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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Forest Neighbors, by William Davenport
+Hulbert, Illustrated by A. R. Dugmore, Walter M. Hardy, Gleeson, and
+Arthur Hemming
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Forest Neighbors
+       Life Stories of Wild Animals
+
+
+Author: William Davenport Hulbert
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 29, 2009  [eBook #27933]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOREST NEIGHBORS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 27933-h.htm or 27933-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/7/9/3/27933/27933-h/27933-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/7/9/3/27933/27933-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+FOREST NEIGHBORS
+
+          _"And the Northern Lights come down,
+             To dance with the houseless snow;
+           And God, Who clears the grounding berg,
+             And steers the grinding floe,
+           He hears the cry of the little kit-fox,
+             And the lemming, on the snow."_
+
+          RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+[Illustration: _The Beaver Lumbering._]
+
+
+FOREST NEIGHBORS
+
+Life Stories of Wild Animals
+
+by
+
+WILLIAM DAVENPORT HULBERT
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Doubleday, Page & Co.
+Garden City
+New York
+1914
+
+Copyright, 1900, 1901, and 1902, by
+the S. S. Mcclure Co.
+
+Copyright, 1902, by
+Doubleday, Page & Co.
+
+
+
+
+          _To my Sister_
+          KATHARINE GRACE HULBERT
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                            PAGE
+
+   INTRODUCTION                               xi
+
+   THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BEAVER                   1
+
+   THE KING OF THE TROUT STREAM               41
+
+   THE STRENUOUS LIFE OF A CANADA LYNX        83
+
+   POINTERS FROM A PORCUPINE QUILL           125
+
+   THE ADVENTURES OF A LOON                  163
+
+   THE MAKING OF A GLIMMERGLASS BUCK         199
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+   The Beaver Lumbering      _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                     PAGE
+
+   "On the grass in the warm, quiet sunshine of
+       an autumn afternoon"                             6
+
+   Building the Dam                                    22
+
+   Nesting Grounds                                     62
+
+   "He tried jumping out of the water"                 72
+
+   "The hole was suddenly darkened, and a round,
+       hairy face looked in"                          100
+
+   "He was a very presentable young lynx"             110
+
+   "They both stood still and looked at each other"   120
+
+   "High up in the top of a tall hemlock"             132
+
+   "He quickly made his way to the beach"             148
+
+   "He went under as simply as you would step out
+       of bed"                                        166
+
+   "She herself was a rarely beautiful sight"         170
+
+   "The old earth sliding southward fifty miles
+       an hour"                                       180
+
+   "He was a baby to be proud of"                     202
+
+   "The buck was nearing the prime of life"           226
+
+   "Wherever they went they were always struggling
+       and fighting"                                  230
+
+
+
+
+_INTRODUCTION_
+
+
+_Some thirty years ago, while out on one of his landlooking trips in
+the woods of Northern Michigan, my father came upon a little lake which
+seemed to him the loveliest that he had ever seen, though he had visited
+many in the course of his explorations. The wild ponds are very apt to
+be shallow and muddy, with low, marshy shores; but this one was deep and
+clear, and its high banks were clothed with a splendid growth of beech,
+maple and birch. Tall elms stood guard along the water's edge, and here
+and there the hardwood forest was broken by dark hemlock groves, and
+groups of lordly pine-trees, lifting their great green heads high above
+their deciduous neighbors. Only in one place, around the extreme eastern
+end, the ground was flat and wet; and there the tamarack swamp showed
+golden yellow in October, and light, delicate green in late spring. Wild
+morning-glories grew on the grassy point that put out from the northern
+shore, and in the bays the white water-lilies were blossoming. Nearly
+two miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide, it lay basking and
+shimmering in the sunshine, a big, broad, beautiful sheet of water set
+down in the very heart of the woods._
+
+_There were no settlers anywhere near, nor even any Indians, yet there
+was no lack of inhabitants. Bears and wolves and a host of smaller
+animals were to be found, and along the shores were runways that had
+been worn deep in the soil by the tread of generation after generation
+of dainty little cloven hoofs. I suppose that some of those paths have
+been used by the deer for hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of years._
+
+_The lands around the entire lake were offered for sale by the United
+States Government at the ridiculously low price which Uncle Sam has
+asked for most of his possessions; and with the help of some friends my
+father bought the whole shore. During the years which followed he was
+occupied in various ways, and some of the best recollections of my
+boyhood are of the days and the nights which I spent with him on his
+fishing-tug, steaming about the Straits of Mackinac and the northern
+part of Lake Huron. But he could not forget the Glimmerglass, that
+little wild lake up in the woods. He had fallen in love with it at first
+sight, and at last he took his family and went there to live._
+
+_Human neighbors were scarce around the lake, and perhaps that was one
+reason why we took such a lively interest in the other residents--those
+who were there ahead of us. "Him and me's chums," my small sister said
+of the red-squirrel that hung around the log-barn. And some of the
+animals seemed to take a very lively interest in us. The chipmunks came
+into the house occasionally, on foraging expeditions; and so, I regret
+to say, did the skunks. There was a woodchuck who used to come to the
+back door, looking for scraps, and who learned to sit bolt upright and
+hold a pancake in his fore paws while he nibbled at it, without being in
+the least disturbed by the presence and the comments of half a dozen
+spectators. The porcupines became a never-ending nuisance, for they made
+almost nightly visits to the woodshed. To kill them was of little use,
+for the next night--or perhaps before morning--there were others to take
+their places. Once in a while one of them would climb up onto the roof
+of the house; and between his teeth and his feet and the rattling of his
+quills on the shingles, the racket that he made was out of all
+proportion to his size._
+
+          It is sweet to lie at evening in your little trundle-bed,
+          And to listen to a porky gnawing shingles overhead;
+            Porky, porky, porky, porky;
+            Gnawing shingles overhead.
+
+_The wolves had been pretty nearly exterminated since my father's first
+visit to the lake, and we saw little or nothing of 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 their peculiar fashion--and I wish there
+were none worse than they in the city's slums._
+
+_I have said good-by to the Glimmerglass, and it may be that I shall
+never again make my home by its shores. But the life of the woods goes
+on, and will still go on as long as man will let it. I suppose that,
+even as I write, the bears are "holeing up" for the winter, and the deer
+are growing anxious because the snow is covering the best of their food,
+and they of the cat tribe are getting down to business, and hunting in
+deadly earnest. The loons and the ducks have pulled out for the Gulf of
+Mexico, and the squirrels are glad that they have such a goodly store of
+nuts laid up for the next four months. The beavers have retired to their
+lodges--that is, if Charley Roop and his fellows have left any of them
+alive. The partridges--well, the partridges will just have to get along
+the best way they can. I guess they'll pull through somehow. The
+porcupines are all right, as you will presently see if you read this
+book. They don't have to worry. Down in the bed of the trout stream the
+trout eggs are getting ready--getting ready. And out on the lake itself
+the frost is at work, and the ice-sheet is forming, and under that cold,
+white lid the Glimmerglass will wait till another year brings round
+another spring-time--the spring-time that will surely come to all of us
+if only we hold on long enough._
+
+_Chicago, December, 1901._
+
+
+
+
+THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BEAVER
+
+
+A BROAD, flat tail came down on the water with a whack that sent the
+echoes flying back and forth across the pond, and its owner ducked his
+head, arched his back, and dived to the bottom. It was a very curious
+tail, for besides being so oddly paddle-shaped it was covered with what
+looked like scales, but were really sections and indentations of hard,
+horny, blackish-gray skin. Except its owner's relations, there was no
+one else in all the animal kingdom who had one like it. But the
+strangest thing about it was the many different ways in which he used
+it. Just now it was his rudder--and a very good rudder, too.
+
+In a moment his little brown head reappeared, and he and his brothers
+and sisters went chasing each other round and round the pond, ducking
+and diving and splashing, raising such a commotion that they sent the
+ripples washing all along the grassy shores, and having the jolliest
+kind of a time. It isn't the usual thing for young beavers to be out in
+broad daylight, but all this happened in the good old days before the
+railways came, when northern Michigan was less infested with men than
+it is now.
+
+When the youngsters wanted a change they climbed up onto a log, and
+nudged and hunched each other, poking their noses into one another's fat
+little sides, and each trying to shove his brother or sister back into
+the water. By and by they scrambled out on the bank, and then, when
+their fur had dripped a little, they set to work to comb it. Up they sat
+on their hind legs and tails--the tail was a stool now, you see--and
+scratched their heads and shoulders with the long brown claws of their
+small, black, hairy hands. Then the hind feet came up one at a time, and
+combed and stroked their sides till the moisture was gone and the fur
+was soft and smooth and glossy as velvet. After that they had to have
+another romp. They were not half as graceful on land as they had been in
+the water. In fact they were not graceful at all, and the way they stood
+around on their hind legs, and shuffled, and pranced, and wheeled like
+baby hippopotami, and slapped the ground with their tails, was one of
+the funniest sights in the heart of the woods. And the funniest and
+liveliest of them all was the one who owned that tail--the tail which,
+when I last saw it, was lying on the ground in front of Charlie Roop's
+shack. He was the one whom I shall call the Beaver--with a big B.
+
+But even young beavers will sometimes grow tired of play, and at last
+they all lay down on the grass in the warm, quiet sunshine of the autumn
+afternoon. The wind had gone to sleep, the pond glittered like steel in
+its bed of grassy beaver-meadow, the friendly woods stood guard all
+around, the enemy was far away, and it was a very good time for five
+furry little babies to take a nap.
+
+The city in which the tail first made its appearance was a very ancient
+one, and may have been the oldest town on the North American continent.
+Nobody knows when the first stick was laid in the dam that changed a
+small natural pond into a large artificial one, and thus opened the way
+for further municipal improvements; but it was probably centuries ago,
+and for all we can tell it may have been thousands of years back in the
+past. Generation after generation of beavers had worked on that dam,
+building it a little higher and a little higher, a little longer and a
+little longer, year after year; and raising their lodges as the pond
+rose around them. Theirs was a maritime city, for most of its streets
+were of water, like those of Venice; rich cargoes of food-stuffs came
+floating to its very doors, and they themselves were navigators from
+their earliest youth, and took to the water as naturally as ducks or
+Englishmen. They were lumbermen, too, and when the timber was all cut
+from along the shores of the pond they dug canals across the low, level,
+marshy ground, back to the higher land where the birch and the poplar
+still grew, and floated the branches and the smaller logs down the
+artificial water-ways. And there were land roads, as well as canals, for
+here and there narrow trails crossed the swamp, showing where
+generations of busy workers had passed back and forth between the felled
+tree and the water's edge. Streets, canals, public works, dwellings,
+commerce, lumbering, rich stores laid up for the winter--what more do
+you want to constitute a city, even if the houses are few in number, and
+the population somewhat smaller than that of London or New York?
+
+[Illustration: "_On the grass in the warm, quiet sunshine of an autumn
+afternoon._"]
+
+There was a time, not very long before the Beaver was born, when for a
+few years the city was deserted. The trappers had swept through the
+country, and the citizens' skulls had been hung up on the bushes, while
+their skins went to the great London fur market. Few were left alive,
+and those few were driven from their homes and scattered through the
+woods. The trappers decided that the ground was worked out, and most of
+them pushed on to the north and west in search of regions not yet
+depopulated. Then, one by one, the beavers came back to their old
+haunts. The broken dam was repaired; new lodges were built, and new
+beavers born in them; and again the ancient town was alive with the play
+of the babies and the labors of the civil engineers. Not as populous,
+perhaps, as it had once been, but alive, and busy, and happy. And so it
+was when our Beaver came into the world.
+
+The first year of his life was an easy one, especially the winter, when
+there was little for anyone to do except to eat, to sleep, and now and
+then to fish for the roots of the yellow water-lily in the soft mud at
+the bottom of the pond. During that season he probably accomplished more
+than his parents did, for if he could not toil he could at least grow.
+Of course they may have been growing, too, but it was less noticeable in
+them than in him. Not only was he increasing in size and weight, but he
+was storing up strength and strenuousness for the work that lay before
+him. It would take much muscle to force those long yellow teeth of his
+through the hard, tough flesh of the maple or the birch or the poplar.
+It would take vigor and push and enterprise to roll the heavy billets
+of wood over the grass-tufts to the edge of the water. And, most of all,
+it would take strength and nerve and determination to tear himself away
+from a steel trap and leave a foot behind. So it was well for the
+youngster that for a time he had nothing to do but grow.
+
+Spring came at last, and many of the male beavers prepared to leave home
+for a while. The ladies seemed to prefer not to be bothered by the
+presence of men-folk during the earliest infancy of the children; so the
+men, probably nothing loath, took advantage of the opportunity to see
+something of the world, wandering by night up and down the streams, and
+hiding by day in burrows under the banks. For a time they enjoyed it,
+but as the summer dragged by they came straggling home one after
+another. The new babies who had arrived in their absence had passed the
+most troublesome age, and it was time to begin work again. The dam and
+the lodges needed repairs, and there was much food to be gathered and
+laid up for the coming winter.
+
+Now, on a dark autumn night, behold the young Beaver toiling with might
+and main. His parents have felled a tree, and it is his business to help
+them cut up the best portions and carry them home. He gnaws off a small
+branch, seizes the butt end between his teeth, swings it over his
+shoulder, and makes for the water, keeping his head twisted around to
+the right or left so that the end of the branch may trail on the ground
+behind him. Sometimes he even rises on his hind legs, and walks almost
+upright, with his broad, strong tail for a prop to keep him from tipping
+over backward if his load happens to catch on something. Arrived at the
+canal or at the edge of the pond, he jumps in and swims for town, still
+carrying the branch over his shoulder, and finally leaves it on the
+growing pile in front of his father's lodge. Or perhaps the stick is too
+large and too heavy to be carried in such a way. In that case it must be
+cut into short billets and rolled, as a cant-hook man rolls a log down a
+skidway. Only the Beaver has no cant-hook to help him, and no skidway,
+either. All he can do is to push with all his might, and there are so
+many, many grass-tufts and little hillocks in the way! And sometimes the
+billet rolls down into a hollow, and then it is very hard to get it out
+again. He works like a beaver, and pushes and shoves and toils with
+tremendous energy, but I am afraid that more than one choice stick never
+reaches the water.
+
+These were his first tasks. Later on he learned to fell trees himself.
+Standing up on his hind legs and tail, with his hands braced against the
+trunk, he would hold his head sidewise, open his mouth wide, set his
+teeth against the bark, and bring his jaws together with a savage nip
+that left a deep gash in the side of the tree. A second nip deepened the
+gash, and gave it more of a downward slant, and two or three more
+carried it still farther into the tough wood. Then he would choose a new
+spot a little farther down, and start a second gash, which was made to
+slant up toward the first. And when he thought that they were both deep
+enough he would set his teeth firmly in the wood between them, and pull
+and jerk and twist at it until he had wrenched out a chip--a chip
+perhaps two inches long, and from an eighth to a quarter of an inch
+thick. He would make bigger ones when he grew to be bigger himself, but
+you mustn't expect too much at first. Chip after chip was torn out in
+this way, and gradually he would work around the tree until he had
+completely encircled it. Then the groove was made deeper, and after a
+while it would have to be broadened so that he could get his head
+farther into it. He seemed to think it was of immense importance to get
+the job done as quickly as possible, for he worked away with tremendous
+energy and eagerness, as if felling that tree was the only thing in the
+world that was worth doing. Once in a while he would pause for a moment
+to feel of it with his hands, and to glance up at the top to see whether
+it was getting ready to fall, and several times he stopped long enough
+to take a refreshing dip in the pond; but he always hurried back, and
+pitched in again harder than ever. In fact, he sometimes went at it so
+impetuously that he slipped and rolled over on his back. Little by
+little he dug away the tree's flesh until there was nothing left but its
+heart, and at last it began to crack and rend. The Beaver jumped aside
+to get out of the way, and hundreds and hundreds of small, tender
+branches, and delicious little twigs and buds came crashing down where
+he could cut them off and eat them or carry them away at his leisure.
+
+And so the citizens labored, and their labor brought its rich reward,
+and everybody was busy and contented, and life was decidedly worth
+living.
+
+But one black November night our hero's father, the wisest old beaver in
+all the town, went out to his work and never came home again. A trapper
+had found the rebuilt city--a scientific trapper who had studied his
+profession for years, and who knew just how to go to work. He kept away
+from the lodges as long as he could, so as not to frighten anyone; and
+before he set a single trap he looked the ground over very carefully,
+located the different trails that ran back from the water's edge toward
+the timber, visited the stumps of the felled trees, and paid particular
+attention to the tooth-marks on the chips. No two beavers leave marks
+that are exactly alike. The teeth of one are flatter or rounder than
+those of another, while a third has large or small nicks in the edges of
+his yellow chisels; and each tooth leaves its own peculiar signature
+behind it. By noting all these things the trapper concluded that a
+particular runway in the wet, grassy margin of the pond was the one by
+which a certain old beaver always left the water in going to his night's
+labor. That beaver, he decided, would best be the first one taken, for
+he was probably the head of a family, and an elderly person of much
+wisdom and experience; and if one of his children should be caught first
+he might become alarmed, and take the lead in a general exodus.
+
+So the trapper set a heavy double-spring trap in the edge of the water
+at the foot of the runway, and covered it with a thin sheet of moss.
+And that night, as the old beaver came swimming up to the shore, he put
+his foot down where he shouldn't, and two steel jaws flew up and clasped
+him around the thigh. He had felt that grip before. Was not half of his
+right hand gone, and three toes from his left hind foot? But this was a
+far more serious matter than either of those adventures. It was not a
+hand that was caught this time, nor yet a toe, or toes. It was his right
+hind leg, well up toward his body, and the strongest beaver that ever
+lived could not have pulled himself free. Now when a beaver is
+frightened, he of course makes for deep water. There, he thinks, no
+enemy can follow him; and, what is more, it is the highway to his lodge,
+and to the burrow that he has hollowed in the bank for a refuge in case
+his house should be attacked. So this beaver turned and jumped back into
+the water the way he had come; but, alas! he took his enemy with him.
+The heavy trap dragged him to the bottom like a stone, and the short
+chain fastened to a stake kept him from going very far toward home. For
+a few minutes he struggled with all his might, and the soft black mud
+rose about him in inky clouds. Then he quieted down and lay very, very
+still; and the next day the trapper came along and pulled him out by
+the chain.
+
+Something else happened the same night. Another wise old beaver, the
+head man of another lodge, was killed by a falling tree. He ought to
+have known better than to let such a thing happen. I really don't see
+how he could have been so careless. But the best of us will make
+mistakes at times, and any pitcher may go once too often to the well. I
+suppose that he had felled hundreds of trees and bushes, big and little,
+in the course of his life, and he had never yet met with an accident;
+but this time he thought he would take one more bite after the tree had
+really begun to fall. So he thrust his head again into the narrowing
+notch, and the wooden jaws closed upon him with a nip that was worse
+than his own. He tried to draw back, but it was too late, his skull
+crashed in, and his life went out like a candle.
+
+And so, in a few hours, the city lost two of its best citizens--the very
+two whom it could least afford to lose. If they had been spared they
+might, perhaps, have known enough to scent the coming danger, and to
+lead their families and neighbors away from the doomed town, deeper into
+the heart of the wilderness. As it was, the trapper had things all his
+own way, and by working carefully and cautiously he added skin after
+skin to his store of beaver-pelts. I haven't time to tell you of all the
+different ways in which he set his traps, nor can we stop to talk of the
+various baits that he used, from castoreum to fresh sticks of birch or
+willow, or of those other traps, still more artfully arranged, which had
+no bait at all, but were cunningly hidden where the poor beavers would
+be almost certain to step into them before they saw them. After all, it
+was his awful success that mattered, rather than the way in which he
+achieved it. Our friend's mother was one of the next to go, and the way
+his brothers and sisters disappeared one after another was a thing to
+break one's heart.
+
+One night the Beaver himself came swimming down the pond, homeward
+bound, and as he dived and approached the submarine entrance of the
+lodge he noticed some stakes driven into the mud--stakes that had never
+been there before. They seemed to form two rows, one on each side of his
+course, but as there was room enough for him to pass between them he
+swam straight ahead without stopping. His hands had no webs between the
+fingers, and were of little use in swimming, so he had folded them back
+against his body; but his big feet were working like the wheels of a
+twin-screw steamer, and he was forging along at a great rate. Suddenly,
+half-way down the lines of stakes, his breast touched the pan of a steel
+trap, and the jaws flew up quick as a wink and strong as a vise.
