commodation train rolled in and came to a halt. He tried to hide
behind a stump, but the trainmen caught sight of him, and before he knew
it they had shoved him into an empty box and hoisted him into the
baggage-car. They turned him loose among the passengers on the station
platform at Sault Ste. Marie, and his arrival created a sensation.

When the first excitement had subsided, all the girls in the crowd
declared that they must have some quills for souvenirs, and all the
young men set to work to procure them, hoping to distinguish themselves
by proving their superiority in strength and courage over this poor
little twenty-pound beast just out of the woods. Most of them succeeded
in getting some quills, and also in acquiring some painful
experience--especially the one who attempted to lift the Porcupine by
the tail, and who learned that that interesting member is the very
hottest and liveliest portion of the animal's anatomy. They finally
discovered that the best way to get quills from a live porcupine is to
hit him with a piece of board. The sharp points penetrate the wood and
stick there, the other ends come loose from his skin, and there you have
them. Our friend lost most of his armor that day, and it was a good
thing for him that departed quills, like clipped hair, will renew
themselves in the course of time.

One of the brakemen carried him home, and he spent the next few months
in the enjoyment of city life. Whether he found much pleasure in it is,
perhaps, a question, but I am rather inclined to think that he did. He
had plenty to eat, and he learned that apples are very good indeed, and
that the best way to partake of them is to sit up on your haunches and
hold them between your forepaws. He also learned that men are not always
to be regarded as enemies, for his owner and his owner's children were
good to him and soon won his confidence. But, after all, the city was
not home, and the woods were; so he employed some of his spare time in
gnawing a hole through the wall in a dark corner of the shed where he
was confined, and one night he scrambled out and hid himself in an empty
barn. A day or two later he was in the forest again.

The remaining years of his life were spent on the banks of St. Mary's
River, and for the most part they were years of quietness and
contentment. He was far from his early home, but the bark of a birch or
a maple or a hemlock is much the same on St. Mary's as by the
Glimmerglass. He g