them. The bears
seemed to be more numerous, but they were very shy and retiring. We
found their tracks more often than we came upon the animals themselves.
Some of the cat tribe remained, and occasionally placed themselves in
evidence. My brother came in one day from a long tramp on snow-shoes,
and told how he had met one of them standing guard over the remains of a
deer, and how the lynx had held him up and made him go around. Beavers
were getting scarce, though a few were still left on the more secluded
streams. Deer, on the contrary, were very plentiful. Many a time they
invaded our garden-patch and helped themselves to our fresh vegetables._

_One August afternoon a flock of eight young partridges, of that
spring's hatching, coolly marched out of the woods and into the
clearing, as if they were bent on investigating their new neighbors.
Partridges appear to be subject to occasional fits of stupidity, and to
temporary (or possibly permanent) loss of common-sense; but it may be
that in this case the birds were too young and inexperienced to realize
what they were doing. Or perhaps they knew that it was Sunday, and that
the rules of the household forbade shooting on that day. If so, their
confidence was sadly misplaced. We didn't shoot them, but we did
surround them, and by working carefully and cautiously we "shooed" them
into an empty log-house. And the next day we had them for dinner._

_Around the shores of the Glimmerglass a few loons and wild-ducks
usually nested, and in the autumn the large flocks from the Far North
often stopped there for short visits, on their way south for the winter.
They were more sociable than you would suppose--or at least the loons
were--and the same small girl who had made friends with the red-squirrel
learned to talk to the big birds._

_Down in the water the herring and a large species of salmon trout made
their homes, and probably enjoyed themselves till they met with the
gill-net and the trolling-hook. But herring and salmon trout did not
satisfy us; we wanted brook trout, too. And so one day a shipment of
babies arrived from the hatchery at Sault Ste. Marie, and thus we first
became acquainted with the habits of infant fishes, and learned
something of their needs and the methods of their foster-parents._

_One after another our neighbors introduced themselves, each in his own
way. And they were good neighbors, all of them. Even the porcupines and
the skunks were interesting--in