+Fortunately there was nothing that they could take hold of. They struck
+him so hard that they lifted him bodily upward, but they caught only a
+few hairs.
+
+Even a scientific trapper may sometimes make mistakes, and when this one
+came around to visit his trap, and found it sprung but empty, he thought
+that the beavers must have learned its secret and sprung it on purpose.
+There was no use, he decided, in trying to catch such intelligent
+animals in their own doorway, and he took the trap up and set it in a
+more out-of-the-way place. And so one source of danger was removed, just
+because the Beaver was lucky enough to touch the pan with his breast
+instead of with a foot.
+
+A week later he was really caught by his right hand, and met with one of
+the most thrilling adventures of his life. Oh, but that was a glorious
+night! Dark as a pocket, no wind, thick black clouds overhead, and the
+rain coming down in a steady, steady drizzles--just the kind of a night
+that the beavers love, when the friendly darkness shuts their little
+city in from all the rest of the world, and when they feel safe and
+secure. Then, how the long yellow teeth gouge and tear at the tough
+wood, how the trees come tumbling down, and how the branches and the
+little logs come hurrying in to augment the winter food-piles! Often of
+late the Beaver had noticed an unpleasant odor along the shores, an odor
+that frightened him and made him very uneasy, but to-night the rain had
+washed it all away, and the woods smelled as sweet and clean as if God
+had just made them over new. And on this night, of all others, the
+Beaver put his hand squarely into a steel trap.
+
+He was in a shallow portion of the pond, and the chain was too short for
+him to reach water deep enough to drown him; but now a new danger
+appeared, for there on the low, mossy bank was an otter, glaring at him
+through the darkness. Beaver-meat makes a very acceptable meal for an
+otter, and the Beaver knew it. And he knew, also, how utterly helpless
+he was, either to fly or to resist, with that heavy trap on his arm, and
+its chain binding him to the stake. His heart sank like lead, and he
+trembled from his nose to the end of his tail, and whimpered and cried
+like a baby. But, strange to say, it was the trapper who saved him,
+though, of course, it was done quite unintentionally. As the otter
+advanced to the attack there came a sudden sharp click, and in another
+second he too was struggling for dear life. Two traps had been set in
+the shallow water. The Beaver had found one, and the otter the other.
+
+The full story of that night, with all its details of fear and suffering
+and pain, will never be written; and probably it is as well that it
+should not be. But I can give you a few of the facts, if you care to
+hear them. The Beaver soon found that he was out of the otter's reach,
+and with his fears relieved on that point he set to work to free himself
+from the trap. Round and round he twisted, till there came a little
+snap, and the bone of his arm broke short off in the steel jaws. Then
+for a long, long time he pulled and pulled with all his might, and at
+last the tough skin was rent apart, and the muscles and sinews were torn
+out by the roots. His right hand was gone, and he was so weak and faint
+that it seemed as if all the strength and life of his whole body had
+gone with it. No matter. He was free, and he swam away to the nearest
+burrow and lay down to rest. The otter tried to do the same, but he was
+caught by the thick of his thigh, and his case was a hopeless one. Next
+day the trapper found him alive, but very meek and quiet, worn out with
+fear and useless struggles. In the other trap were a beaver's hand and
+some long shreds of flesh and sinew that must once have reached well up
+into the shoulder.
+
+We shall have to hurry over the events of the next winter--the last
+winter in the city's history. By the time the Beaver's wound was
+healed--Nature was good to him, and the skin soon grew over the torn
+stump--the pond was covered with ice. The beavers, only half as numerous
+as they had been a few weeks before, kept close in their lodges and
+burrows, and for a time they lived in peace and quiet, and their numbers
+suffered no further diminution. Then the trapper took to setting his
+traps through the ice, and before long matters were worse than ever. By
+spring the few beavers that remained were so thoroughly frightened that
+the ancient town was again abandoned--this time forever. The lodges fell
+to ruins, the burrows caved in, the dam gave way, the pond and canals
+were drained, and that was the end of the city.
+
+Yet not quite the end, after all. The beavers have vanished from their
+old habitation, but their work remains in the broad meadows cleared of
+timber by their teeth, and covered with rich black soil by the
+inundations from their dam. There is an Indian legend which says that
+after the Creator separated the land from the water He employed gigantic
+beavers to smooth it down and prepare it for the abode of men. However
+that may be, the farmers of generations to come will have reason to rise
+up and bless those busy little citizens--but I don't suppose they will
+ever do it.
+
+One city was gone, but there were two that could claim the honor of
+being our Beaver's home at different periods of his life. The first, as
+we have already seen, was ancient and historic. The second was
+brand-new. Let us see how it had its beginning. The Beaver got married
+about the time he left his old home; and this, by the way, is a very
+good thing to do when you want to start a new town. Except for his
+missing hand, his wife was so like him that it would have puzzled you to
+tell which was which. I think it is very likely that she was his twin
+sister, but of course that's none of our business. Do you want to know
+what they looked like? They measured about three feet six inches from
+tip of nose to tip of tail, and they weighed perhaps thirty pounds
+apiece. Their bodies were heavy and clumsy, and were covered with thick,
+soft, grayish under-fur, which in turn was overlaid with longer hairs of
+a glistening chestnut-brown, making a coat that was thoroughly
+water-proof as well as very beautiful. Their heads were somewhat like
+those of gigantic rats, with small, light-brown eyes, little round ears
+covered with hair, and long orange-colored incisors looking out from
+between parted lips. One portrait will answer for both of them.
+
+They wandered about for some time, looking for a suitable location, and
+examining several spots along the beds of various little rivers, none of
+which seemed to be just right. But at last they found, in the very heart
+of the wilderness, a place where a shallow stream ran over a hard stony
+bottom, and here they set to work. It was a very desirable situation in
+every respect. At one side stood a large tree, so close that it could
+probably be used as a buttress for the dam when the latter was
+sufficiently lengthened to reach it; while above the shallow the ground
+was low and flat on both sides for some distance back from the banks, so
+that the pond would have plenty of room to spread out. If they could
+have spoken they would probably have said that the place was a dam site
+better than any other they had seen.
+
+[Illustration: _Building the Dam._]
+
+Alder bushes laid lengthwise of the current were the first materials
+used, and for a time the water filtered through them with hardly a
+pause. Then the beavers began laying mud and stones and moss on this
+brush foundation, scooping them up with their hands, and holding them
+under their chins as they waddled or swam to the dam. The Beaver himself
+was not very good at this sort of work, for his right hand was gone, as
+we know, and it was not easy for him to carry things; but he did the
+best he could, and together they accomplished a great deal. The mud and
+the grass and such-like materials were deposited mainly on the upper
+face of the dam, where the pressure of the water only sufficed to drive
+them tighter in among the brush; and thus, little by little, a smooth
+bank of earth was presented to the current, backed up on the lower side
+by a tangle of sticks and poles. Its top was very level and straight,
+and along its whole length the water trickled over in a succession of
+tiny rills. This was important, for if all the overflow had been in one
+place the stream might have been so strong and rapid as to eat into
+the dam, and perhaps carry away the whole structure.
+
+The first year the beavers did not try to raise the stream more than a
+foot above its original level. There was much other work to be done--a
+house to be built, and food to be laid in for the winter--and if they
+spent too much time on the dam they might freeze or starve before
+spring. A few rods up-stream was a grassy point which the rising waters
+had transformed into an island, and here they built their lodge, a
+hollow mound of sticks and mud, with a small, cave-like chamber in the
+centre, from which two tunnels led out under the pond--"angles," the
+trappers call them. The walls were masses of earth and wood and stones,
+so thick and solid that even a man with an axe would have found it
+difficult to penetrate them. Only at the very apex of the mound there
+was no mud, nothing but tangled sticks through which a breath of fresh
+air found its way now and then. In spite of this feeble attempt at
+ventilation I am obliged to admit that the atmosphere of the lodge was
+often a good deal like that of the Black Hole of Calcutta, but beavers
+are so constituted that they do not need much oxygen, and they did not
+seem to mind it. In all other respects the house was neat and clean.
+The floor was only two or three inches above the level of the water in
+the angles, and would naturally have been a bed of mud; but they mixed
+little twigs with it, and stamped and pounded it down till it was hard
+and smooth. I think likely the Beaver's tail had something to do with
+this part of the work, as well as with finishing off the dam, for he was
+fond of slapping things with it, and it was just the right shape for
+such use. In fact, I fear that if it had not been for the tail, and for
+other tails like it, neither of the cities would ever have been as
+complete as they were. With the ends of projecting sticks cut off to
+leave the walls even and regular, and with long grass carried in to make
+the beds, the lodge was finished and ready.
+
+And now you might have seen the beavers coming home to rest after a
+night's labor at felling timber--swimming across the pond toward the
+island, with only the tops of their two little heads showing above the
+water. In front of the lodge each tail-rudder gives a slap and a twist,
+and they dive for the submarine door of one of the angles. In another
+second they are swimming along the dark, narrow tunnel, making the water
+surge around them. Suddenly the roof of the passage rises, and their
+heads pop up into the air. A yard or two farther, and they enter the
+chamber of the lodge, with its level floor and its low, arched roof. And
+there in the darkness they lie down on their grass beds and go to sleep.
+It is good to have a home of your own where you may take your ease when
+the night's work is done.
+
+Near the upper end of the pond, where the bank was higher, they dug a
+long burrow, running back ten or fifteen feet into the ground. This was
+to be the last resort if, by any possibility, the lodge should ever be
+invaded. It was a weary task, digging that burrow, for its mouth was
+deep under the water, and every few minutes they had to stop work and
+come to the surface for breath. Night after night they scooped and
+shovelled, rushing the job as fast as they knew how, but making pretty
+slow progress in spite of all their efforts. It was done at last,
+however, and they felt easier in their minds when they knew that it was
+ready for use in case of necessity. From its mouth in the depths of the
+pond it sloped gradually upward to a dry chamber under the roots of a
+large birch; and here, where a few tiny holes were not likely to be
+noticed from the outside, two or three small openings, almost hidden by
+the moss and dead leaves, let in the air and an occasional ray of
+light. The big tree made a solid roof overhead, and the chamber was
+large enough, with a little crowding, to accommodate a whole family of
+beavers.
+
+There was only one other heavy task, and that was the gathering of the
+wood, which, with its bark, was to serve as food through the winter.
+This too was finally finished, and the very last things that the beavers
+did that fall were to put another coat of mud on the outside of the
+lodge, and to see that the dam was in the best possible condition. No
+repairing could be done after the ice made; and if the dam should give
+way at any time during the winter, the pond would be drained, and the
+entrances of the lodge and the burrow would be thrown open to any
+prowling marauders that might happen to pass that way. So it was
+imperative to have things in good order before cold weather came on.
+
+There came a quiet, windless day, when the sky was gray, and when the
+big snow-flakes came floating lazily down, some to lose themselves in
+the black water, and some to robe the woods and the shores in white. At
+nightfall the clouds broke up, the stars shone forth, and the air grew
+odder and keener till long crystal spears shot out across the pond, and
+before morning a sheet of glass had spread from shore to shore. I do not
+think it was unwelcome. The beavers were shut in for the winter, or
+could only go abroad with considerable difficulty, but they had each
+other, and there was a little world of their own down under the ice and
+snow. The chamber of the lodge was home, and just outside was their food
+storehouse--the big pile of wood which it had cost so much labor to
+gather. One of the entrances was shorter and straighter than the other,
+and through this they used to bring in sticks from the heap, and lay
+them on the floor between the beds, where they could devour the bark at
+their leisure. If they grew restless, and wanted to go farther afield,
+there was the bottom of the pond to be explored, and the big luscious
+lily-roots to be dug up for a change of diet. It was a peaceful time, a
+time of rest from the labors of the past year, and of growing fat and
+strong for those of the year to come. We have much goods laid up for
+many months; let us eat, drink, and be merry, and hope that the trappers
+will not come to-morrow.
+
+The babies came in May, and I suppose that the young father and mother
+were almost as proud and happy as some of you who are in similar
+circumstances. The Beaver did not wander very far from home that spring
+and summer, nor was he away very long at a time.
+
+There were five of the children, and they were very pretty--about as
+large as rats, and covered with thick, soft, silky, reddish-brown fur,
+but without any of the longer, coarser, chestnut-colored hairs that
+formed their parents' outer coats. They were very playful, too, as the
+father and mother had been in their own youthful days. For a while they
+had to be nursed, like other babies; but by and by the old beavers began
+to bring in little twigs for them, about the size of lead-pencils; and
+if you had been there, and your eyes had been sharp enough to pierce the
+gloom, you might have seen the youngsters exercising their brand new
+teeth, and learning to sit up and hold sticks in their baby hands while
+they ate the bark. And wouldn't you have liked to be present on the
+night when they first went swimming down the long, dark tunnel; and,
+rising to the surface, looked around on their world of woods and
+water--on the quiet pond, with its glassy smoothness broken only by
+their own ripples; on the tall trees, lifting their fingers toward the
+sky; and on the stars, marching silently across the heavens, and looking
+down with still, unwinking eyes on another family of babies that had
+come to live and love and be happy for a little while on God's earth?
+
+One of the children was killed by an otter before the summer was over,
+but I am glad to say that the other four grew up and were a credit to
+their parents.
+
+The babies were not the only addition to the new city during that year,
+for about mid-summer another pair of beavers came and built a lodge near
+the upper end of the pond. It was a busy season for everybody--for our
+old friends as well as for the new-comers. The food-sticks which had
+been peeled off their bark during the winter furnished a good supply of
+construction material, and the dam was built up several inches higher,
+and was lengthened to the buttress-tree on one side, and for a distance
+of two or three rods on the other, so as to keep the water from flowing
+around the ends. As the water-level rose it became necessary to build up
+the floor of the lodge in order to keep it from being flooded; and that,
+in turn, necessitated raising the roof by the simple process of
+hollowing it out from within and adding more material on the outside. In
+the same way the lodge was made both longer and broader, to accommodate
+the growing family and the still further increase that was to be
+expected the following spring. More burrows were dug in the shore of
+the pond--you can't have too many of them--and a much larger stock of
+food wood was gathered, for there were six mouths, instead of two, to be
+fed through the coming winter. The father and mother worked very hard,
+and even the babies helped with the lighter tasks, such as carrying home
+small branches, and mending little leaks in the dam. The second pair of
+beavers was also busy with lodge and burrow and storehouse, and so the
+days slipped by very rapidly.
+
+Only once that year did a man come to town, and then he did not do
+anything very dreadful. He was not a trapper, he was only an amateur
+naturalist who wanted to see the beavers at their work, and who thought
+he was smart enough to catch them at it. His plan was simple enough; he
+made a breach in the dam one night, and then climbed a tree and waited
+for them to come and mend it. It was bright moonlight, and he thought he
+would see the whole thing and learn some wonderful secrets.
+
+The Beaver was at work in the woods not very far away, and presently he
+came down to the edge of the pond, rolling a heavy birch cutting before
+him. He noticed at once that the water was falling, and he started
+straight for the dam to see what was the matter. The amateur naturalist
+saw him coming, a dark speck moving swiftly down the pond, with a long
+V-shaped ripple spreading out behind him like the flanks of a flock of
+wild geese. But the beaver was doing some thinking while he swam. He had
+never before known the water to fall so suddenly and rapidly; there must
+be a very bad break in the dam. How could it have happened? It looked
+suspicious. It looked very suspicious indeed; and just before he reached
+the dam he stopped to reconnoitre, and at once caught sight of the
+naturalist up in the tree. His tail rose in the air and came down with
+the loudest whack that had 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 well say, as he
+looked around on the community which he and his wife had founded, that
+he was a citizen of no mean city.
+
+But this could not last. A great calamity was coming--a calamity beside
+which the slow destruction of the former town would seem tame and
+uninteresting.
+
+One bright February day the Beaver and his wife left their lodge to look
+for lily-roots. They had found a big fat one and were just about to
+begin their feast, when they heard foot-steps on the ice over their
+heads, and the voices of several men talking eagerly. They made for the
+nearest burrow as fast as they could go, and stayed there the rest of
+the day, and when they returned to their lodge they found--but I'm going
+too fast.
+
+The men were Indians and half-breeds, and they were in high feather over
+their discovery. Around this pond there must be enough beaver-skins to
+keep them in groceries and tobacco and whiskey for a long time to come.
+But to find a city is one thing, and to get hold of its inhabitants is
+another and a very different one. One of the Indians was an elderly man
+who in the old days had trapped beaver in Canada for the Hudson Bay
+Company, and he assumed the direction of the work. First of all they
+chopped holes in the ice and drove a line of stakes across the stream
+just above the pond, so that no one might escape in that direction.
+Then, by pounding on the ice, and cutting more holes in it here and
+there, they found the entrances to all the lodges and most of the
+burrows, and closed them also with stakes driven into the bottom.
+Fortunately they did not find the burrow where our Beaver and his wife
+had taken refuge. They were about to break open the roofs of the lodges
+when the old man proposed that they should play a trick on one of the
+beaver families--a trick which his father had taught him when he was a
+boy, and when the beavers were many in the woods around Lake Superior.
+He described it with enthusiasm, and his companions agreed that it would
+be great fun. For a time there was much chopping of ice and driving of
+stakes, and then all was quiet again.
+
+By and by one of our Beaver's children began to feel hungry, and as his
+father and mother had not come home he decided to go out to the
+wood-pile and get something to eat. So he took a header from his bed
+into the water, and swam down the angle. The door had been unbarred
+again, and he passed out without difficulty, but when he reached the
+pile he found it surrounded by a fence made of stakes set so close
+together that he could not pass between them. He swam clear around it,
+and at last found one gap just wide enough to admit his body. He passed
+in, and as he did so his back grazed a small twig which had been thrust
+down through a hole in the ice, and the watching Indians saw it move,
+and knew that a beaver had entered the trap. He picked out a nice stick
+of convenient size, and started to return to the lodge. But where was
+that gap in the fence? This was the place, he was sure. Here were two
+stakes between which he had certainly passed as he came in, but now
+another stood squarely between them, and the gate was barred. He swam
+all round the wood-pile, looking for a way out, and poking his little
+brown nose between the stakes, but there was no escape, and when he came
+back to the entrance and found it still closed his last hope died, and
+he gave up in despair. His heart and lungs and all his circulatory
+apparatus had been so designed by the Great Architect that he might live
+for many minutes under water, but they could not keep him alive
+indefinitely. Overhead was the ice, and all around was that cruel fence.
+Only a rod away was home, where his brothers and sisters were waiting
+for him, and where there was air to breathe and life to live--but he
+could not reach it. You have all read or heard how a drowning man feels,
+and I suppose it is much the same with a drowning beaver. They say it is
+an easy death.
+
+By and by a hooked stick came down through a hole in the ice and drew
+him out, the gate was unbarred, the twig was replaced, and the Indians
+waited for another hungry little beaver to come for his dinner. That's
+enough. You know now what the parents found when they came home--or
+rather what they didn't find.
+
+It would have taken too long to dispose of the whole city in this way,
+so the Indians finally broke the dam and let the water out of the pond,
+and then they tore open the lodges and all the burrows they could find,
+and the inhabitants were put to the--not the sword, but the axe and the
+club. Of all those who had been so happy and prosperous, the old Beaver
+and his wife were the only ones who escaped; and their lives were spared
+only because the Indians failed to find their hiding-place.
+
+That was the end of the second city, but it was not quite the end of the
+beavers. A few miles up-stream they dug a short burrow in the bank and
+tried to make a new home. In May another baby came, but only one, and it
+was dead before it was born. Next day the mother died too, and the
+Beaver left the burrow and went out into the world alone. I really think
+his heart was broken, though it continued to beat for several months
+longer.
