he found ample compensation in the fact that
here was one of the much-discussed and sometimes doubted canals,
actually in process of construction. He knew he could outdo the
beavers in their own game of wariness and watchfulness. He made up his
mind he would lie out that very night, on the hillside close by--and
so patiently, so unstirringly, that the beavers would never suspect
the eager eyes that were upon them.

All around him, on the nearer slopes, were evidences of the purpose
for which the canal was designed, as well as of the diligence with
which the little people of the pond were labouring to get in their
winter stores. From this diligence, so early in the season, the Boy
argued an early and severe winter. He found trees of every size up to
two feet in diameter cleanly felled, and stripped of their branches.
With two or three exceptions--probably the work of young beavers
unskilled in their art--the trees were felled unerringly in the
direction of the water, so as to minimize the labour of dragging down
the cuttings. Close to the new part of the canal, he found the tree
whose falling he and Jabe had heard the night before. It was a tall
yellow birch, fully twenty inches through at the place where it was
cut, some fifteen inches from the ground. The cutting was still fresh
and sappy. About half the branches had been gnawed off and trimmed,
showing that the beavers, after being disturbed by the Boy's visit to
the dam, had returned to work later in the night. Much of the smaller
brush, from the top, had been cleared away and dragged down to the
edge of the canal. As the Boy knew, from what trappers and woodsmen
had told him, this brush, and a lot more like it, would all be
anchored in a huge pile in mid-channel, a little above the dam, where
it would serve the double purpose of breaking the force of the floods
and of supplying food through the winter.

Very near the newly felled birch the Boy found another large tree
about half cut through; and he vowed to himself that he would see the
finish of that job that very night. He found the cutting done pretty
evenly all around the tree, but somewhat lower and deeper on the side
next to the water. In width the cut was less than that which a good
axeman would make--because the teeth of a beaver are a more frugal
cutting instrument than the woodsman's axe, making possible a
straighter and less wasteful cut. At the foot of this tree he picked
up chips fully eight inches in