ch his left
ear with his right hind foot. He went about his task with such zeal
that in a very few minutes his fur was as fluffy and exquisite as that
of a boudoir kitten. Then he rubbed his face, eyes, and ears
vigorously with both forepaws at once in a half-childish fashion,
sitting up on his hind-quarters as he did so. This done, he flicked
his tail sharply two or three times, touched his mate lightly with his
nose, and scurried up to the little sleeping-chamber. Something less
than a foot above his head the winter gale howled, ripped the
snow-flurries, lashed the bushes, sent the snapped twigs hurtling
through the bare branches, turned every naked sod to stone. But to the
sleeping muskrat all the outside sound and fury came but as a murmur
of Jun trees.

His mate, meanwhile, was gobbling the lily-root as if she had not
eaten for a week. Sitting up like a squirrel, and clutching the end of
the root with both little forepaws, she crushed the white esculent
into her mouth and gnawed at it ravenously with the keen chisels of
her teeth. The root was as long as herself, and its weight perhaps a
sixth of her own. Yet when it was all eaten she wanted more. There
were other pieces stored in the chamber; and indeed the whole house
itself was in great part edible, being built largely of such roots and
grasses as the muskrat loves to feed on. But such stores were for
emergency use. She could forage for herself at present. Diving down
the main passage she presently issued from the water-gate, and
immediately rose to the clear-roofed air-space. Here she nibbled
tentatively at some stems and withered leafage. These proving little
to her taste, she suddenly remembered a clam-bed not far off, and
instantly set out for it. She swam briskly down-stream along the
air-space, her eyes and nose just out of the water, the ice gleaming
silvery above her head.

She had travelled in this position perhaps fifty yards when she saw,
some twelve or fifteen feet ahead of her, a lithe, dark, slender
figure with a sharp-nosed, triangular head, squeeze itself over a
projecting root which almost touched the ice. The stranger was no
larger than herself,--but she knew it was not for her to try
conclusions with even the smallest of minks. Catching a good lungful
of air, she dived on the instant, down, down, to the very bed of the
creek, and out to mid-channel.

The mink, eagerly desirous of a meal of muskrat-meat, dived also,
heading outward to inte