+
+Just northeast of the Glimmerglass there lies a long, narrow pond, whose
+shores are very low and swampy, and whose waters drain into the larger
+lake through a short stream only a few rods in length. Hundreds,
+perhaps thousands, of years ago the narrow strip of land that separates
+them may possibly have been a beaver-dam, but to-day it is hard to tell
+it from one of Nature's own formations. In the course of his lonely
+wanderings the Beaver reached this pond, and here he established himself
+to spend his last few weeks. He was aging rapidly. Such a little while
+ago he had seemed in the very prime of life, and had been one of the
+handsomest beavers in the woods, with fur of the thickest and softest
+and silkiest, and a weight of probably sixty pounds. Now he was thin and
+lean, his hair was falling out, his teeth were losing their sharp edges
+and becoming blunt and almost useless, and even his flat tail was
+growing thicker and more rounded, and its whack was not as startling as
+of old when he brought it down with all his might on the surface of the
+water.
+
+Yet even now the old instinct flamed up and burned feebly for a little
+while. Or shall we say the old love of work, and of using the powers and
+faculties that God had given him? Why should the thing that is called
+genius in a man be set down as instinct when we see it on a somewhat
+smaller scale in an animal? Whatever it was, the ruling passion was
+still strong. All his life he had been a civil engineer; and now, one
+dark, rainy autumn night, he left his shallow burrow, swam down the pond
+to its outlet, and began to build a dam. The next day, pushing up the
+shallow stream in my dug-out canoe, I saw the alder-cuttings lying in
+its bed, with the marks of his dull teeth on their butts. God knows why
+he did it, or what he was thinking about as he cut those bushes and
+dragged them into the water. I don't; but sometimes I wonder if a wild
+dream of a new lodge, a new mate, a new home, and a new city was
+flitting through his poor, befogged old brain.
+
+It was only a few nights later that he put his foot into Charlie Roop's
+beaver-trap, jumped for deep water, and was drowned like his father
+before him. Charlie afterward showed me the pelt, which he had stretched
+on a hoop made of a little birch sapling. It was not a very good pelt,
+for, as I said, the Beaver had been losing his hair, but Charlie thought
+he might get a dollar or two for it. Whether he needed the dollar more
+than the Beaver needed his skin was a question which it seemed quite
+useless to discuss.
+
+As we left the shack I noticed the tail lying on the ground just outside
+the door.
+
+"Why don't you eat it?" I asked. "Don't you know that a beaver's tail is
+supposed to be one of the finest delicacies in the woods?"
+
+"Huh!" said Charlie. "I'd rather have salt pork."
+
+
+
+
+THE KING OF THE TROUT STREAM
+
+
+IT was winter, and the trout stream ran low in its banks, hidden from
+the sky by a thick shell of ice and snow, and not seeing the sun for a
+season. But the trout stream was used to that, and it slipped along in
+the darkness, undismayed and not one whit disheartened; talking to
+itself in low, murmuring tones, and dreaming of the time when spring
+would come back and all the rivers would be full.
+
+Mingled with its waters, and borne onward and downward by the ceaseless
+flow of its current, went multitudes of the tiniest air-bubbles, most of
+them too small ever to be seen by a human eye, yet large enough to be
+the very breath of life to thousands and thousands of creatures. Some of
+them found their way to the gills of the brook trout, and some to the
+minnows, and the herrings, and the suckers, and the star-gazers; some
+fed the little crustacea, and the insect larvæ, and the other tiny water
+animals that make up the lower classes of society; and some passed
+undetained down the river and out into Lake Superior. But there were
+others that worked down into the gravel of the riverbed; and there, in
+the nooks and crannies between the pebbles, they found a vast number of
+little balls of yellow-brown jelly, about as large as small peas, which
+seemed to be in need of their kindly ministrations. And the air-bubbles
+touched the trout eggs gently and lovingly, and in some mysterious and
+wonderful way their oxygen passed in through the pores of the shells,
+and the embryos within were quickened and stirred to a new vigor and a
+more rapid growth.
+
+Not all of the eggs were alive. Some had been crushed between the
+stones; some were buried in sediment, which had choked the pores and
+kept away the friendly oxygen until they smothered; and some had never
+really lived at all. But one danger they had been spared, for there were
+no saw-mills on the stream to send a flood of fungus-breeding sawdust
+down with the current. And in spite of all the misfortunes and disasters
+to which trout eggs are liable, a goodly number of them were doing quite
+as well as could be expected. I suppose one could hardly say that they
+were being incubated, for, according to the dictionaries, to incubate is
+to sit upon, and certainly there was no one sitting on them. Their
+mothers had not come near them since the day they were laid. But the
+gravel hid them from the eyes of egg-eating fishes and musk-rats; the
+water kept them cold, but not too cold; the fresh oxygen came and
+encouraged them if ever they grew tired and dull, and so the good work
+went on.
+
+Through each thin, leathery, semi-transparent shell you could have seen,
+if you had examined it closely, a pair of bright, beady eyes, and a dark
+little thread of a backbone that was always curled up like a horseshoe
+because there wasn't room for it to lie straight. But along the outside
+of the curve of each spinal column a set of the tiniest and daintiest
+muscles was getting ready for a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull
+all together. And one day, late in the winter, when the woods were just
+beginning to think about spring, the muscles in one particular egg
+tugged with all their little might, the backbone straightened with a
+great effort, the shell was ripped open, and the tail of a brand-new
+brook trout thrust itself out into the water and wiggled pathetically.
+
+But his head and shoulders were still inside, and for a while it looked
+as if he would never get them free. His tail was shaped somewhat like a
+paddle set on edge, for a long, narrow fin ran from the middle of his
+back clear around the end of it and forward again on the under side of
+his body, and with this for an oar he struggled and writhed and
+squirmed, and went bumping blindly about among the pebbles like a kitten
+with its head in the cream pitcher. And at last, with the most vigorous
+squirm and wriggle of all, he backed clear of the shell in which he had
+lain for so many weeks and months, and, weak and weary from his
+exertions, lay down on a stone to rest.
+
+He had to lie on his side, for attached to his breast was a large,
+round, transparent sac which looked very much like the egg out of which
+he had just come. In fact it really was the egg, or at least a portion
+of it, for it held a large part of what had been the yolk. If you could
+have examined him with a microscope you would have seen a most strange
+and beautiful thing. His little body was so delicate and transparent
+that one could see the arteries pulsing and throbbing in time with the
+beating of his heart, and some of those arteries found their way into
+the food-sac, where they kept branching and dividing, and growing
+smaller and more numerous. And in the very smallest of the tiny tubes a
+wonderful process was going on--as wonderful as the way in which the
+oxygen fed the embryos through the shell. Somehow, by life's marvellous
+alchemy, the blood was laying hold of the material of the yolk, turning
+it into more blood, and carrying it away to be used in building up bone
+and muscle everywhere from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail.
+You might not have detected the actual transformation, but you could
+have seen the beating of the engine, and the throbbing rush of the
+little red rivers, all toiling with might and main to make a big, strong
+trout out of this weak and diminutive baby. And you could have seen the
+corpuscles hurrying along so thick and fast that at times they blocked
+up the passages, and the current was checked till the heart could bring
+enough pressure to bear to burst the dam and send them rushing on again.
+For the corpuscles of a trout's blood are considerably larger than those
+of most fishes, and they sometimes get "hung up," like a drive of logs
+sent down a stream hardly large enough to float it.
+
+With a full haversack to be drawn upon in such a convenient manner the
+Troutlet was not obliged to take food through his mouth or to think
+about hustling around in search of a living. This was very fortunate,
+for the stream was full of hungry beasts of prey who would be very
+likely to gobble him up quick the first time he went abroad; and,
+besides, his frail little body was still so weak and delicate that he
+could not bear the light of day. So, instead of swimming away to seek
+his fortune, he simply dived down deeper into the gravel, and stayed
+there. For some weeks he led a very quiet life among the pebbles, and
+the only mishap that befell him during that time was the direct result
+of his retiring disposition. In his anxiety to get as far away from the
+world as possible he one day wedged himself into a cranny so narrow that
+he couldn't get out again. He couldn't even breathe, for his gill-covers
+were squeezed down against the sides of his head as if he were in a
+vise. A trout's method of respiration is to open his mouth and fill it
+with water, and then to close it again and force the water out through
+his gills, between his cheeks and his shoulders, about where his neck
+would be if he had one. It's very simple when you once know how, but you
+can't do it with your gill-covers clamped down. His tail wiggled more
+pathetically than ever, and did its level best to pull him out, but
+without success. He was wedged in so tightly that he couldn't move, and
+he was fast smothering, like a baby that has rolled over on its face
+upon the pillow. But at the last moment, when his struggles had grown
+feebler and feebler until they had almost ceased, something stirred up
+the gravel around him and set him free. He never knew what did it.
+Perhaps a deer or a bear waded through the stream; or a saw-log may have
+grounded for a moment in the shallow; or possibly it was only the
+current, for by this time most of the snow had melted, and the little
+river was working night and day to carry the water out of the woods. But
+whatever it was, he was saved.
+
+He stayed in the gravel nearly a month, but his yolk-sac was gradually
+shrinking, and after a time it drew itself up into a little cleft in his
+breast and almost disappeared. There was nothing left of it but a little
+amber-colored bead, and it could no longer supply food enough for his
+growing body. There were times when he felt decidedly hungry. And other
+changes had come while he lay and waited in the gravel. The embryonic
+fin which had made his tail so like a paddle was gone, the true dorsal
+and caudal and anal fins had taken their proper shape, and he looked a
+little less like a tadpole and a little more like a fish. He was
+stronger than he had been at first, and he was losing his dread of the
+sunlight; and so at last he left the gravel-bed, to seek his rightful
+place in the world of moving, murmuring waters.
+
+He was rather weak and listless at first, and quite given to resting in
+the shallows and back water, and taking things as easily as possible.
+But that was to be expected for a time, and he was much better off than
+some of the other trout babies. He saw one that had two heads and only
+one body, and another with two heads and two bodies joined together at
+the tail. Still others there were who had never been strong enough to
+straighten their backbones, and who had lain in the egg till the shell
+wore thin and let them out head first, which is not at all the proper
+way for a trout to hatch. Even now they still retained the horseshoe
+curve, and could never swim straight ahead, but only spin round and
+round like whirligigs. These cripples and weaklings seemed to have got
+on pretty well as long as their food-sacs lasted, but now that they had
+to make their own living they were at a serious disadvantage. They all
+disappeared after a day or two, and our friend never saw them again.
+They couldn't stand the real struggle of life.
+
+Many a strong, healthy baby disappeared at the same time, and if there
+had not been so many of them it is not likely that any would have
+survived the first few days and weeks. Even as it was, I doubt if more
+than one fish out of each thousand eggs ever lived to grow up. It is not
+difficult to guess where they went. Our Trout had hardly emerged from
+his hiding-place in the gravel when a queer, ugly, big-headed little
+fish darted at him from under a stone, with his jaws open and an awful
+cavity yawning behind them. The Troutlet dodged between a couple of
+pebbles and escaped, but another youngster just beyond him was caught
+and swallowed alive. That was his first meeting with the star-gazer, who
+kills more babies than ever Herod did. Then there were minnows, and
+herrings, and lizards, and frogs, and weasels, and water-snakes, and
+other butchers of all sorts and sizes, too numerous to mention. And
+perhaps the worst of all were the older trout, who never seemed to have
+the least compunction about eating their small relations, and who were
+so nimble and lively that it was almost impossible to keep out of their
+way. Our friend spent most of his time in the shallow water near the
+banks, where larger fishes were not so likely to follow him, but even
+there he had many narrow escapes and was obliged to keep himself hidden
+as much as possible under chips and dead leaves, and behind stones.
+
+Often he found himself in great peril when he least suspected it. Once
+he lay for some time in the edge of a dark forest of water-weeds, only
+an inch from a lumpish, stupid-looking creature, half covered with mud,
+that was clinging to one of the stems. The animal appeared so dull and
+unintelligent that the young Trout paid little attention to him until
+another baby came up and approached a trifle closer. Then, quick as a
+flash, the creature shot out an arm nearly three-quarters of an inch
+long, bearing on its end two horrible things which were not exactly
+claws, nor fingers, nor teeth, but which partook of the nature of all
+three, and which came together on the infant's soft, helpless little
+body like a pair of tongs or the jaws of a steel trap, and drew him in
+to where the real jaws were waiting to make mince-meat of him. Our
+friend fled so precipitately that he did not see the end of the tragedy,
+but neither did he ever see that baby again. Before the summer had
+passed, the dull, lumpish-looking creature had become a magnificent
+insect, with long, gauzy wings, clad in glittering mail, and known to
+everybody as a dragon-fly, but I doubt if any of his performances in the
+upper air were ever half as dragon-like as the deeds of darkness that he
+did when he was an ugly, shapeless larva down under the water.
+
+Fortunately, not all the larvæ in the stream were thus to be feared.
+Many were so small that the Troutlet could eat them, instead of letting
+them eat him; and nowhere were they more plentiful than in this same
+forest of water-weeds. His first taste of food was a great experience,
+and gave him some entirely new ideas of life. One day he was lying with
+his head up-stream, as was his usual habit, when a particularly fat,
+plump little larva, torn from his home by the remorseless river, came
+drifting down with the current. He looked very tempting, and our friend
+sallied out from under a stick and caught him on the fly, just as he had
+seen the star-gazer catch his own brother. The funny little creature
+wriggled deliciously on his tongue, and he held him between his jaws for
+a moment in a kind of ecstasy; but he couldn't quite make up his mind to
+swallow him, and presently he spat him out again and went back to the
+shadow of his stick to rest and think about it. It was the first time in
+his life that he had ever done such a thing, and he felt rather
+overwhelmed, but an hour or two later he tried it again, and this time
+the living morsel did not stop in his mouth, but went straight on down.
+
+It was really something more than a new experience--this first mouthful
+of food--for it marked a turning-point in his career. Up to this time he
+had lived entirely on the provisions which his parents had left him, but
+henceforth he was independent and could take care of himself. He was no
+longer an embryo; he was a real fish, a genuine _Salvelinus fontinalis_,
+as carnivorous as the biggest and fiercest of all his relations. The
+cleft in his breast might close up now, and the last remnant of his
+yolk-sac vanish forever. He was done with it. He had graduated from the
+nursery, and had found his place on the battle-field of life.
+
+It must be admitted, however, that he did not look much like a mature
+trout, even now. He was less than three-quarters of an inch long, and
+his big head, bulging eyes, and capacious mouth were out of all
+proportion to his small and feeble body. But time and food were all
+that was needed to set these matters right; and now that he had learned
+how, he set to work and did his level best. I should be afraid to guess
+how many tiny water-creatures, insects and larvæ and crustaceæ, found
+their way down his throat, but it is pretty safe to say that he often
+ate more than his own weight in a single day. And so he grew in size and
+strength and symmetry, and from being a quiet, languid baby, always
+hiding in dark corners, and attending strictly to his own affairs, he
+became one of the liveliest and most inquisitive little fishes in all
+the stream. To a certain extent he developed a fondness for travelling,
+and in company with other troutlets of his own age and size he often
+journeyed from place to place in search of new surroundings and new
+things to eat. In fly-time he found a bountiful food-supply in the
+mosquitoes and black-flies that swarmed over the stream, and it was fun
+to see him leap from the water, catch one of them in his mouth, and drop
+back with a triumphant little splash. It wasn't really very considerate
+in him to prey on those biting, stinging flies, for in after years they
+would be his best defenders against anglers and fishermen, but
+consideration doesn't seem to be one of the strong points in a brook
+trout's character.
+
+It would take too long to tell of all his youthful doings during the
+next year, and of all his narrow escapes, and the many tight places that
+he got into and out of. It was a wonder that he ever pulled through at
+all, but I suppose it is necessary that a few trout should grow up, for,
+if they didn't, who would there be to eat the little ones?
+
+Once a kingfisher dived for him, missed him by a hair's-breadth, and
+flew back, scolding and chattering, to his perch on an old stub that
+leaned far out over the water. And once he had a horrible vision of an
+immense loon close behind him, with long neck stretched out, and huge
+bill just ready to make the fatal grab. He dodged and got away, but it
+frightened him about as badly as anything can frighten a creature with
+no more nerves than a fish. And many other such adventures he had--too
+many to enumerate. However, I don't think they ever troubled him very
+much except for the moment. He grew more wary, no doubt, but he didn't
+do much worrying. Somehow or other he always escaped by the skin of his
+teeth, and the next spring he was swallowing the new crop of young fry
+with as little concern as his older relations had shown in trying to
+swallow him. So far he seemed to be one of the few who are foreordained
+to eat and not be eaten, though it was more than likely that in the end
+he, too, would die a violent death.
+
+When he was about a year and a half old he noticed that all the larger
+trout in the stream were gathering in places where the water was
+shallow, the bottom pebbly, and the current rapid; and that they acted
+as if they thought they had very important business on hand. He wanted
+to do as the others did, and so it happened that he went back again to
+the gravelly shallow where the air-bubbles had first found him. By this
+time he was about as large as your finger, or possibly a trifle larger,
+and he had all the bumptiousness of youth and was somewhat given to
+pushing himself in where he wasn't wanted.
+
+The male trout were the first to arrive, and they promptly set to work
+to prepare nests for their mates, who were expected a little later. It
+was a simple process. All they did was to shove the gravel aside with
+their noses and fins and tails, and then fan the sediment away until
+they had made nice, clean little hollows in the bed of the stream; but
+there was a good deal of excitement and jealousy over it, and every
+little while they had to stop and have a scrap. The biggest and
+strongest always wanted the best places, and if they happened to take a
+fancy for a location occupied by a smaller and weaker fish, they drove
+him out without ceremony and took possession by right of the conqueror.
+For the most part their fighting seemed rather tame, for they did little
+more than butt each other in the ribs with their noses, but once in a
+while they really got their dander up and bit quite savagely. And when
+the lady trout came to inspect the nests that had been prepared for
+them, then times were livelier than ever, and the jealousy and rivalry
+ran very high, indeed.
+
+Of course our Trout was too young to bear a very prominent part in these
+proceedings, but he and some companions of about his own age skirmished
+around the edges of the nesting grounds, and seemed to take a wicked
+delight in teasing the old males and running away just in time to escape
+punishment. And when the nests began to be put to practical use, the
+yearlings were very much in evidence. Strictly fresh eggs are as good
+eating down under the water as they are on land, and, partly on this
+account, and partly because direct sunshine is considered very injurious
+to them, the mothers always covered them with gravel as quickly as
+possible. But in spite of the best of care the current was constantly
+catching some of them and sweeping them away, and our young friend would
+creep up as near as he dared, and whenever one of the yellow-brown balls
+came his way he would gobble it down with as little remorse as he had
+felt for his first larva. Now and then an irate father would turn upon
+him fiercely and chase him off, but in a few minutes he would be back
+again, watching for eggs as eagerly as ever. Once, indeed, he had a
+rather close call, for the biggest old male in all the stream came after
+him with mouth open as if he would swallow him whole, as he could very
+easily have done. Our friend was almost caught when the big fellow
+happened to glance back and saw another trout coming to visit his wife,
+and promptly abandoned the chase and went home to see about it.
+
+A year later our Trout went again to the gravelly shallow, and this
+time, being six inches long and about thirty months old, he decided to
+make a nest of his own. He did so, and had just induced a most beautiful
+young fish of the other sex to come and examine it, with a view to
+matrimony, when that same big bully appeared on the scene, promptly
+turned him out of house and home, and began courting the beautiful young
+creature himself. It was very exasperating, not to say humiliating, but
+it was the sort of thing that one must expect when one is only a
+two-year-old.
