et away from the cabin when the weather was
fine. One day, taking Hoag's gun, he travelled up the nearest stream for
a mile, and came on a big beaver pond. Round this he scouted and soon
discovered a drowned beaver, held in a trap which he recognized at once,
for it had the (" ' "') mark on the frame. Then he found an empty trap
with a beaver leg in it, and another, till six traps were found. Then
he gathered up the six and the beaver, and returned to the cabin to be
greeted with a string of complaints:

"Ye didn't ought to leave me like this. I'm paying ye well enough. I
don't ax no favours," etc.

"See what I got," and Rolf showed the beaver. "An' see what I found;"
then he showed the traps. "Queer, ain't it," he went on, "we had six
traps just like them, and I marked the face just like these, and they
all disappeared, and there was a snowshoe trail pointing this way. You
haven't got any crooked neighbours about here, have you?"

The trapper looked sulky and puzzled, and grumbled, "I bet it was Bill
Hawkins done it"; then relapsed into silence.

Chapter 47. Hoag's Home-coming

When it comes to personal feelin's better let yer friends
do the talkin' and jedgin'. A man can't handle his own
case any more than a delirious doctor kin give hisself the
right physic--Sayings of Si Sylvanne.

The coming of springtime in the woods is one of the gentlest, sweetest
advents in the world. Sometimes there are heavy rains which fill all the
little rivers with an overflood that quickly eats away the ice and snow,
but usually the woodland streams open, slowly and gradually. Very rarely
is there a spate, an upheaval, and a cataclysmal sweep that bursts the
ice and ends its reign in an hour or two. That is the way of the large
rivers, whose ice is free and floating. The snow in the forest melts
slowly, and when the ice is attacked, it goes gradually, gently, without
uproar. The spring comes in the woods with swelling of buds and a
lengthening of drooping catkins, with honking of wild geese, and cawing
of crows coming up from the lower countries to divide with their larger
cousins, the ravens, the spoils of winter's killing.

The small birds from the South appear with a few short notes of spring,
and the pert chicadees that have braved it all winter, now lead the
singing with their cheery "I told you so" notes, till robins and
blackbirds join in, and with their more ambitious singing make all the
lesser ro