He took three or four steps and Peter saw right away how very useful those snowshoes were. "My!" he exclaimed. "I wish Old Mother Nature would give me snowshoes too." Strutter and Jumper both laughed and after a second Peter laughed with them, for he realized how impossible it would be for him to have anything like those snowshoes of Strutter's.

"Cousin Peter was just saying that he should think I would find it lonesome over here in the Green Forest. He forgot that you and Mrs. Grouse stay all winter, and he forgot that while most of the birds who spent the summer here have left, there are others who come down from the Far North to take their place."

"Who, for instance?" demanded Peter.

"Snipper the Crossbill," replied Jumper promptly. "I haven't seen him yet this winter, but I know he is here because only this morning I found some pine seeds on the snow under a certain tree."

"Huh!" Peter exclaimed. "That doesn't prove anything. Those seeds might have just fallen, or Chatterer the Red Squirrel might have dropped them."