+
+The next year he had better luck. As another summer passed away, and the
+cooler weather came on, he arrayed himself in his wedding finery, and it
+almost seemed as if he had stolen some of the colors of the swamp
+maples, in their gay fall dress, and was using them to deck himself out
+and make a brave display. In later years he was larger and heavier, but
+I don't think he was ever much handsomer than he was in that fourth
+autumn of his life. His back was a dark, dusky, olive-green, with
+mottlings that were still darker and duskier. His sides were lighter--in
+some places almost golden yellow; and scattered irregularly over them
+were the small, bright carmine spots that gave him one of his _aliases_,
+the "Speckled Trout." Beneath he was usually of a pale cream color, but
+now that he had put on his best clothes his vest was bright orange, and
+some of his fins were variegated with red and white, while others were a
+fiery yellow. He was covered all over with a suit of armor made of
+thousands and thousands of tiny scales, so small and fine that the eye
+could hardly separate them, and from the bony shoulder-girdle just
+behind his gills a raised line, dark and slightly waving, ran back to
+his tail, like the sheer-line of a ship. There were other fishes that
+were more slender and more finely modelled than he, and possibly more
+graceful, but in him there was something besides beauty--something that
+told of power and speed and doggedness. He was like a man-o'-war dressed
+out in all her bunting for some great gala occasion, but still showing
+her grim, heavy outlines beneath her decorations. His broad mouth opened
+clear back under his eyes, and was armed with rows of backward-pointing
+teeth, so sharp and strong that when they once fastened themselves upon
+a smaller fish they never let him go again. The only way out from
+between those jaws was down his throat. His eyes were large and bright,
+and were set well apart; and the bulge of his forehead between them
+hinted at more brains than are allotted to some of the people of the
+stream. Altogether, he was a most gallant and knightly little fish, and
+it would certainly have been a pity if he hadn't found a mate.
+
+[Illustration: _Nesting Grounds._]
+
+And now he started the third time for the gravelly shallow, and
+travelled as he had never travelled before in all his life. Streams are
+made to swim against--every brook trout knows that--and the faster they
+run, the greater is the joy of breasting them. The higher the
+water-fall, the prouder do you feel when you find you can leap it. And
+our friend was in a mood for swimming, and for swimming with all his
+might. Never had he felt so strong and vigorous and so full of life and
+energy, and he made his fins and his tail go like the oars of a
+racing-shell. Now he was working up the swift current of a long rapid
+like a bird in the teeth of the wind. Now he was gathering all his
+strength for the great leap to the top of the water-fall. And now,
+perhaps, he rested for a little while in a quiet pool, and presently
+went hurrying on again, diving under logs and fallen trees, swinging
+round the curves, darting up the still places where the water lay
+a-dreaming, and wriggling over shallow bars where it was not half deep
+enough to cover him; until at last he reached the old familiar place
+where so many generations of brook trout had first seen the light of day
+and felt the cold touch of the snow-water.
+
+As before, he and the other males arrived at the nesting grounds some
+days in advance of their mates, and spent the intervening time in
+scooping hollows in the gravel and quarrelling among themselves. Two or
+three times he was driven from a choice location by someone who was
+bigger than he, but he always managed in some way to regain it, or else
+stole another from a smaller fish; and when the ladies finally appeared
+he had a fine large nest in a pleasant situation a little apart from
+those of his rivals. But for some reason the first candidates who came
+to look at it declined to stay. Perhaps they were not quite ready to
+settle down, or perhaps they were merely disposed to insist on the
+feminine privilege of changing their minds. But finally there came one
+who seemed to be quite satisfied, and with whom the Trout himself had
+every reason to be pleased.
+
+She was not a native of the stream, but of one of the hatcheries of the
+Michigan Fish Commission; and while he was lying in the gravel she was
+one of a vast company inhabiting a number of black wooden troughs that
+stood in a large, pleasant room filled with the sound of running water.
+Here there were no yearlings nor musk-rats nor saw-bill ducks looking
+for fresh eggs, nor any dragons nor star-gazers lying in wait for the
+young fry. Instead there were nice, kind men, who kept the hatching
+troughs clean and the water at the right temperature, and who gently
+stirred up the troutlets with a long goose-feather whenever too many of
+them crowded together in one corner, trying to get away from the hateful
+light. Under this sort of treatment most of the thirty million babies in
+the hatchery lived and thrived. Only a few thousands of them were brook
+trout, but among those thousands one of the smartest and most precocious
+was the one in whom we are just now most interested. She was always
+first into the dark corners, as long as dark corners seemed desirable;
+and later, when they began to come up into the light and partake of the
+pulverized beef-liver which their attendants offered them, there was no
+better swimmer or more voracious feeder than she. All this was
+especially fortunate because there was a very hard and trying experience
+before her--one in which she would have need of all her strength and
+vitality, and in which her chances of life would be very small, indeed.
+It came with planting time, when she and a host of her companions were
+whisked through a rubber tube and deposited in a big can made of
+galvanized iron, in which they were borne away to the trout stream. The
+journey was a long one, they were pretty badly cramped for room, and
+before they reached their destination the supply of oxygen in the water
+became exhausted. The baby trout began to think they had blown out the
+gas, and they all crowded to the surface, where, if anywhere, the minute
+bubbles that keep one alive are to be found. They gulped down great
+mouthfuls of water and forced it out through their gills as fast as ever
+they could, but, somehow, all the life seemed to be gone out of it, and
+it did them no good whatever. Pretty soon a few turned over on their
+backs and died, and every last one of them would have suffocated if the
+man who had charge of the party hadn't noticed what was going on and
+come to the rescue. Picking up a dipperful of water and troutlets, and
+holding it high in the air, he poured it back into the can with much
+dashing and splashing. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny bubbles were caught
+in the rush and carried down to the bottom, and so the oxygen came back
+again to the tired gills, and the danger was over.
+
+The emigrants reached the trout stream at last, and one would have
+supposed that their troubles were ended. In reality the chapter of
+trials and tribulations had only just begun, for the same fishes and
+frogs and lizards that had so persecuted our friend and his brothers and
+sisters were on hand to welcome the new arrivals, and very few escaped.
+And so, in spite of its quiet beginnings in the peaceful surroundings
+of the hatchery, this young lady trout's life proved quite as exciting
+and adventurous as our friend's, and it is possible that the good care
+which she received during her early infancy really served to make things
+all the harder for her when she came to be thrown entirely on her own
+resources. The mere change in the temperature of the water when she was
+turned out of the can was quite a shock to her nervous system; and,
+whereas most trout are somewhat acquainted with the dangers and
+hardships of the stream, almost from the time they rip their shells
+open, she did not even know that there was such a place until she was
+set down in it and told to shift for herself.
+
+However, by dint of strength, speed, agility, and good judgment in
+selecting hiding-places--and also, in all probability, by a run of
+remarkably good luck--she made her way unharmed through all the perils
+of babyhood and early youth, and now she was one of the most beautiful
+little three-year-old pirates that ever swooped down upon a helpless
+victim.
+
+As she and our friend swam side by side, her nose and the end of her
+tail were exactly even with his. Her colors were the same that he had
+worn before he put on his wedding garments, and if you had seen them
+together in the early summer I don't believe you could ever have told
+them apart. They were a well-matched pair, more evenly mated, probably,
+than is usual in fish marriages.
+
+But they were not to be allowed to set up housekeeping together without
+fighting for the privilege. Hardly had she finished inspecting the nest,
+and made up her mind that it would answer, and that he was, on the
+whole, quite eligible as a husband, when a third trout appeared and
+attempted to do as the big bully had done the year before. This time,
+however, our young friend's blood was up, and, though the enemy was
+considerably larger than he, he was ready to strike for his altars and
+his fires. He made a quick rush, like a torpedo-boat attacking a
+man-of-war, and hit the intruder amidships, ramming him with all his
+might. Then the enemy made as sudden a turn, and gave our Trout a poke
+in the ribs, and for a few minutes they dodged back and forth, and round
+and round, and over and under each other, each getting in a punch
+whenever he had a chance. So far it seemed only a trial of strength and
+speed and dexterity, and if our Trout was not quite as large and
+powerful as the other, yet he proved himself the quicker and the more
+agile and lively. But before it was over he did more than that, for,
+suddenly ranging up on the enemy's starboard quarter, he opened his
+mouth, and the sharp teeth of his lower jaw tore a row of bright scales
+from his adversary's side, and left a long, deep gash behind. That
+settled it. The big fellow lit out as fast as he could go, and our Trout
+was left in undisputed possession.
+
+The nesting season cannot last forever, and by and by, when the days
+were very short and the nights were very long, when the stars were
+bright, and when each sunrise found the hoar-frost lying thick and heavy
+on the dead and fallen leaves, the last trout went in search of better
+feeding grounds, and again the gravelly shallow seemed deserted. But it
+was only seeming. There were no eggs in sight--the frogs, the rats, the
+ducks, and the yearlings had taken care of that, and I am very much
+afraid that our friend may have eaten a few himself, on the sly, when
+his wife wasn't looking--but hidden away among the pebbles there were
+thousands, and the old, old miracle was being re-enacted, and multitudes
+of little live creatures were getting ready for the time when something
+should tell them to tear their shells open and come out into the world.
+
+One of the Trout's most remarkable adventures, and the one which
+probably taught him more than any other, came during the hot weather of
+the following summer. The stream had grown rather too warm for comfort,
+and lately he had got into the habit of frequenting certain deep, quiet
+pools where icy springs bubbled out of the banks and imparted a very
+grateful coolness to the slow current. It was delightful to spend a long
+July afternoon in the wash below one of these fountains, having a lazy,
+pleasant time, and enjoying the touch of the cold water as it went
+sliding along his body from nose to tail. One sunshiny day, as he lay in
+his favorite spring-hole, thinking about nothing in particular, and just
+working his fins enough to keep from drifting down stream, a fly lit on
+the surface just over his head--a bright, gayly colored fly of a species
+which was entirely new to him, but which looked as if it must be very
+finely flavored. As it happened, there had been several days of very
+warm, sultry weather, and even the fish had grown sullen and lazy, but
+this afternoon the wind had whipped around to the north, straight off
+Lake Superior, and all the animals in the Great Tahquamenon Swamp felt
+as if they had been made over new. How the brook trout could have known
+of it so quickly, down under the water, is a mystery; but our friend
+seemed to wake up all of a sudden, and to realize that he hadn't been
+eating as much as usual, and that he was hungry. He made a dash at the
+fly and seized it, but he had no sooner got it between his lips than he
+spat it out again. There was something wrong with it. Instead of being
+soft and juicy and luscious, as all flies ought to be, it was stiff, and
+dry, and hard, and it had a long, crooked stinger that was different
+from anything belonging to any other fly that he had ever tasted. It
+disappeared as suddenly as it had come, and the Trout sank back to the
+bottom of the pool.
+
+But presently three more flies came down together, and lit in a row, one
+behind another. They were different from the first, and he decided to
+try again. He chose the foremost of the three, and found it quite as
+ill-tasting as the other had been; but this time he didn't spit it out,
+for the stinger was a little too quick for him, and before he could let
+go it was fast in his lip. For the next few minutes he tore around the
+pool as if he was crazy, frightening some of the smaller fishes almost
+out of their wits, and sending them rushing up-stream in a panic. He
+himself had more than once been badly scared by seeing other trout do
+just what he was doing, but he had never realized what it all meant. Now
+he understood.
+
+The first thing he did was to go shooting along the surface for several
+feet, throwing his head from side to side as he went, and doing his best
+to shake that horrible fly out of his mouth. But it wouldn't shake, so
+he tried jumping out of the water and striking at the line with his
+tail. That wasn't any better, and next he rushed off up the stream as
+hard as he could go. But the line kept pulling him round to the left
+with gentle but irresistible force, and before he knew it he was back in
+the pool again. Wherever he went, and whatever he did, it was always
+pulling, pulling, pulling--not hard enough to tear the hook away, but
+just enough to keep him from getting an inch of slack. If there had been
+any chance to jerk he would probably have got loose in short order. He
+rushed around the pool so hard that he soon grew weary, and presently he
+sank to the bottom, hoping to lie still for a few minutes, and rest, and
+perhaps think of some new way of escape. But even there that steady
+tugging never ceased. It seemed as if it would pull his jaw out of his
+head if he didn't yield, and before long he let himself be drawn up
+again to the surface. Once he was so close to the shore that the angler
+made a thrust at him with the landing-net, and just grazed his side. It
+frightened him worse than ever, and he raced away again so fast that the
+reel sang, and the line swished through the water like a knife.
+
+[Illustration: "_He tried jumping out of the water._"]
+
+The other two flies were trailing behind, and the short line that held
+them was constantly catching on his fins and twisting itself around his
+tail in a way that annoyed him greatly. He almost thought he could get
+away if they were not there to hinder him. And yet, as it finally turned
+out, it was one of those flies that saved his life. He was coming slowly
+back from that last unsuccessful rush for liberty, fighting for every
+inch, and only yielding to a strength a thousand times greater than his
+own, when the trailer caught on a sunken log and held fast. Instantly
+the strain on his mouth relaxed. The angler was no longer pulling on
+him, but on the log. He could jerk now, and he immediately began to
+twitch his head this way and that, backward and forward, right and
+left, tearing the hole in his lip a little larger at every yank,
+until the hook came away and he was free.
+
+It was a painful experience, and he carried the scar as long as he
+lived, but the lesson he learned was worth all it cost. I won't say that
+he never touched bait again, but he was much more cautious, and no other
+artificial fly ever stung him as badly as that one.
+
+The years went by, and the Trout increased in size and strength and
+wisdom, as a trout should. One after another his rivals went away to the
+happy hunting-grounds, most of them losing their lives because they
+could not resist the temptation to taste a made-up fly, or to swallow a
+luscious angle-worm festooned on a dainty little steel hook; and the
+number of fish who dared dispute his right to do whatever he pleased
+grew beautifully less. And at last there was only one trout left in all
+the stream who was larger and stronger than he. That was the same big
+fellow who had come so near swallowing him on the occasion of his first
+visit to the nesting-grounds; and the way the fierce, solemn old brute
+finally departed this life deserves a paragraph all to itself.
+
+It happened one morning in early spring, just after the ice had gone
+out. Our friend was still a trifle sleepy and lazy after the long, dull
+winter, though he had an eye open, as always, for anything particularly
+good to eat. I doubt if he would have jumped at any kind of a fly, for
+it was not the right time of year for flies, and he did not believe in
+eating them out of season; but almost anything else was welcome. He was
+faring very well that morning, as it chanced, for the stream was running
+high, and many a delicious grub and earthworm had been swept into it by
+the melting snow. And presently, what should come drifting down with the
+current but a poor little field-mouse, struggling desperately in a vain
+effort to swim back to the shore. Once before our friend had swallowed a
+mouse whole, just as you would take an oyster from the half-shell, and
+he knew that they were very nice, indeed. He made a rush for the unlucky
+little animal, and in another second he would have had him; but just
+then the big bully came swaggering up with an air which seemed to say:
+"That's my meat. You get out of this!"
+
+Our friend obeyed, the big fellow gave a leap and seized the mouse, and
+then--his time had come. He fought bravely, but he was fairly hooked,
+and in a few minutes he lay out on the bank, gasping for breath,
+flopping wildly about, and fouling his beautiful sides with sand and
+dirt. If he had understood English he might have overheard an argument
+which immediately took place between the angler and a girl, and which
+began something like this:
+
+"There!" in a triumphant tone; "who says mice aren't good bait? This is
+the biggest trout that's been caught in this stream for years."
+
+"Oh, George, don't kill him! He's so pretty! Put him back in the water."
+
+"Put him back in the water? Well, I should say not! What do you take me
+for?"
+
+Evidently the girl took him for one who could be easily influenced by
+the right person, for she kept up the argument, and in the end she won
+her case. The trout was tossed back into the stream, where he gave
+himself a shake or two, to get rid of the sand, and then swam away,
+apparently as well as ever. But girls don't always know what is good for
+trout. It would really have been kinder if the angler had hit him over
+the head with the butt of his fishing-rod, and then carried him home and
+put him in the frying-pan. In his struggles a part of the mucus had been
+rubbed from his body, and that always means trouble for a fish. A few
+days later our friend met him again, and noticed that a curious growth
+had appeared on his back and sides--a growth which bore a faint
+resemblance to the bloom on a peach, and which had taken the exact shape
+of the prints of the angler's fingers. The fungus had got him. He was
+dying, slowly but surely, and within a week he turned over on his back
+and drifted away down the stream. A black bear found him whirling round
+and round in a little eddy under the bank, and that was the end of him.
+
+And so our friend became the King of the Trout Stream.
+
+You are not to suppose, however, that he paid very much attention to his
+subjects, or that he was particularly fond of having them about him and
+giving them orders. On the contrary, he had become very hermit-like in
+his habits. In his youth he had been fond of society, and he and his
+companions had often roamed the stream in little schools and bands, but
+of late years his tastes seemed to have undergone a change, and he kept
+to himself and lurked in the shady, sunless places till his skin grew
+darker and darker, and he more and more resembled the shadows in which
+he lived. His great delight was to watch from the depths of some
+cave-like hollow under an overhanging bank until a star-gazer, or a
+herring, or a minnow, or some other baby-eater came in sight, and then
+to rush out and swallow him head first. He took ample revenge on all
+those pesky little fishes for all that they had done and tried to do to
+him and his brethren in the early days. The truth is that every brook
+trout is an Ishmaelite. The hand of every creature is against him, from
+that of the dragon-fly larva to that of the man with the latest
+invention in the way of patent fishing-tackle. It is no wonder if he
+turns the tables on his enemies whenever he has a chance, or even if he
+sometimes goes so far, in his general ruthlessness, as to eat his own
+offspring.
+
+Yet, in spite of our friend's moroseness and solitary habits, there were
+certain times and seasons when he did come more or less in contact with
+his inferiors. In late spring and early summer he liked to sport for a
+while in the swift rapids--perhaps to stretch his muscles after the
+dull, quiet life of the winter-time, or possibly to free himself from
+certain little insects which sometimes fastened themselves to his body,
+and which, for lack of hands, it was rather difficult to get rid of.
+Here he often met some of his subjects, and later, when the hot weather
+came on, they all went to the spring-holes which formed their summer
+resorts. And at such times he never hesitated to take advantage of his
+superior size and strength. He always picked out the coolest and most
+comfortable places in the pools, and helped himself to the choicest
+morsels of food; and the others took what was left, without question.
+And when the summer was gone, and the water grew cold and invigorating,
+and once more he put on his wedding-garment and hurried away to the
+gravelly shallows, how different was his conduct from what it had been
+when he was a yearling! Then he was only a hanger-on; now he selected
+his nest and his mate to suit himself; and nobody ever dared to
+interfere. Whether he ever again chose that beautiful little fish from
+the hatchery, whom he had been so fond of when he was a three-year-old,
+is a question which I would rather not try to answer. Among all the
+vicissitudes, dangers, and rivalries of life in a trout stream, a
+permanent marriage seems to be almost an impossibility; and I fear that
+the affections of a fish are not remarkable for depth or constancy.
+
+The Trout had altered in many ways besides his relations to his
+fellows. The curving lines of his body were not quite as graceful as
+they had once been, and sometimes he wore a rather lean and dilapidated
+look, especially in the six months from November to May. His tail was
+not as handsomely forked as when he was young, but was nearly square
+across the end, and was beginning to be a little frayed at the corners.
+His lower jaw had grown out beyond the upper, and its extremity was
+turned up in a wicked-looking hook which was almost a disfigurement, but
+which he often found very useful in hustling a younger trout out of the
+way. Even his complexion had grown darker, as we have already seen.
+Altogether he was less prepossessing than of old, but of a much more
+formidable appearance, and the very look of him was enough to scare a
+minnow out of a year's growth.
+
+But, notwithstanding all changes, the two great interests of his
+every-day life continued to be just what they had always been--namely,
+to get enough to eat, and to keep out of the way of his enemies; for
+enemies he still had, and would have as long as he lived. The
+fly-fishermen, with their feather-weight rods and their scientific
+tackle, came every spring and summer; and only the wisdom born of
+experience kept him from falling into their hands. Several times he met
+with an otter, and had to run for his life. Once, a black bear, fishing
+for suckers, came near catching a brook trout. And perhaps the very
+closest of all his close calls came one day when some river-drivers
+exploded a stick of dynamite in the water to break up a log-jam. The
+trout was some distance up the stream at the time, but the concussion
+stunned him so that he floated at the surface, wrong side up, for
+several minutes before his senses gradually came back. That is a fish's
+way of fainting.
+
+His luck stayed by him, however, and none of these things ever did him
+any serious harm. His reign proved a long one, and as the years went by
+he came to exercise a more and more autocratic sway over the smaller
+fry. For in spite of his age he was still growing. A trout has an
+advantage over a land animal in this, that he is not obliged to use any
+of his food as fuel for keeping himself warm. He can't keep warm
+anyhow--not as long as he lives in the water--and so he doesn't try, but
+devotes everything he eats to enlarging his body and repairing wear and
+tear. If nothing happens to put a stop to the process, he seems to be
+able to keep it up almost indefinitely. But the size of the stream in
+which he lives appears to limit him to a certain extent. Probably the
+largest trout stream in the world is the Nepigon, and they say that
+seventeen-pounders were caught there in the early days. Our friend's
+native river was a rather small one. In the course of time, however, he
+attained a weight of very nearly three pounds, and I doubt if he would
+ever have been much larger. Perhaps it was fitting that his reign should
+end there.
