too, as I followed his winding path; and if I was tracking him to his den, it was only to wake him for a moment with the compliments of the season.  But it was not even a momentary disturbance; for when I finally found him in his hollow gum, he was sound asleep, and only half realized that some one was poking him gently in the ribs and wishing him a merry Christmas.

The ’possum had led me to the center of the empty, hollow swamp, where the great-boled gums lifted their branches like a timbered, unshingled roof between me and the wide sky.  Far away through the spaces of the rafters I saw a pair of wheeling buzzards and, under them, in lesser circles, a broad-winged hawk.  Here, at the feet of the tall, clean trees, looking up through the leafless limbs, I had something of a measure for the flight of the birds.  The majesty and the mystery of the distant buoyant wings were singularly impressive.

I have seen the turkey-buzzard sailing the skies on the bitterest winter days.  To-day, however, could hardly be called winter.  Indeed, nothing yet had felt the pinch of the cold.  There was no hunger yet in the swamp, though this new snow had scared the raccoons out, and their half-human tracks along the margin of the swamp stream showed that, if not hungry, they at least feared that they might be.