ing, careening, tumbling. To
the girl, it was a strangely ludicrous sight, but to Donald it was
familiar enough. The otters were indulging in the favorite amusement
of their kind--sliding down a snow-bank.

The two observers turned away soon, and, with exaggerated care,
made their way back to the little shanty, where Donald at once set
about mending the broken trap. In two hours' time, he had succeeded
in fixing it temporarily. Then, after wrapping Jean in her blankets
and furs on the spruce-coveted bunk, he rolled up in his own
coverings before the fire for the night.

The next morning, Donald caught a fish for breakfast, and then
returned to the otter-slide with his trap and the piece of meat he
had rescued from the pack. Baiting the trap with part of a fish,
he buried it in the snow at a point where the otter must come down
the slide to the pool. Then, he rubbed the meat in the tracks where
he had stepped, and brushed snow across them, obliterating every
trace of his presence. After that, he returned to the shanty, for
there was still much to be done.

On his way to the fish pool that morning, he had seen a number of
sharply impressed, three-toed clusters of footprints, and recognized
the tracks of the hare. Now, he searched the by-ways of the low
ground in the vicinity, and finally discovered a line of undergrowth
like a hedge, through which a passage had been forced. The hard-packed
runway told him that here the long-ears passed through on their
foraging expeditions. He cut a number of small sticks and planted
them across this opening, leaving barely enough room for a small
animal to pass. Then, he took from his pocket the string of
moose-gut that had made part of the fish-line, and fashioned it
into a running noose. This he hung across the opening, and tied
the other end to a bent twig, which would spring up immediately a
pull dislodged it from its caught position. Here, too, he carefully
effaced any man-trace, and afterward went on to the second hedge,
where he set a snare made of his moccasin strings. At noon, he
returned to his snares, and found two strangled rabbits hanging in
mid air, frozen to the consistency of granite. Releasing them, he
reset the snares, and returned jubilantly to the cabin with his
catch. . . . And they had rabbit stew that day.

This was only the beginning. It was food, and no more. As the days
passed, Donald spent many hours in the forest, chopping saplings
and underbrush for the