e grass roots; and here the muskrat paused, head and shoulders
half out of water, to take breath. He was panting heavily, having come
a long way under water without stopping to empty and refill his
long-suffering little lungs. Two inches over his head, on the other
side of the ice, the thin, hard snow went driving and swirling, and he
could hear the alders straining under the bitter wind. His little,
bead-bright eyes, set deep in his furry face, gleamed with
satisfaction over his comfortable security.

Having fully eased his lungs, the muskrat dived again to the bottom,
and began to gnaw with fierce energy at a snaky mass of the roots of
the yellow material. Having cut off a section about as long as
himself, and more than an inch in thickness, he tugged at it fiercely
to loosen the fibres which held it to the bottom. But this particular
piece was more firmly anchored than he had expected to find it, and
presently, feeling as if his lungs would burst, he was obliged to
ascend to the air-space under the ice for a new breath. There he
puffed and panted for perhaps a minute. But he had no thought of
relinquishing that piece of succulent, crisp, white-hearted lily-root.
As soon as he had rested, he swam down again, and gripping it savagely
tore it loose at the first pull. Holding the prize lengthwise that it
might not obstruct his entrance, he plunged into the hole in the bank,
the round, black water-gate to his winter house.

The house was a most comfortable and strictly utilitarian structure.
The entrance, dug with great and persistent toil from the very bottom
of the bank, for the better discouragement of the muskrat's deadliest
enemy, the mink, ran inward for nearly two feet, and then upward on a
long slant some five or six feet through the natural soil. At this
point the shore was dry land at the average level of the water; and
over this exit, which was dry at the time of the building, the muskrat
had raised his house.

The house was a seemingly careless, roughly rounded heap of
grass-roots, long water-weeds, lily-roots and stems, and mud, with a
few sticks woven into the foundation. The site was cunningly chosen,
so that the roots and stems of a large alder gave it secure anchorage;
and the whole structure, for all its apparent looseness, was so well
compacted as to be secure against the sweep of the spring freshets.
About six feet in diameter at the base, it rose about the same
distance from the foundation, a rude,