ever echoed across the pond, a stroke that
sent the spray flying in every direction, and that might have been heard
three-quarters of a mile away. His wife heard it, and paused in her work
of felling a tree; the children heard it, and the neighbors heard it;
and they all knew it meant business. The Beaver dived like a loon and
swam for dear life, and he did not come to the surface again till he had
reached the farther end of the pond and was out of sight behind a grassy
point. There he stayed, now and then striking the water with his tail
as a signal that the danger was not yet over. It isn't every animal that
can use his caudal appendage as a stool, as a rudder, as a third hind
leg, as a trowel for smoothing the floor of his house, and as a tocsin
for alarming his fellow-citizens.

The naturalist roosted in the tree till his teeth were chattering and he
was fairly blue with cold, and then he scrambled down and went back to
his camp, where he had a violent chill. The next night it rained, and as
he did not want to get wet there was nothing to do but stay in his tent.
When he visited the pond again the dam had been repaired and the water
was up to its usual level. He decided that watching beavers wasn't very
interesting, hardly worth the trouble it cost; and he guessed he knew
enough about them, anyhow. So the next day he packed up his camping
outfit and went home.

In the following year the population was increased to eighteen, for six
more babies arrived in our Beaver's lodge, and four in his neighbors'.
In another twelvemonth the first four were old enough to build lodges
and found homes of their own; and so the city grew, and our Beaver and
his wife were the original inhabitants, the first settlers, the most
looked-up-to of all the citizens. You are not to suppose, however, that
the Beaver was mayor of the town. There was no city government. The
family was the unit, and each household was a law unto itself. But that
did not keep him from being the oldest, the wisest, the most knowing of
all the beavers in the community, just as his father had been before him
in another town.

I don't believe you care to hear all about the years that followed. They
were years of peace and growth, of marriages and homebuilding, of many
births and a few deaths, of winter rest and summer labor, and of quiet
domestic happiness. There was little excitement, and, best of all, there
were no trappers. The time came when the Beaver might we