his snoring unmistakably proclaimed, but as soon as I moved, he woke and resentfully pecked at my face. So I lay there, miserably enough, until dawn. Jim woke of his own accord, took away his feet, which were warm by this time, yawned, stretched himself, and demanded breakfast. I took my time about preparing the meal, but Jim made such a racket with his caws of complaint that I determined to be more prompt in future. That day I barred up all the windows, and at night, after two hours of strategy that would have done credit to the commanding general of an army, I found myself in the cabin, with doors and windows locked, and Jim on the outside. He tried all the windows, but my barriers held. It was suffocatingly close in the cabin, but I knew that the chimney would furnish a draft and keep me from being poisoned by the impure air. Then a terrible thought struck me—suppose Jim should come in by the chimney route, as Kitchi-Kitchi and her friends were wont to do, and, sooty though he was, insist upon sleeping with me! This did not occur to him, however, or perhaps he knew a better way. He made night so unspeakably hideous with his loud and vociferous calling, his vicious pecks at the glass, and the beating of his wings against the door, that at last, in sheer desperation, I got up and let him in. I slept the sleep of utter exhaustion that night—with Jim’s feet on my cheek. As the weeks went by, I got used to it, though it was never pleasant. We can get used to almost anything, if we have to. I tried to find consolation in Jim’s cunning tricks, of which he had a great many. A Crow is about the most intelligent wild beast I have ever come across, and, after study, becomes fascinating. It added a pleasantly human element to my solitude in the wilderness, for Jim was as unexpected, as unreasonable, and as incomprehensible as a woman. When I planted my garden, he watched me, and afterward he dug up the seeds and ate them. By way of atonement, he brought me some crocus bulbs from somebody’s else garden. I was never able to find out where they came from and so I could not return them. He made deep excavations into my potato hills and ate the eyes out of the potatoes, passing by the Bugs, which I could never induce him to touch. He would eat the Worms I gathered to go fishing with, and afterward would caw repeatedly, with bated breath. Mosquitoes, Flies, Potato-Bugs—all these he disdained, but he would eat anything which he could eat without being of indirect use to anybody. I discovered later that after he had gorged himself with the eyes of the potatoes, so that he could not hold so much as another eyelash, he would keep on digging until he was exhausted, merely to make a nuisance of himself. I stretched a white cotton string across my dooryard, between two 

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