+
+But it seems a great pity that it could not have ended in a more
+imposing manner. The last act of the drama was so inglorious that I am
+almost ashamed to tell it. He was the King of the Trout Stream; over and
+over he had run Fate's gauntlet, and escaped with his body unharmed and
+his wits sharper than ever; he knew the wiles of the fly-fishermen
+better than any other trout in the river; and yet, alas! he fell a
+victim to a little Indian boy with a piece of edging for a rod, coarse
+string for a line, and salt pork for bait.
+
+I'm sure it wouldn't have happened if he had stayed at home; but one
+spring he took it into his head to go on an exploring expedition out
+into Lake Superior. I understand that his cousins in the streams of
+eastern Canada sometimes visit salt water in somewhat the same manner,
+and that they thereupon lose the bright trimmings of their coats and
+become a plain silver-gray. Superior did not affect our friend in that
+way, but something worse happened to him--he lost his common-sense.
+Perhaps his interest in his new surroundings was so great that he forgot
+the lessons of wisdom and experience which it had cost him so much to
+learn.
+
+In the course of his wanderings he came to where a school of perch were
+loafing in the shadow of a wharf; and just as he pushed his way in among
+them, that little white piece of fat pork sank slowly down through the
+green water. It was something new to the trout; he didn't quite know
+what to make of it. But the perch seemed to think it was good, and they
+would be sure to eat it if he didn't; and so, although the string was in
+plain sight and ought to have been a sufficient warning, he exercised
+his royal prerogative, shouldered those yellow-barred plebeians out of
+the way, and took the tid-bit for himself. It is too humiliating; let us
+draw a veil over that closing scene.
+
+The King of the Trout Stream had gone the way of his fathers, and
+another reigned in his stead.
+
+
+
+
+THE STRENUOUS LIFE OF A CANADA LYNX
+
+
+THE Canada lynx came down the runway that follows the high bank along
+the northern shore of the Glimmerglass, his keen, silvery eyes watching
+the woods for foe or prey, and his big feet padding softly on the dead
+leaves. He was old, was the Canada lynx, and he had grown very tall and
+gaunt, but this afternoon his years sat lightly on him. And in a moment
+more they had vanished entirely, and he was as young as ever he was in
+his life, for, as he stepped cautiously around a little spruce, he came
+upon another lynx, nearly as tall as he, and quite as handsome in her
+early winter coat. They both stopped short and stared. And no wonder.
+Each of them was decidedly worth looking at, especially if the one who
+did the looking happened to be another lynx of the opposite sex.
+
+He was some twenty-odd inches in height and about three and a half feet
+in length, and had a most villanous cast of countenance, a very
+wicked-looking set of teeth, and claws that were two inches long and so
+heavy and strong and sharp that you could sometimes hear them crunch
+into the bark when he climbed a tree. His long hind legs, heavy
+buttocks, thick fore-limbs, and big, clumsy-looking paws told of a
+magnificent set of muscles pulling and sliding and hauling under his
+cloak. She was nearly as large as he, and very much like him in general
+appearance. Both of them wore long, thick fur, of a lustrous steel-gray
+color, with paler shades underneath, and darker trimmings along their
+back-bones and up and down their legs. Their paws were big and broad and
+furry, their tails were stubby and short, and they wore heavy, grizzled
+whiskers on the sides of their jaws and mustachios under their noses,
+while from the tips of their ears rose tassels of stiff, dark hairs that
+had an uncommonly jaunty effect. Altogether they looked very fierce and
+imposing and war-like--perhaps rather more so than was justified by
+their actual prowess. So it was not surprising that they took to each
+other. Perhaps he wasn't really quite as heroic as he appeared, but
+that's not uncommon among other lovers besides those belonging to the
+lynx tribe, and what difference did it make, anyhow, as long as she
+didn't know it?
+
+That winter was a hard one. The cold was intense, the snow was very
+deep, and the storms came often. Spruce hens and partridges were scarce,
+even rabbits were hard to find, and sometimes it seemed to the two
+lynxes as if they were the only animals left in the woods. Except the
+deer. There were always plenty of deer down in the cedar swamp, and
+their tracks were as plain as a lumberman's logging road. But although
+the lynxes sometimes killed and ate young fawns in the summertime, they
+seldom tasted venison in the winter. It was well for them that they had
+each other, for when one failed in the hunt the other sometimes
+succeeded, yet I cannot help thinking that the old male, especially,
+might perhaps have been of more use to his mate if he had not confined
+his hunting so entirely to the smaller animals. More than once he sat on
+a branch of a tree and watched a buck or doe go by, and his claws
+twitched and his eyes blazed, and he fairly trembled with eagerness and
+excitement as he saw the big gray creature pass, all unconscious,
+beneath his perch. Splendidly armed as he was, it would seem as though
+he must have succeeded if only he had jumped and risked a tussle. But he
+never tried it. I suppose he was afraid. And yet--such were the
+contradictions of his nature--one dark night he trotted half a mile
+after a shanty-boy who was going home with a haunch of venison over his
+shoulder, and was just gathering himself for a spring, intending to leap
+on him from behind, when another man appeared. Two against one was not
+fair, he thought, and he gave it up and beat a retreat without either of
+them seeing him. They found his footprints the next morning in their
+snow-shoe tracks, and wondered how far behind them he had been. I don't
+know whether it was a vein of real courage that nerved him up to doing
+such a foolhardy thing as to follow a man with the intention of
+attacking him, or whether it was simply a case of recklessness. The
+probability is, however, that he was hungrier than usual, and that the
+smell of the warm blood made him forget everything else. Anyhow, he had
+a pretty close call, for the shanty-boy had a revolver in his pocket.
+
+Aside from any question of heroism, I am afraid that he was not really
+as wise and discriminating as he looked. I have an idea that when Nature
+manufactured him she thought he did not need as much wisdom or as many
+wits as some of the other people of the woods, inasmuch as he was larger
+and stronger and better armed than most of them. Except possibly the
+bear, who was altogether too easy-going to molest him, there was not
+one of the animals that could thrash him, and they all knew it and let
+him alone. You can often manage very well without brains if only you
+have the necessary teeth and muscle and claws; and the old lynx had
+them, without a doubt. But I fear that Nature, in adapting a wild animal
+to his environment, now and then forgets to allow for the human element
+in the problem. Brains are a good thing to have, after all. Even to a
+lynx the time is pretty sure to come, sooner or later, when he needs
+them in his business. Your fellow-citizens of the woods may treat you
+with all due respect, but the trapper won't, and he'll get you if you
+don't watch out.
+
+One day he found some more snow-shoe tracks, just like those that the
+shanty-boy had left, and instead of running away, as he ought to have
+done, and as most of the animals would have had sense enough to do, he
+followed them up to see where they led. He wasn't particularly hungry
+that day, and there was absolutely no excuse for what he did. It
+certainly wasn't bravery that inspired him, for he had not the least
+idea of attacking anyone. It was simply a case of foolish curiosity. He
+followed the trail a long way, not walking directly in it, but keeping
+just a little to one side, wallowing heavily as he went, for a foot and
+a half of light, fluffy snow had fallen the day before, and the walking
+was very bad. Presently he caught sight of a little piece of scarlet
+cloth fastened to a stick that stood upright in a drift. It ought to
+have been another warning to him, but it only roused his curiosity to a
+still higher pitch, as the trapper knew it would. He sat down in the
+snow and considered. The thing didn't really look as if it were good to
+eat, and yet it might be. The only way to find out would be to go up to
+it and taste it. But, eatable or not, such a bright bit of color was
+certainly very attractive to the eye. You would think so yourself if you
+hadn't seen anything scarlet since last summer's wild-flowers faded.
+Finally, he got up and walked slowly toward it, and the first thing he
+knew a steel trap had him by the right foreleg.
+
+The way of the foolish is sometimes as hard as that of the transgressor.
+For a few minutes he was the very maddest cat in all the Great
+Tahquamenon Swamp, and he yelled and howled and caterwauled at the top
+of his voice, and jumped and tore around as if he was crazy. But, of
+course, that sort of thing did him no good, and after a while he quieted
+down and took things a little more calmly. Instead of being made fast
+to a tree, the trap was bound by a short chain to a heavy wooden clog,
+and he found that by pulling with all his might he could drag it at a
+snail's pace through the snow. So off he went on three legs, hauling the
+trap and clog by the fourth, with the blood oozing out around the steel
+jaws and leaving a line of bright crimson stains behind him. The strain
+on his foot hurt him cruelly, but a great fear was in his heart, and he
+knew that he must go away or die. So he pushed on, hour after hour,
+stopping now and then to rest for a few minutes in a thicket of cedar or
+hemlock, but soon gathering his strength for another effort. How he
+growled and snarled with rage and pain, and how his great eyes flamed as
+he looked ahead to see what was before him, or back along his trail to
+know if the trapper was coming!
+
+It was a terrible journey that he made that night, and the hours dragged
+by slow as his pace and heavy as his clog. He was heading toward the
+hollow tree by the Glimmerglass that he and his mate called home, but he
+had not made more than half the distance, and his strength was nearly
+gone. Half-way between midnight and dawn he reached the edge of a steep
+and narrow gully that lay straight across his path. The moon had risen
+some time before, and the white slopes gleamed and shone in the frosty
+light, all the whiter by contrast with the few bushes and trees that
+were scattered up and down the little valley. The lynx stood on the
+brink and studied the proposition before him. It would be hard, hard
+work to climb the farther side, dragging that heavy clog, but at least
+it ought to be easy going down. He scrambled over the edge, hauling the
+clog after him till it began to roll of its own accord. The chain
+slackened, and he leaped forward. It was good to be able to jump again.
+But he jumped too far, or tried to, and the chain tightened with a jerk
+that brought him down head-first in the snow. Before he could recover
+himself the clog shot past him, and the chain jerked again and sent him
+heels over head. And then cat, trap, and clog all went rolling over and
+over down the slope, and landed in a heap at the bottom. All the breath
+and the spirit were knocked out of him, and for a long time he could do
+nothing but lie still in the snow, trembling with weakness and pain, and
+moaning miserably. It must have been half an hour before he could pull
+himself together again, and then, just as he was about to begin the
+climb up the far side of the gully, he suddenly discovered that he was
+no longer alone. Off to the left, among some thick bushes, he saw the
+lurking form of a timber-wolf. He looked to the right, and there was
+another. Behind him was a third, and he thought he saw several others
+still farther away, slinking from bush to bush, and gradually drawing
+nearer. Ordinarily they would hardly have dreamed of tackling him, and,
+if they had mustered up sufficient courage to attempt to overpower him
+by mere force of numbers, he would simply have climbed a tree and
+laughed at them. But now it was different.
+
+The lynx cowered down in the snow and seemed to shrink to half his
+normal size; and then, as all the horror and the hopelessness of it came
+over him, he lifted up his voice in such a cry of abject fear, such a
+wail of utter agony and despair, as even the Great Tahquamenon Swamp had
+very seldom heard. I suppose that he had killed and eaten hundreds of
+smaller animals in his time, but I doubt if any of his victims ever
+suffered as he did. Most of them were taken unawares, and were killed
+and eaten almost before they knew what was coming; but he had to lie
+still and see his enemies slowly closing in upon him, knowing all the
+time that he could not fight to any advantage, and that to fly was
+utterly impossible. But when the last moment arrived he must have braced
+up and given a good account of himself. At least that was what the
+trapper decided when he came a few hours later to look for his trap. The
+lynx was gone--not even a broken bone of him was left--but there in the
+trodden and blood-stained snow was the record of an awful struggle.
+There must have been something heroic about him, after all.
+
+For the rest of the winter his widow had to hunt alone. This was not
+such a great hardship in itself, for they had frequently gone out
+separately on their marauding expeditions--more often, perhaps, than
+they had gone together. But now there was never anyone to curl up beside
+her in the hollow tree and help her keep warm, or to share his kill with
+her when her own was unsuccessful. And when the spring should come and
+bring her a family of kittens, she would have to take on her own
+shoulders the whole burden of parental responsibility. Or, rather, the
+burden was already there, for if she did not find enough meat to keep
+herself in good health the babies would be weak and wizened and
+unpromising, with small chance of growing up to be a credit to her or a
+satisfaction to themselves. So she hunted night and day, and, on the
+whole, with very good results. To tell the truth, I think she was rather
+more skilful in the chase than her mate had been, and this seems to be a
+not uncommon state of things in cat families. Perhaps feminine fineness
+of instinct and lightness of tread are better adapted to the still-hunt
+than the greater clumsiness and awkwardness of masculinity. Or, is there
+something deeper than that? Has something whispered to these savage
+mothers that on their success depends more than their own lives, and
+that it is their sacred duty to kill, kill, kill? However that may be,
+she proved herself a mighty huntress before the Lord. Her eye was keen,
+and her foot was sure, and she made terrible havoc among the rabbits and
+partridges.
+
+And yet there were times when even she was hungry and tired and
+disheartened. Once, on a clear, keen, cold winter night when all the
+great white world seemed frozen to death, she serenaded a land-looker
+who had made his bed in a deserted lumber-camp and was trying to sleep.
+She had eaten almost nothing for several days, and she knew that her
+strength was ebbing. That very evening she had fallen short in a flying
+leap at a rabbit, and had seen him dive head-first into his burrow,
+safe by the merest fraction of an inch. She had fairly screeched with
+rage and disappointment, and as the hours went by and she found no other
+game, she grew so blue and discouraged that she really couldn't contain
+herself any longer. Perhaps it did her good to have a cry. For two hours
+the land-looker lay in his bunk and listened to a wailing that made his
+heart fairly sink within him. Now it was a piercing scream, now it was a
+sob, and now it died away in a low moan, only to rise again, wilder and
+more agonized than ever. He knew without a doubt that it was only some
+kind of a cat--knew it just as well as he knew that his compass needle
+pointed north. Yet there had been times in his land-looking experience
+when he had been ready to swear that the needle was pointing
+south-southeast; and to-night, in spite of his certain knowledge that
+the voice he heard was that of a lynx or a wild-cat or cougar, he
+couldn't help being almost dead sure that it came from a woman in
+distress, there was in it such a note of human anguish and despair.
+Twice he got half-way out of bed to go to her assistance, and then lay
+down again and called himself a fool. At last he could stand it no
+longer, and taking a burning brand from the broken stove that stood in
+the centre of the room, he went to the door and looked out. The great
+arc-light of the moon had checkered the snow-crust with inky shadows,
+and patches of dazzling white. The cold air struck him like needles, and
+he said to himself that it was no wonder that either a cat or a woman
+should cry if she had to stay out in the snow on such a night. The
+moaning and wailing ceased as he opened the door, but now two round
+spots of flame shone out of a black shadow and stared at him
+unwinkingly. The lynx's pupils were wide open, and the golden-yellow
+tapeta in the backs of her eyeballs were glowing like incandescent
+lamps. It was no woman. No human eyes could ever shine like that. The
+land-looker threw the brand with all his might; an ugly snarl came from
+the shadow, and he saw a big gray animal go tearing away across the
+hard, smooth crust in a curious kind of gallop, taking three or four
+yards at a bound, coming down on all four feet at once, and spring
+forward again as if she was made of rubber. He shut the door and went
+back to bed.
+
+That was the end of the concert, and, as it turned out, it was also the
+end of the lynx's troubles, at least for the time being. Half an hour
+later, as she was loping along in the moonlight, she thought she heard a
+faint sound from beneath her feet. She stood still to listen, and the
+next minute she was sure. During the last heavy snow-storm three
+partridges had dived into a drift for shelter from the wind and the
+cold, and such a thick, hard crust had formed over their heads that they
+had not been able to get out again. She resurrected them in short order
+and reinterred them after a fashion of her own, and then she went home
+to her hollow tree and slept the sleep of those who have done what
+Nature tells them to, and whose consciences are clear and whose stomachs
+full.
+
+That was her nearest approach to starvation. She never was quite so
+hungry again, and in the early spring she had a great piece of luck. Not
+very far from her hollow tree she met a buck that had been mortally
+wounded by a hunter. He had had strength enough to run away, and to
+throw his pursuer off his track, but there was very little fight left in
+him. In such a case as this she was quite ready to attack, and it did
+not take her long to finish him. Probably it was a merciful release, for
+he had suffered greatly in the last few days. Fortunately no wolves or
+other large animals found him, and he gave her meat till after the
+kittens had come and she had begun to grow well and strong again.
+
+The kittens were a great success--two of the finest she had ever had,
+and she had had many. But at first, of course, they were rather
+insignificant-looking--just two little balls of reddish-brown fur that
+turned over once in a while and mewed for their dinner. Some of the
+scientific men say that a new-born baby has no mind, but only a blank
+something that appears to be capable of receiving and retaining
+impressions, and that may in certain cases have tendencies. There is
+reason for thinking that the baby lynxes had tendencies. But imagine, if
+you can, what their first impressions were like. And remember that they
+were blind, and that if their ears heard sounds they certainly did not
+comprehend them. Sometimes they were cold and hungry and lonesome, and
+that was an impression of the wrong sort. They did not know what the
+trouble was, but something was the matter, that was certain, and they
+cried about it, like other babies. Then would come a great, warm,
+comforting presence, and all would be right again; and that was a very
+pleasant impression, indeed. I don't suppose they knew exactly what had
+been done to them. Probably they were not definitely aware that their
+empty stomachs had been filled, or that their shrinking, shivering
+little bodies were snuggled down in somebody's thick fur coat, or that
+somebody's warm red tongue was licking and stroking and caressing them.
+Much less could they have known how that big, strong, comforting
+somebody came to be there, or how many harmless and guiltless little
+lives had been snuffed out to give her life and to enable her to give it
+to them. But they knew that all was well with them, and that everything
+was just as it should be--and they took another nap.
+
+[Illustration: "_The hole was suddenly darkened, and a round, hairy face
+looked in._"]
+
+By and by they began to look about for impressions, and were no longer
+content with lying still and taking only what came to them. They seemed
+to acquire a mental appetite for impressions that was almost as ravenous
+as their stomachs' appetite for milk, and their weak little legs were
+forced to lift their squat little bodies and carry them on exploring
+expeditions around the inside of the hollow tree, where they bumped
+their heads against the walls, and stumbled and fell down over the
+inequalities of the floor. They got a good many impressions during these
+excursions, and some of them were mental and some were physical. And
+sometimes they explored their mother, and went scrambling and
+sprawling all over her, probably getting about as well acquainted with
+her as it is possible to be with a person whom one has never seen. For
+their eyes were still closed, and they must have known her only as a
+big, kind, loving, furry thing, that fed them, and warmed them, and
+licked them, and made them feel good, and yet was almost as vague and
+indefinite as something in a dream. But the hour came at last when for
+the first time they saw the light of day shining in through the hole in
+the side of their tree. And while they were looking at it--and probably
+blinking at it--a footstep sounded outside, the hole was suddenly
+darkened, and a round, hairy face looked in--a face with big, unwinking
+eyes, pointed, tufted ears, and a thick whisker brushed back from under
+its chin. Do you suppose they recognized their mother? I don't believe
+they did. But when she jumped in beside them, then they knew her, and
+the impression they gained that day was one of the most wonderful of
+all.
+
+In looks, these kittens of the woods were not so very different from
+those of the backyard, except that they were bigger and perhaps a little
+clumsier, and that their paws were very large, and their tails very
+short and stubby. They grew stronger as the days went on, and their
+legs did not wobble quite so much when they went travelling around the
+inside of the tree. And they learned to use their ears as well as their
+eyes. They knew what their mother's step meant at the entrance, and they
+liked to hear her purr.
