tall youth who neither stirred nor made any sound.

Another bird, hidden behind an immense leaf, began to pour forth the
full notes of a chattering, mocking song, almost like the voice of a
human being. Henry liked it, too, although he knew the bird was flinging
him a pretty defiance. It belonged in his world. It was fitting that one
singer, many singers, should live in his wilderness and sing for him.

A gray squirrel, its saucy tail curved over its back, ran lightly up an
oak, perched on a bough and gazed at him with a challenging, red eye.
Henry gave back his look, and laughed in the silent manner of the
border. He had no wish to hurt the swaggering little fellow. His heart
was bare of ill will against anything.

A deep, clear creek flowed at the base of the hill, and a fish, snapping
at a fly, leaped clear of the water, making a silver streak in the air,
gone in an instant as he fell back into the stream. The glimpse pleased
Henry. It, too, was a part of his kingdom, stocked with fur, fin and
feather, beyond that of any other king, and far more vast.

The brilliant sunlight over his head began to dim and darken. He looked
up. The van of a host, the wild pigeons flying northward appeared, and
then came the great wide column, millions and millions of birds,
returning from their winter in the south. He had seen the huge flights
before, but the freshness and zest of the sight never wore away. No
matter how far they came nor how far they went they would still be
flying over his forest empire. And then would come the great flocks of
wild ducks and wild geese, winging swiftly like an arrow toward the
north. They, too, were his, and again he took long, deep breaths of a
delight so keen that it made his pulses leap.

From the wood at the base of the hill came a crackling sound as of
something breaking, and then the long crash of a tree falling. He went a
little way down the slope and his moccasins made no sound in the grass.
Gently pulling aside the bough of a sheltering bush he saw the beavers
at work. Already they were measuring for lengths the tree they had cut
through at the base with their long, sharp teeth.

The creek here received a tributary brook of considerable volume, and
the dam erected by the beavers had sent the waters far back in a tiny
sheet like a little lake. But as Henry saw, they were going to raise the
dam higher, and they were working with the intelligence and energy that
belong so peculiarly to t