like a stuffed rag doll that Quoskh was
carrying home for his babies to play with.

Undoubtedly they liked the frog much better; but my curious thought
about them, in that brief romantic instant, gave me an interest in the
little fellows which was not satisfied till I climbed to the nest, long
afterwards, and saw them, and how they lived.

When I took to studying Quoskh, so as to know him more intimately, I
found a fascinating subject; not simply because of his queer ways, but
also because of his extreme wariness and the difficulties I met in
catching him doing things. Quoskh K'sobeqh was the name that at first
seemed most appropriate, till I had learned his habits and how best to
get the weather of him--which happened only two or three times in the
course of a whole summer.

One morning I went early to the beaver pond and sat down against a gray
stump on the shore, with berry bushes growing to my shoulders all about
me. "Now I shall keep still and see everything that comes," I thought,
"and nothing, not even a blue jay, will see me."

That was almost true. Little birds, that had never seen a man in the
woods before, came for the berries and billed them off within six feet
of my face before they noticed anything unusual. When they did see me
they would turn their heads so as to look at me, first with one eye,
then with the other, and shoot up at last, with a sharp _Burr!_ of their
tiny wings, to a branch over my head. There they would watch me keenly,
for a wink or a minute, according to their curiosity, then swoop down
and whirr their wings loudly in my face, so as to make me move and show
what I was.

Across a little arm of the pond, a stone's throw away, a fine buck came
to the water, put his muzzle into it, then began to fidget uneasily.
Some vague, subtle flavor of me floated across and made him uneasy,
though he knew not what I was. He kept tonguing his nostrils, as a cow
does, so as to moisten them and catch the scent of me better. On my
right, and nearer, a doe was feeding unconcernedly among the lily pads.
A mink ran, hopping and halting, along the shore at my feet, dodging in
and out among roots and rocks. Cheokhes always runs that way. He knows
how glistening black his coat is, how shining a mark he makes for owl
and hawk against the sandy shore; and so he never runs more than five
feet without dodging out of sight; and he always prefers the roots and
rocks that are blackest to travel on.

A kingfisher