+
+Other sounds there were which they did not understand so well, and to
+most of which they gave little heed--the scream of the rabbit when the
+big gray cat leaps on him from behind a bush; the scolding of the red
+squirrel, disturbed and angry at the sight, and fearful that he may be
+the next victim; the bark of the fox; the rasping of the porcupine's
+teeth; and oftenest of all the pleasant rustling and whispering of the
+trees, for by this time the sun and the south wind had come back and
+done their work, and the voice of the leaves was heard in the land. All
+these noises of the woods, and many others besides, came to them from
+outside the walls of the tree, from a vast, mysterious region of which
+as yet they knew nothing except that their mother often went there. She
+was beginning to think that they were big enough and old enough to learn
+something more about it, and so one day she led them out of the hole,
+and they saw the sunshine, and the blue of the sky, and the green of
+the trees, and the whiteness of the sailing clouds, and the beauty of
+the Glimmerglass. But I don't think they appreciated the wonder and the
+glory of it all, or paid as much attention to it as they ought. They
+were too much interested in making their legs work properly, for their
+knees were still rather weak, and were apt to give out all of a sudden,
+and to let a fellow sit down when he didn't want to. And the dry leaves
+and little sticks kept sliding around under one's feet so that one never
+knew what was going to happen next. It was very different from the
+hollow tree, and they were glad when their mother picked them up one at
+a time by the back of the neck, carried them home, gave them their
+supper, and told them to lie still and take a nap while she went after
+another rabbit.
+
+But they had really done very well, considering that it was their first
+day out. One of them in particular was very smart and precocious, and
+she had taken much pleasure in watching the independent way in which he
+went staggering about, looking for impressions. And the other was not
+far behind him. Her long hours of still-hunting had brought their rich
+reward, and her babies were all that she could ask.
+
+She was in the habit of occasionally bringing something home for them to
+play with--a wood-mouse, perhaps, or a squirrel, or a partridge, or even
+a larger animal; and they played with it with a vengeance, shaking and
+worrying it, and spitting and growling and snarling over it in the most
+approved fashion. And you should have seen them the first time they saw
+their mother catch a rabbit. They did not try to help her, for she had
+told them not to, but they watched her as if it was a matter of life and
+death--as, indeed, it was, but not to them. The rabbit was nibbling some
+tender young sprouts. The old lynx crept up behind him very quietly and
+stealthily, and the kittens' eyes stuck out farther and farther as they
+saw her gradually work up within leaping distance. They nearly jumped
+out of their skins with excitement when at last she gave a bound and
+landed with both forepaws on the middle of his back. And when the rabbit
+screamed out in his fright and pain, they could not contain themselves
+any longer, but rushed in and helped finish him. They seemed to
+understand the game as perfectly as if they had been practising it for
+years. I suppose that was where their tendencies came in.
+
+A few days later they had another experience--or at least one of them
+did. Their mother happened to see two little wood-mice run under a
+small, half-decayed log, and she put her forefeet against it and rolled
+it half-way over; and then, while she held it there, the larger
+Kitten--the one who had made the better record the day they first left
+the den--thrust his paw under and grabbed one of them. The other mouse
+got away, but I don't think the Kitten cared very much. He had made his
+first kill, and that was glory enough for one day.
+
+From wood-mice the kittens progressed to chipmunks, and from them to
+larger game. With use and exercise their soft baby muscles grew hard and
+strong, and it was not long before they were able to follow the old lynx
+almost anywhere, to the tops of the tallest trees, over the roughest
+ground, and through the densest thickets. And they learned other things
+besides how to walk and climb and hunt. Their mother was a good teacher
+and a rather rigid disciplinarian, and very early in life they were
+taught that they must obey promptly and without question, and that on
+certain occasions it was absolutely necessary to keep perfectly still
+and not make the slightest sound. For instance, there was the time when
+the whole family lay sprawled out on a limb of a tree, fifteen or
+twenty feet up from the ground, and watched the land-looker go by with
+his half-axe over his shoulder, his compass in his hand, and a note-book
+sticking out of his pocket. They were so motionless, and the grayish
+color of their fur matched so well with the bark of the tree, that he
+never saw them, although for a moment they were right over his head, and
+could have leaped to his shoulders as easily as not.
+
+In short, the kittens were learning to take care of themselves, and it
+was well that they were, for one day their mother was taken from them in
+a strange, sad way, and there was nothing they could do but cry, and try
+to follow her, and at last see her pass out of sight, still looking back
+and calling to them pitifully. It was the river that carried her off,
+and it was a floating saw-log that she rode upon, an unwilling
+passenger. The trouble began with a steel trap, just as it did in their
+father's case. Traps are not nearly as much to be feared in summer or
+early fall as in winter, for the simple reason that one's fur is not as
+valuable in warm weather as in cold. The lynx's, for instance, was
+considerably shorter and thinner than it had been in the preceding
+December, when she and her mate first met, and it had taken on a
+reddish tinge, as if the steel had begun to rust a trifle. But the
+killing machines are to be found occasionally at all seasons of the
+year, and somebody had set this one down by the edge of the water--not
+the Glimmerglass, but a branch of the Tahquamenon River--and had chained
+it to a log that had been hung up in last spring's drive. When she first
+felt its grip on her leg she yelled and tore around just as her mate had
+done, while the kittens looked on in wonder and amazement. They had seen
+their mother in many moods, but never in one like this. But by and by
+she grew weary, and a little later it began to rain. She was soon
+soaking wet, and as the hours dragged on every ounce of courage and
+gumption seemed to ooze out of her. If the trapper had come then he
+would have found her very meek and limp. Possibly she would have been
+ready to fight him for her children's sakes, but nothing else could have
+nerved her to it. But she was not put to any such test; the trapper did
+not come.
+
+It rained very hard, and it rained very long. In fact it had been
+raining most of the time for two or three days before the lynx found the
+trap, and in a few more hours the Great Tahquamenon Swamp was as full
+of water as a soaked sponge, and the river was rising rapidly. The lynx
+was soon lying in a puddle, and to get out of it she climbed upon the
+log and stretched herself out on the wet, brown bark. Still the river
+rose, and by and by the log began to stir in its bed, as if it were
+thinking of renewing its voyage. At last, when she had been there nearly
+twenty-four hours, and was faint with hunger, as well as cold and wet,
+it quietly swung out into the current and drifted away down the stream.
+She was an excellent swimmer, and she promptly jumped overboard and
+tried to reach the shore, but of course the chain put a stop to that.
+Weakened by fasting, and borne down by the weight of the trap, she came
+very near drowning before she could scramble up again over the end of
+the log and seat herself amidships.
+
+The kittens were foraging among the bushes, but she called to them in a
+tone which told them plainly enough that some new trouble had befallen
+her, and they hurried down to the water's edge, and stood there, mewing
+piteously. She implored them to follow her, and after much persuasion
+the bigger and bolder of the two plunged bravely in. But he didn't get
+very far. It was very cold and very wet, and he wasn't used to
+swimming. Besides, the water got into his nose and made him sneeze,
+which distracted his attention so that for a moment he forgot all about
+his mother, and just turned around and hustled back to the shore as fast
+as he could go. After that he, contented himself with following along
+the bank and keeping as near her as he could. Once the log drifted in so
+close that she thought she could jump ashore, and the Kitten watched
+eagerly as she gathered herself for the spring. But the chain was too
+short, and she fell into the water. Her forepaw just grazed the
+grass-tuft where the Kitten was standing, and for an instant she felt
+the blades slipping between her toes; but the next moment she was
+swimming for the log again, and the Kitten was mewing his sympathy at
+the top of his voice.
+
+They journeyed on for nearly an hour longer, she on her prison-ship, and
+he on land; and then, before either of them knew just what had happened,
+the little tributary had emptied itself into the main stream of the
+Tahquamenon, and they suddenly realized that they were much farther
+apart than they had been at any time before. This new river was several
+times as broad as the one on which the voyage had begun, and the wind
+was steadily carrying her away from the shore, while the current bore
+her resistlessly on in its long, slow voyage to Lake Superior. She was
+still calling to him, but her voice was growing fainter and fainter in
+the distance, and so, at last, she passed out of his sight and hearing
+forever.
+
+[Illustration: "_He was a very presentable young lynx._"]
+
+And then, for the first time, he missed his brother. The other kitten
+had always been a trifle the slower of the two, and in some way he had
+dropped behind. Our friend was alone in the world.
+
+But the same river that had carried his mother away brought him a little
+comfort in his desolation, for down by the water's edge, cast up on the
+sand by a circling eddy, he found a dead sucker. He ate it with relish,
+and felt better in spite of himself. It made a very large meal for a
+lynx of his size, and by the time he had finished it he began to be
+drowsy, so he picked out the driest spot he could find, under the thick
+branches of a large hemlock, and curled himself up on the brown needles
+and went to sleep.
+
+The next day he had to hustle for a living, and the next it was the
+same, and the next, and the next. As the weeks and the months went by
+there was every indication that life would be little else than one long
+hustle--or perhaps a short one--and in spite of all he could do there
+were times when he was very near the end of the chapter. But his
+mother's lessons stood him in good stead, and he was exceedingly well
+armed for the chase. It would have been hard to find in all the woods
+any teeth better adapted than his to the work of pulling a
+fellow-creature to pieces. In front, on both the upper and lower jaws,
+were the chisel-shaped incisors. Flanking them were the canines, very
+long and slender, and very sharply pointed, thrusting themselves into
+the meat like the tines of a carving-fork, and tearing it away in great
+shreds. And back of the canines were other teeth that were still larger,
+but shorter and broader, and shaped more like notched knife-blades.
+Those of the lower jaw worked inside those of the upper, like shears,
+and they were very handy for cutting the large chunks into pieces small
+enough to go down his throat. By the time he got through with a
+partridge there was not much left of it but a puddle of brown feathers.
+His claws, too, were very long and white, and very wickedly curved; and
+before starting out on a hunt he would often get up on his hind legs
+and sharpen those of his forefeet on a tree-trunk, just as your
+house-cat sharpens hers on the leg of the kitchen-table. When he wasn't
+using them he kept them hidden between his toes, so that they would not
+be constantly catching and breaking on roots and things; but all he had
+to do when he wanted them was to pull certain muscles, and out they
+came, ready to scratch and tear to his heart's content. They were not by
+any means full grown as yet, but they bade fair to equal his father's
+some day. He was warmly and comfortably clothed, of course, and along
+his sides and flanks the hair hung especially thick and long, to protect
+his body when he was obliged to wade through light, fluffy snow. When
+there was a crust he didn't need it, for his paws were so big and broad
+and hairy that at such times they bore him up almost as well as if they
+had been two pairs of snow-shoes.
+
+But, well armed, well clad, and well shod though he was, it was
+fortunate for the Kitten that his first winter was a mild one--mild,
+that is, for the Glimmerglass country. Otherwise things might have gone
+very hard with him, and they were none too easy as it was. There were
+days when he was even hungrier than his mother had been the night she
+serenaded the land-looker, and it was on one of these occasions that he
+found a porcupine in a tree and tried to make a meal of him. That was a
+memorable experience. The porky was sitting in a crotch, doing nothing
+in particular, and when the Kitten approached he simply put his nose
+down and his quills up. The Kitten spat at him contemptuously, but
+without any apparent effect. Then he put out a big forepaw and tapped
+him lightly on the forehead. The porcupine flipped his tail, and the
+Kitten jumped back, and spat and hissed harder than ever. He didn't
+quite know what to make of this singular-looking creature, but he was
+young and rash, besides being awfully, awfully hungry, and in another
+minute he pitched in.
+
+The next thing they knew, the porcupine had dropped to the ground, where
+he lit in a snow-bank, and presently picked himself up and waddled off
+to another tree, while the Kitten--well, the Kitten just sat in the
+crotch and cried as hard as ever he could cry. There were quills in his
+nose, and quills in his side, and quills in both his forepaws; and every
+motion was agony. He himself never knew exactly how he got rid of them
+all, so of course I can't tell you. A few of those that were caught only
+by their very tips may possibly have dropped out, but it is probable
+that most of them broke off and left their points to work deeper and
+deeper into the flesh until the skin finally closed over them and they
+disappeared. I have no doubt that pieces of those quills are still
+wandering about in various parts of his anatomy, like the quart of lead
+that "Little Bobs" carries around with him, according to Mr. Kipling. It
+was weeks before he ceased to feel the pain of them.
+
+For several days after this mishap it was impossible for him to hunt,
+and he would certainly have starved to death if it had not been for a
+cougar who providentially came to the Glimmerglass on a short visit. The
+Kitten found his tracks in the snow the very next day, and cautiously
+followed them up, limping as he went, to see what the big fellow had
+been doing. For a mile or more the large, round, shapeless
+footprints--very much like his own, but on a bigger scale--were spaced
+so regularly that it was evident the cougar had been simply walking
+along at a very leisurely gait, with nothing to disturb his frame of
+mind. But after a while the record showed a remarkable change. The
+footprints were only a few inches apart, and his cougarship had carried
+himself so low that his body had dragged in the snow and left a deep
+furrow behind. The Kitten knew what that meant. He had been there
+himself, though not after the same kind of prey. And then the trail
+stopped entirely, and for a space the snow lay fresh and virgin and
+untrodden. But twenty feet away was the spot where the cougar had come
+down on all-fours, only to leap forward again like a ricochetting
+cannon-ball; and twenty-five feet farther lay the greater part of the
+carcass of a deer.
+
+The Kitten stuffed himself as full as he could hold, and then climbed a
+tree and watched. About midnight the cougar appeared, and after he had
+eaten his fill and gone away again the Kitten slipped down and ate some
+more. He was making up for lost time. For four successive nights the
+cougar came and feasted on venison, but after that the Kitten never saw
+him or heard of him again. There was still a goodly quantity of meat
+left, and it seems somewhat curious that he did not return for it, but
+he was a stranger in those parts, and it is probable that he went back
+to his old haunts, up toward Whitefish Point, perhaps, or the Grand
+Sable. Anyhow, it was very nice for the Kitten, for that deer kept him
+in provisions until he was able to take up hunting once more.
+
+He had one rather exciting experience during this period. One day, just
+as he was finishing a very enjoyable meal of venison tenderloin, he
+heard the tramp of snow-shoes on the crust, and in a moment more that
+same land-looker came pacing down a section line and halted squarely in
+front of him. Now there are trappers who say that a Canada lynx is a
+fool and a coward, that he will run from a small dog, and that he makes
+his living entirely by preying on animals that are weaker and more
+poorly armed than he. I admit, of course, that the majority of lynxes do
+not go ramming around the woods with chips on their shoulders, looking
+for hunters armed with bowie-knives and repeating rifles. You wouldn't,
+either--not as long as there were rabbits to be had for the stalking.
+But on this occasion the Kitten's conduct certainly savored of
+recklessness, if not of real bravery. Being entirely unacquainted with
+the land-looking profession, he naturally supposed that the man had come
+for his deer. And he didn't propose to let him have it. He considered
+that that venison belonged to him, and he took his stand on the carcass,
+laid his ears back, showed his white teeth, made his eyes blaze, and
+spit and growled and snarled defiantly. The land-looker didn't quite
+know what to do. His section line lay straight across the deer's body,
+and he did not want to leave it for fear of confusing his reckoning, but
+the Kitten, though only half grown, looked uncommonly business-like. He
+had no gun, nor even a revolver, for he was hunting for pine, not fresh
+meat. He had left his half-axe in camp, and when he felt in his pocket
+for his jack-knife it was not there. Then he looked about for a club. He
+had been told that lynxes always had very thin skulls, and that a light
+blow on the back of the head was enough to kill the biggest and fiercest
+of them, let alone a kitten. But he couldn't even find a stick that
+would answer his purpose.
+
+"Well," he said, when they had stared at each other a minute or two
+longer without coming to any understanding, "I suppose if you won't turn
+out for me, I'll have to turn out for you"; and he made a careful
+circuit at a respectful distance, picked up his line again, and went on
+his way.
+
+The winter dragged on very slowly, with many ups and downs, but it was
+gone at last. Summer was easier, if only because he was not obliged to
+use up any of his vitality in keeping warm. Sometimes, indeed, he was
+really too warm for comfort, so he presently changed his coat and put
+on a thinner one. People like to talk about the coolness of the deep
+woods, but the truth is that there isn't any place much hotter and
+stuffier than a dense growth of timber, where the wind never comes, and
+where the air is heavy and still. And then there are the windfalls and
+the old burnings, where the sun beats fiercely down among the fallen
+trees till the blackened soil is hot as a city pavement, and where dead
+trunks and half-burned logs lie thrown together in the wildest
+confusion--places which are almost impassable for men, and which even
+the land-lookers avoid whenever they can, but which a cat will thread as
+readily as the locomotive follows the rails. These were the localities
+which the Kitten was most fond of frequenting, and here his youth
+slipped rapidly away. He was fast becoming an adult lynx.
+
+The summer passed, and half the autumn; the first snow came and went,
+and again the Kitten put on his winter coat of gray, with the white
+underneath, and the dark trimmings up and down his legs and along his
+back. What with his mustachios, and his whiskers, and the tassels on his
+ears, he was a very presentable young lynx. It would be many years
+before he could hope to be as large and powerful as his father, but,
+nevertheless, he was making remarkably good progress. And the time was
+at hand when he would need both his good looks and his muscle.
+
+Since his mother had left him he had seen only two or three lynxes, and
+those were all much older and larger than he, and not well suited to be
+his companions. But history repeats itself. One Indian-summer afternoon
+he was tramping along the northern bank of the Glimmerglass, just as his
+father had done two years before, and as he rounded a bend in the path
+he came face to face with someone who was enough like him to have been
+his twin sister. And they did as his parents had done, stood still for a
+minute or two and looked at each other as if they had just found out
+what they were made for. After all, life is something more than hustling
+for a living, even in the woods.
+
+But just then something else happened, and another ruling passion came
+into play--the old instinct of the chase, which neither of them could
+very long forget. A faint "Quack, quack, quack," came up from the lake,
+and they crept to the edge of the bank, side by side, and looked down.
+Above them the trees stood dreamily motionless in the mellow sunshine.
+Below was a steep slope of ten or fifteen feet; beyond it a tiny strip
+of sandy beach, and then the quiet water. A squadron of ducks, on their
+way from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf, had taken stop-over checks for
+the Glimmerglass; and now they came loitering along through the dead
+bulrushes, murmuring gently, in soft, mild voices, of delicious minnows
+and snails, and pausing a moment now and then to put their heads under
+and dabble in the mud for some particularly choice morsel. The lynxes
+crouched and waited, while their stubby tails twitched nervously, their
+long, narrow pupils grew still narrower, and their paws fumbled about
+among the dry pine-needles, feeling for the very best footing for the
+flying leap. The ducks came on, still prattling pleasantly over their
+own private affairs. Closer and closer they swam, without a thought of
+death waiting for them at the top of the bank, and suddenly four
+splendid sets of muscles jerked like bowstrings, four long hind-legs
+straightened with a mighty thrust and shove, and two big gray creatures
+shot out from the brink and came sailing down through the air with their
+heads up, their tails on end, their eyes blazing, and their forepaws
+stretched out to grab the nearest unhappy duck. The flock broke up with
+frightened cries and a wonderful whirring of wings, and in a moment
+more they were far away and going like the very wind.
+
+[Illustration: "_They both stood still and looked at each other._"]
+
+But two of its members stayed behind, and presently the lynxes waded out
+on the beach and sat down to eat their supper together. They talked as
+much over that meal as the ducks had over theirs, but the lynx language
+is very different from that of the water-fowl. Instead of soft, gentle
+murmurings there were low growls and snarls as the long, white claws and
+teeth tore the warm red flesh from the bones. It could hardly have been
+a pleasant conversation to anyone but themselves, but I suppose they
+enjoyed it as much as the choicest repartee. In truth they had good
+reason to be satisfied and contented with themselves and each other, and
+with what they had just done, for not every flying leap is so
+successful, and not every duck is as plump and juicy as the two that
+they were discussing. So they talked on in angry, threatening tones,
+that sounded like quarrelling, but that really meant only a fierce,
+savage kind of pleasure; and when the meal was ended, and the very last
+shred of duck-flesh had disappeared, they washed their faces, and
+purred, and lay still a while to visit and get acquainted.
