better than
anything else; and this fellow had caught some of the colony, no
doubt, in the well-fed autumn days, as they worked on their dam and
houses. Sharp hunger made him remember them as he came through the
wood on his nightly hunt after hares. He knew well that the beavers
were safe; that months of intense cold had made their two-foot mud
walls like granite. But he came, nevertheless, just to pretend he had
caught one, and to remember how good his last full meal smelled when
he ate it in October.

It was all so boylike, so unexpected there in the heart of the
wilderness, that I quite forgot that I wanted the lynx's skin. I was
hungry too, and went out for a sniff at the ventilator; and it smelled
good. I remembered the time once when I had eaten beaver, and was glad
to get it. I walked about among the houses. On every dome there were
lynx tracks, old and new, and the prints of a blunt nose in the snow.
Evidently he came often to dine on the smell of good dinners. I looked
the way he had gone, and began to be sorry for him. But there were the
beavers, safe and warm and fearless within two feet of me, listening
undoubtedly to the strange steps without. And that was good; for they
are the most interesting creatures in all the wilderness.

Most of us know the beaver chiefly in a simile. "Working like a
beaver," or "busy as a beaver," is one of those proverbial
expressions that people accept without comment or curiosity. It is
about one-third true, which is a generous proportion of truth for a
proverb. In winter, for five long months at least, he does nothing but
sleep and eat and keep warm. "Lazy as a beaver" is then a good figure.
And summer time--ah! that's just one long holiday, and the beavers are
jolly as grigs, with never a thought of work from morning till night.
When the snow is gone, and the streams are clear, and the twitter of
bird songs meets the beaver's ear as he rises from the dark passage
under water that leads to his house, then he forgets all settled
habits and joins in the general heyday of nature. The well built house
that sheltered him from storm and cold, and defied even the wolverine
to dig its owner out, is deserted for any otter's den or chance hole
in the bank where he may sleep away the sunlight in peace. The great
dam, upon which he toiled so many nights, is left to the mercy of the
freshet or the canoeman's axe; and no plash of falling water through a
break--that sound which in autumn or