I know my voice frightens House People, but let them pity me and point their guns at something else." "Short and to the point! Acquitted!" said the Eagle.

"Snowy Owl, it is your turn." This beautiful white Owl, marked here and there with black bars and spots, had a smooth round head like a snowball, great yellow eyes, and thickly feathered feet; his bill and claws were black, but you could hardly see them for the thickness of the feathers in which they were muffled up.

He winked with each eye, clicked Iris bill once or twice, and thus began: [Illustration: Snowy Owl.] "I'm a very good-looking bird, as you see--fatally beautiful, in fact; for House People shoot me, not on account of my sins, but because I can be stuffed and sold for an ornament.

I do not stay long enough in the parts of the country where they live, to do much harm, even were I a wicked Owl.

My home is in Arctic regions, where my feather-lined nest rests on the ground, and even in winter I come into the United States only when driven by snowstorms from the North.
"At home I live chiefly on lemmings, which are a sort of clumsy, short-tailed field-mice, not good for anything but to be eaten.