+
+There were many other meetings during the weeks that followed--some
+under as pleasant circumstances as the first, and some not. Perhaps the
+best were those of the clear, sharp days of early winter, when the sky
+was blue, and the sunshine was bright, and a thin carpet of fine, dry
+snow covered the floor of the forest. It was cold, of course; but they
+were young and strong and healthy, and their fur was thick and warm,
+like the garments of a Canadian girl. The keen air set the live blood
+leaping and dancing, and they frisked and frolicked, and romped and
+played, and rolled each other over and over in the snow, and were as
+wildly and deliciously happy as it is ever given to two animals to be.
+
+It was too good to last long without some kind of an interruption, and
+one glorious winter evening, when the full moon was flooding the woods
+with the white light that brings a touch of madness, a third young lynx
+came upon the scene. And then there was trouble. The Kitten's new friend
+sat back in the bushes and looked on, while he and his rival squatted
+face to face in the snow and sassed each other to the utmost limits of
+the lynx vocabulary, their voices rising and falling in a hideous duet,
+and their eyes gleaming and glowing with a pale, yellow-green fire.
+Presently there was a rush, and the fur began to fly. The snow flew,
+too; and the woods rang and rang again with yelling and caterwauling,
+and spitting and swearing, and all manner of abuse. The rabbits heard
+it, and trembled; and the partridges, down in the cedar swamp, glanced
+furtively over their shoulders and were glad it was no nearer. They bit
+and scratched and clawed like two little devils, and the onlooker in the
+bushes must have felt a thrill of pride over the strenuous way in which
+they strove for her favors. First one was on top, and then the other.
+Now our Kitten had his rival by the ears, and now by the tail. One
+minute heads, legs, and bodies were all mixed up in such a snarl that it
+seemed as if they could never be untangled, and the next they backed off
+just long enough to catch their breath, and then flew at each other's
+throats more savagely than ever. It was really more difficult than you
+would suppose for either of them to get a good hold of the other, partly
+because their fur was so thick, and partly because Nature had purposely
+made their skins very loose, with an eye to just such performances as
+this. But they managed to do a good deal of damage, nevertheless; and in
+the end the pretender was thoroughly whipped, and fled away in disgrace
+down the long, snowy aisles of the forest, howling as he went, while
+the Kitten turned slowly and painfully to the one who was at the bottom
+of all this unpleasantness. His ears were slit; one eye was shut, and
+the lid of the other hung very low; he limped badly with his right
+hind-leg, and many were the wounds and scratches along his breast and
+sides. But he didn't care. He had won his spurs.
+
+The story of the Kitten is told, for he was a kitten no longer.
+
+
+
+
+POINTERS FROM A PORCUPINE QUILL
+
+
+HE wasn't handsome--the original owner of this quill--and I can't say
+that he was very smart. He was only a slow-witted, homely old porky who
+once lived by the Glimmerglass. But in spite of his slow wits and his
+homeliness a great many things happened to him in the course of his
+life.
+
+He was born in a hollow hemlock log, on a wild April morning, when the
+north wind was whipping the lake with snow, and when winter seemed to
+have come back for a season. The Glimmerglass was neither glimmering nor
+glassy that morning, but he and his mother were snug and warm in their
+wooden nest, and they cared little for the storm that was raging
+outside.
+
+It has been said by some that porcupines lay eggs, the hard, smooth
+shells of which are furnished by a kind and thoughtful Providence for
+the protection of the mothers from their prickly offspring until the
+latter have fairly begun their independent existence. Other people say
+that two babies invariably arrive at once, and that one of them is
+always dead before it is born. But when my Porcupine discovered America
+he had neither a shell on his back nor a dead twin brother by his side.
+Neither was he prickly. He was covered all over with soft, furry,
+dark-brown hair. If you had searched carefully along the middle of his
+back you might possibly have found the points of the first quills, just
+peeping through the skin; but as yet the thick fur hid them from sight
+and touch unless you knew just where and how to look for them.
+
+He was a very large baby, larger even than a new-born bear cub, and no
+doubt his mother felt a justifiable pride in his size and his general
+peartness. She was certainly very careful of him and very anxious for
+his safety, for she kept him out of sight, and no one ever saw him
+during those first days and weeks of his babyhood. She did not propose
+to have any lynxes or wild-cats or other ill-disposed neighbors fondling
+him until his quills were grown. After that they might give him as many
+love-pats as they pleased.
+
+He grew rapidly, as all porcupine babies do. Long hairs, tipped with
+yellowish-white, came out through the dense fur, and by and by the
+quills began to show. His teeth were lengthening, too, as his mother
+very well knew, and between the sharp things in his mouth and those on
+his back and sides he was fast becoming a very formidable nursling.
+Before he was two months old she was forced to wean him, but by that
+time he was quite able to travel down to the beach and feast on the
+tender lily-pads and arrow-head leaves that grew in the shallow water,
+within easy reach from fallen and half-submerged tree-trunks.
+
+One June day, as he and his mother were fishing for lily-pads, each of
+them out on the end of a big log, a boy came down the steep bank that
+rose almost from the water's edge. He wasn't a very attractive boy. His
+clothes were dirty and torn--and so was his face. His hat was gone, and
+his hair had not seen a comb for weeks. The mosquitoes and black-flies
+and no-see-'ems had bitten him until his skin was covered with blotches
+and his eyelids were so swollen that he could hardly see. And worst of
+all, he looked as if he were dying of starvation. There was almost
+nothing left of him but skin and bones, and his clothing hung upon him
+as it would on a framework of sticks. If the Porcupine could have
+philosophized about it he would probably have said that this was the
+wrong time of year for starving; and from his point of view he would
+have been right. June, in the woods, is the season of plenty for
+everybody but man. Man thinks he must have wheat-flour, and that doesn't
+grow on pines or maple-trees, nor yet in the tamarack swamp. But was
+there any wild, fierce glare in the boy's eyes, such a light of hunger
+as the story-books tell us is to be seen in the eyes of the wolf and the
+lynx when they have not eaten for days and days, and when the snow lies
+deep in the forest, and famine comes stalking through the trees? I don't
+think so. He was too weak and miserable to do any glaring, and his
+stomach was aching so hard from eating green gooseberries that he could
+scarcely think of anything else.
+
+But his face brightened a very little when he saw the old she-porcupine,
+and he picked up a heavy stick and waded out beside her log. She clacked
+her teeth together angrily as he approached; but he paid no attention,
+so she drew herself into a ball, with her head down and her nose covered
+by her forepaws. Reaching across her back and down on each side was a
+belt or girdle of quills, the largest and heaviest on her whole body,
+which could be erected at will, and now they stood as straight as young
+spruce-trees. Their tips were dark-brown, but the rest of their length
+was nearly white, and when you looked at her from behind she seemed to
+have a pointed white ruffle, edged with black, tied around the middle of
+her body. But the boy wasn't thinking about ruffles, and he didn't care
+what she did with her quills. He gave her such a thrust with his stick
+that she had to grab at the log with both hands to keep from being
+shoved into the water. That left her nose unprotected, and he brought
+the stick down across it once, twice, three times. Then he picked her up
+by one foot, very gingerly, and carried her off; and our Porky never saw
+his mother again.
+
+Perhaps we had best follow her up and see what finally became of her.
+Half a mile from the scene of the murder the boy came upon a woman and a
+little girl. I sha'n't try to describe them, except to say that they
+were even worse off than he. Perhaps you read in the papers, some years
+ago, about the woman and the two children who were lost for several
+weeks in the woods of northern Michigan.
+
+"I've got a porky," said the boy.
+
+[Illustration: "_High up in the top of a tall hemlock._"]
+
+He dropped his burden on the ground, and they all stood around and
+looked at it. They were hungry--oh, so hungry!--but for some reason they
+did not seem very eager to begin. An old porcupine with her clothes on
+is not the most attractive of feasts, and they had no knife with which
+to skin her, no salt to season the meat, no fire to cook it, and no
+matches with which to start one. Rubbing two sticks together is a very
+good way of starting a fire when you are in a book, but it doesn't work
+very well in the Great Tahquamenon Swamp. And yet, somehow or other--I
+don't know how, and I don't want to--they ate that porcupine. And it did
+them good. When the searchers found them, a week or two later, the woman
+and the boy were dead, but the little girl was still alive, and for all
+I know she is living to this day.
+
+Let us return to the Glimmerglass. The young Porcupine ought to have
+mourned deeply for his mother, but I grieve to say that he did nothing
+of the kind. I doubt if he was even very lonesome. His brain was
+smaller, smoother, and less corrugated than yours is supposed to be; its
+wrinkles were few and not very deep; and it may be that the bump of
+filial affection was quite polished, or even that there wasn't any such
+bump at all. Anyhow, he got along very well without her, dispensing with
+her much more easily than the woman and the boy and girl could have.
+He watched stolidly while the boy killed her and carried her off, and a
+little later he was eating lily-pads again.
+
+As far as his future prospects were concerned, he had little reason for
+worrying. He knew pretty well how to take care of himself, for that is a
+kind of knowledge which comes early to young porcupines. Really, there
+wasn't much to learn. His quills would protect him from most of his
+enemies, if not from all of them; and, what was still better, he need
+never suffer from a scarcity of food. Of all the animals in the woods
+the porcupine is probably the safest from starvation, for he can eat
+anything from the soft green leaves of the water-plants to the bark and
+the small twigs of the tallest hemlock. Summer and winter, his
+storehouse is always full. The young lions may lack, and suffer hunger,
+and seek their meat from God; but the young porky has only to climb a
+tree and set his teeth at work. All the woods are his huckleberry.
+
+And, by the way, our Porcupine's teeth were a great institution,
+especially the front ones, and were well worthy of a somewhat detailed
+description. They were long and sharp and yellow, and there were two in
+the upper jaw and two in the lower, with a wide gap on each side between
+them and the molars. They kept right on growing as long as he lived, and
+there is no telling how far they would have gone if there had been
+nothing to stop them. Fortunately, he did a great deal of eating and
+chewing, and the constant friction kept them worn down, and at the same
+time served to sharpen them. Like a beaver's, they were formed of thin
+shells of hard enamel in front, backed up by softer pulp behind; and of
+course the soft parts wore away first, and left the enamel projecting in
+sharp, chisel-like edges that could gnaw crumbs from a hickory
+axe-handle.
+
+The next few months were pleasant ones, with plenty to eat, and nothing
+to do but keep his jaws going. By and by the leaves began to fall, and
+whenever the Porky walked abroad they rustled around him like silk
+skirts going down the aisle of a church. A little later the beechnuts
+came down from the sky, and he feasted more luxuriously than ever. His
+four yellow chisels tore the brown shells open, his molars ground the
+sweet kernels into meal, and he ate and ate till his short legs could
+hardly keep his fat little belly off the ground.
+
+Then came the first light snow, and his feet left tracks which bore a
+faint resemblance to a baby's--that is, if your imagination was
+sufficiently vigorous. The snow grew deeper and deeper, and after a
+while he had to fairly plough his way from the hollow log to the tree
+where he took his meals. It was hard work, for his clumsy legs were not
+made for wading, and at every step he had to lift and drag himself
+forward, and then let his body drop while he shifted his feet. A
+porcupine's feet will not go of themselves, the way other animals' do.
+They have to be picked up one at a time and lifted forward as far as
+they can reach--not very far at the best, for they are fastened to the
+ends of very short legs. It almost seems as if he could run faster if he
+could drop them off and leave them behind. One evening, when the snow
+was beginning to freeze again after a thawing day, he lay down to rest
+for a few minutes; and when he started on, some of his quills were fast
+in the hardening crust and had to be left behind. But no matter how
+difficult the walk might be, there was always a good square meal at the
+end of it, and he pushed valiantly on till he reached his dinner-table.
+
+Sometimes he stayed in the same tree for several days at a time,
+quenching his thirst with snow, and sleeping in a crotch.
+
+He was not by any means the only porcupine in the woods around the
+Glimmerglass, although weeks sometimes passed without his seeing any of
+his relations. At other times there were from one to half a dozen
+porkies in the trees close by, and when they happened to feel like it
+they would call back and forth to each other in queer, harsh, and often
+querulous voices.
+
+One afternoon, when he and another porcupine were occupying trees next
+each other, two land-lookers came along and camped for the night between
+them. Earlier in the day the men had crossed the trail of a pack of
+wolves, and they talked of it as they cut their firewood, and, with all
+the skill of the _voyageurs_ of old, cooked their scanty supper, and
+made their bed of balsam boughs. The half-breed was much afraid that
+they would have visitors before morning, but the white man only laughed
+at the idea.
+
+The meal was hardly finished when they lay down between their
+blankets--the white man to sleep, and the half-breed to listen, listen,
+listen for the coming of the wolves. Beyond the camp-fire's little
+circle of ruddy light, vague shadows moved mysteriously, as if living
+things were prowling about among the trees and only waiting for him to
+fall asleep. Yet there was no wolf-howl to be heard, nor anything else
+to break the silence of the winter night, save possibly the dropping of
+a dead branch, or the splitting open of a tree-trunk, torn apart by the
+frost. And by and by, in spite of himself, the half-breed's eyelids
+began to droop.
+
+But somebody else was awake--awake, and tempted with a great temptation.
+The porcupine--not ours, but the other one--had caught the fragrance of
+coffee and bacon. Here were new odors--different from anything that had
+ever before tickled his nostrils--strange, but indescribably delicious.
+He waited till the land-lookers were snoring, and then he started down
+the tree. Half-way to the ground he encountered the cloud of smoke that
+rose from the camp-fire. Here was another new odor, but with nothing
+pleasant about it. It stung his nostrils and made his eyes smart, and he
+scrambled up again as fast as he could go, his claws and quills rattling
+on the bark. The half-breed woke with a start. He had heard
+something--he was sure he had--the wolves were coming, and he gave the
+white man a punch in the ribs.
+
+"Wake up, wake up, m'shoor!" he whispered, excitedly. "The wolves are
+coming. I can hear them on the snow."
+
+The white man was up in a twinkling, but by that time the porcupine hod
+settled himself in a crotch, out of reach of the smoke, and the woods
+were silent again. The two listened with all their ears, but there was
+not a sound to be heard.
+
+"You must have been dreaming, Louis."
+
+The half-breed insisted that he had really heard the patter of the
+wolves' feet on the snow-crust, but the timber cruiser laughed at him,
+and lay down to sleep again. An hour later the performance was repeated,
+and this time the white man was angry.
+
+"Don't you wake me up again, Louis. You're so rattled you don't know
+what you're doing."
+
+Louis was silenced, but not convinced, and he did not let himself go to
+sleep again. The fire was dying down, and little by little the
+smoke-cloud grew thinner and thinner until it disappeared entirely. Then
+the half-breed heard the same sound once more, but from the tree
+overhead, and not from across the snow. He waited and watched, and
+presently a dark-brown animal, two or three feet in length and about
+the shape of an egg, came scrambling cautiously down the trunk. The
+porky reached the ground in safety, and searched among the tin plates
+and the knives and forks until he found a piece of bacon rind; but he
+got just one taste of it, and then Louis hit him over the head with a
+club. Next morning the land-lookers had porcupine soup for breakfast,
+and they told me afterward that it was very good indeed.
+
+Our Porky had seen it all. He waited till the men had tramped away
+through the woods, with their packs on their backs and their snow-shoes
+on their feet, and then he, too, came down from his tree on a tour of
+investigation. His friend's skin lay on the snow not very far away--if
+you had pulled the quills and the longer hairs out of it, it would have
+made the pelt which the old fur-traders sometimes sold under the name of
+"spring beaver"--but he paid no attention to it. The bacon rind was what
+interested him most, and he chewed and gnawed at it with a relish that
+an epicure might have envied. It was the first time in all his
+gluttonous little life that he had ever tasted the flavor of salt or
+wood-smoke; and neither lily-pads, nor beechnuts, nor berries, nor
+anything else in all the woods could compare with it. Life was worth
+living, if only for this one experience; and it may be that he stowed a
+dim memory of it away in some dark corner of his brain, and hoped that
+fortune would some day be good to him and send him another rind.
+
+The long, long winter dragged slowly on, the snow piled up higher and
+deeper, and the cold grew sharper and keener. Night after night the
+pitiless stars seemed sucking every last bit of warmth out of the old
+earth and leaving it dead and frozen forever. Those were the nights when
+the rabbits came out of their burrows and stamped up and down their
+runways for hours at a time, trying by exercise to keep from freezing to
+death, and when the deer dared not lie down to sleep. And hunger came
+with the cold and the deep snow. The buck and the doe had to live on
+hemlock twigs till they grew thin and poor. The partridges were buried
+in the drifting snow, and starved to death. The lynxes and the wild-cats
+hunted and hunted and hunted, and found no prey; and it was well for the
+bears and the woodchucks that they could sleep all winter and did not
+need food. Only the Porcupine had plenty and to spare. Starvation had no
+terrors for him.
+
+But the hunger of another may mean danger for us, as the Porcupine
+discovered. In ordinary times most of the animals let him severely
+alone. They knew better than to tackle such a living pin-cushion as he;
+and if any of them ever did try it, one touch was generally enough. But
+when you are ready to perish with hunger, you will take risks which at
+other times you would not even think about; and so it happened that one
+February afternoon, as the Porky was trundling himself deliberately over
+the snow-crust, a fierce-looking animal with dark fur, bushy tail, and
+pointed nose sprang at him from behind a tree and tried to catch him by
+the throat, where the quills did not grow, and there was nothing but
+soft, warm fur. The Porcupine knew just what to do in such a case, and
+he promptly made himself into a prickly ball, very much as his mother
+had done seven or eight months before, with his face down, and his
+quills sticking out defiantly. But this time his scheme of defence did
+not work as well as usual, for the sharp little nose dug into the snow
+and wriggled its way closer and closer to where the jugular vein was
+waiting to be tapped. That fisher must have understood his business, for
+he had chosen the one and only way by which a porcupine may be
+successfully attacked. For once in his life our friend was really
+scared. Another inch, and the fisher would have won the game, but he was
+in such a hurry that he grew careless and reckless, and did not notice
+that he had wheeled half-way round, and that his hind-quarters were
+alongside the Porcupine's. Now, sluggish and slow though a porky may be,
+there is one of his members that is as quick as a steel trap, and that
+is his tail. Something hit the fisher a whack on his flank, and he gave
+a cry of pain and fury, and jumped back with half a dozen spears
+sticking in his flesh. He must have quite lost his head during the next
+few seconds, for before he knew it his face also had come within reach
+of that terrible tail and its quick, vicious jerks. That ended the
+battle, and he fled away across the snow, almost mad with the agony in
+his nose, his eyes, his forehead, and his left flank. As for the Porky,
+he made for the nearest tree as fast as he could go, hardly trusting in
+his great deliverance. And I don't believe there is any sight in all the
+Great Tahquamenon Swamp much funnier than a porky in a hurry--a porky
+who has really made up his mind that he is in danger and must hustle for
+dear life. He is the very personification of haste and a desire to go
+somewhere quick, and he picks his feet up and puts them down again as
+fast as ever he can; and yet, no matter how hard he works, his legs are
+so short and his body so fat that he can't begin to travel as fast as he
+wants to.
+
+Another day the lynx tried it, and fared even worse than the fisher--not
+the Canada lynx, with whom we are already somewhat acquainted, but the
+bay lynx. The fisher had had some sense, and would probably have
+succeeded if he had been a little more careful, but the lynx was a fool.
+He didn't know the very first thing about the proper way to hunt
+porcupines, and he ought never to have tried it at all, but he was
+literally starving, and the temptation was too much for him. Here was
+something alive, something that had warm red blood in its veins and a
+good thick layer of flesh over its bones, and that was too slow to get
+away from him; and he sailed right in, tooth and claw, regardless of the
+consequences. Immediately he forgot all about the Porcupine, and his own
+hunger, and everything else but the terrible pain in his face and his
+forepaws. He made the woods fairly ring with his howls, and he jumped up
+and down on the snow-crust, rubbing his head with his paws, and driving
+the little barbed spears deeper and deeper into the flesh. And then,
+all of a sudden, he ceased his leaping and bounding and howling, and
+dropped on the snow in a limp, lifeless heap, dead as last summer's
+lily-pads. One of the quills had driven straight through his left eye
+and into his brain. Was it any wonder if in time the Porcupine came to
+think himself invulnerable?
+
+Even a northern Michigan winter has its ending, and at last there came
+an evening when all the porcupines in the woods around the Glimmerglass
+were calling to each other from one tree to another. They couldn't help
+it. There was something in the air that stirred them to a vague
+restlessness and uneasiness, and our own particular Porky sat up in the
+top of a tall hemlock and sang. Not like Jenny Lind, nor like a thrush
+or a nightingale, but his harsh voice went squealing up and down the
+scale in a way that was all his own, without time or rhythm or melody,
+in the wildest, strangest music that ever woke the silent woods. I don't
+believe that he himself quite knew what he meant or why he did it.
+Certainly no one else could have told, unless some wandering Indian or
+trapper may have heard the queer voices and prophesied that a thaw was
+coming.
+
+The thaw arrived next day, and it proved to be the beginning of spring.
+The summer followed as fast as it could, and again the lily-pads were
+green and succulent in the shallow water along the edge of the
+Glimmerglass, and again the Porcupine wandered down to the beach to feed
+upon them, discarding for a time his winter diet of bark and twigs. Why
+should one live on rye-bread when one can have cake and ice-cream?
+
+And there among the bulrushes, one bright June morning, he had a fight
+with one of his own kind. Just as he was approaching his favorite log,
+two other porcupines appeared, coming from different directions, one a
+male, and the other a female. They all scrambled out upon the log, one
+after another, but it soon became evident that three was a crowd. Our
+Porky and the other bachelor could not agree at all. They both wanted
+the same place and the same lily-pads, and in a little while they were
+pushing and shoving and growling and snarling with all their might, each
+doing his best to drive the other off the log and into the water. They
+did not bite--perhaps they had agreed that teeth like theirs were too
+cruel to be used in civilized warfare--but they struggled and chattered
+and swore at each other, and made all sorts of queer noises while they
+fought their funny little battle--all the funnier because each of them
+had to look out for the other's quills. If either had happened to push
+the wrong way, they might both have been in serious trouble. It did not
+last long. Our Porky was the stronger, and his rival was driven backward
+little by little till he lost his hold completely and slipped into the
+lake. He came to the surface at once, and quickly swam to the shore,
+where he chattered angrily for a few minutes, and then, like the
+sensible bachelor that he was, wandered off up the beach in search of
+other worlds more easily conquered. There was peace on our Porky's log,
+and the lily-pads that grew beside it had never been as fresh and juicy
+as they were that morning.
+
+Two months later, on a hot August afternoon, I was paddling along the
+edge of the Glimmerglass in company with a friend of mine, each of us in
+a small dug-out canoe, when we found the Porky asleep in the sunshine.
+He was lying on the nearly horizontal trunk of a tree whose roots had
+been undermined by the waves till it leaned far out over the lake,
+hardly a foot from the water.
+
+My friend, by the way, is the foreman of a lumber-camp. He has served in
+the British army, has hunted whales off the coast of Greenland, married
+a wife in Grand Rapids, and run a street-car in Chicago; and now he is
+snaking logs out of the Michigan woods. He is quite a chunk of a man,
+tall and decidedly well set up, and it would take a pretty good
+prize-fighter to whip him, but he learned that day that a porcupine at
+close quarters is worse than a trained pugilist.
+
+"Look at that porky," he called to me. "I'm going to ram the canoe into
+the tree and knock him off into the water. Just you watch, and you'll
+see some fun."
+
+I was somewhat uncertain whether the joke would ultimately be on the
+Porcupine or the man, but it was pretty sure to be worth seeing, one way
+or the other, so I laid my paddle down and awaited developments. Bang!
+went the nose of the dug-out against the tree, and the Porcupine
+dropped, but not into the water. He landed in the bow of the canoe, and
+the horrified look on my friend's face was a delight to see. The Porky
+was wide awake by this time, for I could hear his teeth clacking as he
+advanced to the attack.
+
+"Great Scott! He's coming straight at me!"
+
+The Porcupine was certainly game. I saw the paddle rise in the air and
+come down with a tremendous whack, but it seemed to have little effect.
+The Porky's coat of quills and hair was so thick that a blow on the back
+did not trouble him much. If my friend could have hit him across the
+nose it would have ended the matter then and there, but the canoe was
+too narrow and its sides too high for a crosswise stroke. He tried
+thrusting, but that was no better. When a good-sized porcupine has
+really made up his mind to go somewhere he may be slow, but it takes
+more than a punch with the end of a stick to stop him; and this Porky
+had fully determined to go aft and get acquainted with the foreman.
+
+[Illustration: "_He quickly made his way to the beach._"]
+
+My friend couldn't even kick, for he was kneeling on the bottom of the
+dug-out, with his feet behind him, and if he tried to stand up he would
+probably capsize.
+
+"Say, Hulbert, what am I going to do?"
+
+I didn't give him any advice, for my sympathies were largely with the
+Porcupine. Besides, I hadn't any advice to give. Just then the canoe
+drifted around so that I could look into it, and I beheld the Porcupine
+bearing down on my helpless friend like Birnam Wood on its way to
+Dunsinane, his ruffle of quills erect, fire in his little black eyes,
+and a thirst for vengeance in his whole aspect. My friend made one or
+two final and ineffectual jabs at him, and then gave it up.
+
+"It's no use!" he called; "I'll have to tip over!" and the next second
+the canoe was upside down and both belligerents were in the water. The
+Porcupine floated high--I suppose his hollow quills helped to keep him
+up--and he proved a much better swimmer than I had expected, for he
+quickly made his way to the beach and disappeared in the woods, still
+chattering disrespectfully. My friend waded ashore, righted his canoe,
+and we resumed our journey. I don't think I'll tell you what he said. He
+got over it after a while, and in the end he probably enjoyed his joke
+more than if it had turned out as he had intended.
+
+The summer followed the winter into the past, and the Moon of Falling
+Leaves came round again. The Porcupine was not alone. Another porky was
+with him, and the two seemed very good friends. In fact, his companion
+was the very same lady porcupine who had stood by while he fought the
+battle of the log and the lily-pads, though I do not suppose that they
+had been keeping company all those months, and I am by no means certain
+that they remembered that eventful morning at all. Let us hope they
+did, for the sake of the story. Who knows how much or how little of love
+was stirring the slow currents of their sluggish natures--of such love
+as binds the dove or the eagle to his mate, or of such steadfast
+affection as the Beaver and his wife seem to have felt for each other?
+Not much, perhaps; yet they climbed the same tree, ate from the same
+branch, and drank at the same spring; and the next April there was
+another arrival in the old hollow log--twins, this time, and both of
+them alive.
+
+But the Porcupine never saw his children, for a wandering fit seized
+him, and he left the Glimmerglass before they were born. Two or three
+miles away was a little clearing where a mossback lived. A railway
+crossed one edge of it, between the hill and the swamp, and five miles
+away was a junction, where locomotives were constantly moving about,
+backing, hauling, and making up their trains. As the mossback lay awake
+in the long, quiet, windless winter nights, he often heard them puffing
+and snorting, now with slow, heavy coughs, and now quick and sharp and
+rapid. One night when he was half asleep he heard something that said,
+"chew-chew-chew-chew-chew-chew," like an engine that has its train
+moving and is just beginning to get up speed. At first he paid no
+attention to it. But the noise suddenly stopped short, and after a pause
+of a few seconds it began again at exactly the same speed; stopped
+again, and began a third time. And so it went on, chewing and pausing,
+chewing and pausing, with always just so many chews to the second, and
+just so many seconds to each rest. No locomotive ever puffed like that.
+The mossback was wide awake now, and he muttered something about
+"another of those pesky porkies." He had killed the last one that came
+around the house, and had wanted his wife to cook it for dinner and see
+how it tasted, but she wouldn't. She said that the very sight of it was
+enough for her, and more than enough; and that it was all she could do
+to eat pork and potatoes after looking at it.
+
+He turned over and tried to go to sleep again, but without success. That
+steady "chew-chew-chew" was enough to keep a woodchuck awake, and at
+last he got up and went to the door. The moonlight on the snow was
+almost as bright as day, and there was the Porcupine, leaning against
+the side of the barn, and busily rasping the wood from around the head
+of a rusty nail. The mossback threw a stick of stove-wood at him, and
+he lumbered clumsily away across the snow. But twenty minutes later he
+was back again, and this time he marched straight into the open shed at
+the back of the house, and began operations on a wash-tub, whose mingled
+flavor of soap and humanity struck him as being very delicious. Again
+the mossback appeared in the doorway, shivering a little in his
+night-shirt.
+
+The Porcupine was at the foot of the steps. He had stopped chewing when
+the door opened, and now he lifted his forepaws and sat half-erect, his
+yellow teeth showing between his parted lips, and his little eyes
+staring at the lamp which the mossback carried. The quills slanted back
+from all around his diminutive face, and even from between his
+eyes--short at first, but growing longer toward his shoulders and back.
+Long whitish bristles were mingled with them, and the mossback could not
+help thinking of a little old, old man, with hair that was grizzly-gray,
+and a face that was half-stupid and half-sad and wistful. He was not yet
+two years of age, but I believe that a porcupine is born old. Some of
+the Indians say that he is ashamed of his homely looks, and that that is
+the reason why, by day, he walks so slowly, with hanging head and
+downcast eyes; but at night, they say, when the friendly darkness hides
+his ugliness, he lifts his head and runs like a dog. In spite of the
+hour and the cheering influence of the wash-tub, our Porky seemed even
+more low-spirited than usual. Perhaps the lamplight had suddenly
+reminded him of his personal appearance. At any rate he looked so
+lonesome and forlorn that the mossback felt a little thrill of pity for
+him, and decided not to kill him after all, but to drive him away again.
+He started down the steps with his lamp in one hand and a stick of wood
+in the other, and then--he never knew how it happened, but in some way
+he stumbled and fell. Never in all his life, not even when his wildest
+nightmare came and sat on him in the wee, sma' hours, had he come so
+near screaming out in terror as he did at that moment. He thought he was
+going to sit down on the Porcupine. Fortunately for both of them, but
+especially for the man, he missed him by barely half an inch, and the
+Porky scuttled away as fast as his legs could carry him.
+
+In spite of this unfriendly reception, the Porcupine hung around the
+edges of the clearing for several months, and enjoyed many a meal such
+as seldom falls to the lot of the woods-people. One night he found an
+empty pork-barrel out behind the barn, its staves fairly saturated with
+salt, and hour after hour he scraped away upon it, perfectly content.
+Another time, to his great satisfaction, he discovered a large piece of
+bacon rind among some scraps that the mossback's wife had thrown away.
+Later he invaded the sugar-bush by night, gnawing deep notches in the
+edges of the sap buckets and barrels, and helping himself to the sirup
+in the big boiling-pan.
+
+Life was not all feasting, however. There was a dog who attacked him two
+or three times, but who finally learned to keep away and mind his own
+business. Once, when he had ventured a little too close to the house,
+and was making an unusual racket with his teeth, the mossback came to
+the door and fired a shotgun at him, cutting off several of his quills.
+And still another night, late in the spring, when he was prowling around
+the barn, a bull calf came and smelled him. Next morning the mossback
+and his boys threw that calf down on the ground and tied his feet to a
+stump, and three of them sat on him while a fourth pulled the quills
+from his nose with a pair of pincers. You should have heard him grunt.
+
+Then came the greatest adventure of all. Down beside the railway was a
+small platform on which supplies for the lumber-camps were sometimes
+unloaded from the trains. Brine and molasses and various other
+delectable things had leaked out of the barrels and kegs and boxes, and
+the Porcupine discovered that the planks were very nicely seasoned and
+flavored. He visited them once too often, for one summer evening, as he
+was gnawing away at the site of an ancient puddle of molasses, the
+accommodation train rolled in and came to a halt. He tried to hide
+behind a stump, but the trainmen caught sight of him, and before he knew
+it they had shoved him into an empty box and hoisted him into the
+baggage-car. They turned him loose among the passengers on the station
+platform at Sault Ste. Marie, and his arrival created a sensation.
+
+When the first excitement had subsided, all the girls in the crowd
+declared that they must have some quills for souvenirs, and all the
+young men set to work to procure them, hoping to distinguish themselves
+by proving their superiority in strength and courage over this poor
+little twenty-pound beast just out of the woods. Most of them succeeded
+in getting some quills, and also in acquiring some painful
+experience--especially the one who attempted to lift the Porcupine by
+the tail, and who learned that that interesting member is the very
+hottest and liveliest portion of the animal's anatomy. They finally
+discovered that the best way to get quills from a live porcupine is to
+hit him with a piece of board. The sharp points penetrate the wood and
+stick there, the other ends come loose from his skin, and there you have
+them. Our friend lost most of his armor that day, and it was a good
+thing for him that departed quills, like clipped hair, will renew
+themselves in the course of time.
+
+One of the brakemen carried him home, and he spent the next few months
+in the enjoyment of city life. Whether he found much pleasure in it is,
+perhaps, a question, but I am rather inclined to think that he did. He
+had plenty to eat, and he learned that apples are very good indeed, and
+that the best way to partake of them is to sit up on your haunches and
+hold them between your forepaws. He also learned that men are not always
+to be regarded as enemies, for his owner and his owner's children were
+good to him and soon won his confidence. But, after all, the city was
+not home, and the woods were; so he employed some of his spare time in
+gnawing a hole through the wall in a dark corner of the shed where he
+was confined, and one night he scrambled out and hid himself in an empty
+barn. A day or two later he was in the forest again.
+
+The remaining years of his life were spent on the banks of St. Mary's
+River, and for the most part they were years of quietness and
+contentment. He was far from his early home, but the bark of a birch or
+a maple or a hemlock is much the same on St. Mary's as by the
+Glimmerglass. He grew bigger and fatter as time went on, and some weeks
+before he died he must have weighed thirty or forty pounds.
+
+Once in a while there was a little dash of excitement to keep life from
+becoming too monotonous--if too much monotony is possible in a
+porcupine's existence. One night he scrambled up the steps of a little
+summer cottage close to the edge of the river, and, finding the door
+unlatched, he pushed it open and walked in. It proved to be a cottage
+full of girls, and they stood around on chairs and the tops of
+wash-stands, bombarded him with curling-irons, poked feebly with
+bed-slats, and shrieked with laughter till the farmers over on the
+Canadian shore turned in their beds and wondered what could be happening
+on Uncle Sam's side of the river. The worst of it was that in his
+travels around the room he had come up behind the door and pushed it
+shut, and it was some time before even the red-haired girl could muster
+up sufficient courage to climb down from her perch and open it again.
+
+At another time an Indian robbed him of the longest and best of his
+quills--nearly five inches in length some of them--and carried them off
+to be used in ornamenting birch-bark baskets. And on still another
+occasion he narrowly escaped death at the hands of an irate canoe-man,
+in the side of whose Rob Roy he had gnawed a great hole.
+
+The end came at last, and it was the saddest, hardest, strangest fate
+that can ever come to a wild creature of the woods. He--who had never
+known hunger in all his life, who was almost the only animal in the
+forest who had never looked famine in the eye, whose table was spread
+with good things from January to December, and whose storehouse was full
+from Lake Huron to the Pictured Rocks--he of all others, was condemned
+to die of starvation in the midst of plenty. The Ancient Mariner, with
+water all around him and not a drop to drink, was no worse off than our
+Porcupine; and the Mariner finally escaped, but the Porky didn't.
+
+One of the summer tourists who wandered up into the north woods that
+year had carried with him a little rifle, more of a toy than a weapon,
+a thing that a sportsman would hardly have condescended to laugh at. And
+one afternoon, by ill luck, he caught sight of the Porcupine high up in
+the top of a tall tree. It was his first chance at a genuine wild beast,
+and he fired away all his cartridges as fast as he could load them into
+his gun. He thought that every shot missed, and he was very much ashamed
+of his marksmanship. But he was mistaken. The very last bullet broke one
+of the Porcupine's lower front teeth, and hurt him terribly. It jarred
+him to the very end of his tail, and his head felt as if it was being
+smashed to bits. For a minute or two the strength all went out of him,
+and if he had not been lying in a safe, comfortable crotch he would have
+fallen to the ground.
+
+The pain and the shock passed away after a while, but when supper-time
+came--and it was almost always supper-time with the Porcupine--his left
+lower incisor was missing. The right one was uninjured, however, and for
+a while he got on pretty well, merely having to spend a little more time
+than usual over his meals. But that was only the beginning of trouble.
+The stump of the broken tooth was still there and still growing, and it
+was soon as long as ever, but in the meantime its fellow in the upper
+jaw had grown out beyond its normal length, and the two did not meet
+properly. Instead of coming together edge to edge, as they should have
+done, each wearing the other down and keeping it from reaching out too
+far, each one now pushed the other aside, and still they kept on
+growing, growing, growing. Worst of all, in a short time they had begun
+to crowd his jaws apart so that he could hardly use his right-hand
+teeth, and they too were soon out of shape. The evil days had come, and
+the sound of the grinding was low. Little by little his mouth was forced
+open wider and wider, and the food that passed his lips grew less and
+less. His teeth, that had all his life been his best tools and his most
+faithful servants, had turned against him in his old age, and were
+killing him by inches. Let us not linger over those days.
+
+He was spared the very last and worst pangs--for that, at least, we may
+be thankful. On the last day of his life he sat under a beech-tree, weak
+and weary and faint. He could not remember when he had eaten. His coat
+of hair and quills was as thick and bushy as ever, and outwardly he had
+hardly changed at all, but under his skin there was little left but
+bones. And as he sat there and wished that he was dead--if such a wish
+can ever come to a wild animal--the Angel of Mercy came, in the shape
+of a man with a revolver in his pistol pocket--a man who liked to kill
+things.
+
+"A porky!" he said. "Guess I'll shoot him, just for fun."
+
+The Porcupine saw him coming and knew the danger; and for a moment the
+old love of life came back as strong as ever, and he gathered his feeble
+strength for one last effort, and started up the tree. He was perhaps
+six feet from the ground when the first report came.
+
+"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" Four shots, as fast as the self-cocking
+revolver could pour the lead into his body. The Porky stopped climbing.
+For an instant he hung motionless on the side of the tree, and then his
+forepaws let go, and he swayed backward and fell to the ground. And that
+was the end of the Porcupine.
+
+
+
+
+THE ADVENTURES OF A LOON
+
+
+HIS name was Mahng, and the story which I am about to relate is the
+story of his matrimonial career--or at least of a portion of it.
+
+One snowy autumn night, three years ago, he was swimming on the
+Glimmerglass in company with his first wife--one of the first, that is.
+There may possibly have been others before her, but if so I wasn't
+acquainted with them. It was a fine evening--especially for loons. There
+was no wind, and the big, soft flakes came floating lazily down to lose
+themselves in the quiet lake. The sky, the woods, and the shores were
+all blotted out; and the loons reigned alone, king and queen of a dim
+little world of leaden water and falling snow. And right royally they
+swam their kingdom, with an air as if they thought God had made the
+Glimmerglass for their especial benefit. Perhaps He had.
+
+[Illustration: "_He went under as simply as you would step out of
+bed._"]
+
+It was very, very lonely, but they liked it all the better for that. At
+times they even lost sight of each other for a little while, as one
+dived in search of a herring or a young salmon trout. I wish we could
+have followed Mahng down under the water and watched him at his hunting.
+He didn't dive as you do, with a jump and a plunge and a splash. He
+merely drew his head back a little and then thrust it forward and
+downward, and went under as simply and easily as you would step out of
+bed, and with a good deal more dignity. It was his feet that did it, of
+course. They were not good for much for walking, but they were the real
+thing when it came to swimming or diving. They were large and broad and
+strongly webbed, and the short stout legs which carried them were
+flattened and compressed that they might slip edgewise through the
+water, like a feathered oar-blade. The muscles which worked them were
+very powerful, and they kicked backward with so much vigor that two
+little jets of spray were often tossed up in his wake as he went under,
+like the splash from a steamer's paddles. And he had a rudder, too, for
+in the after part of his body there were two muscles just like
+tiller-ropes, fastened to his tail in such a way that they could twist
+it to either side, and steer him to port or starboard as occasion
+demanded. With his long neck stretched far out in front, his wings
+pressed tightly against his sides, and his legs and feet working as
+if they went by steam, he shot through the water like a submarine
+torpedo-boat. "The Herdsman of the Deep," the Scottish Highlanders used
+to say, when in winter a loon came to visit their lochs and fiords.
+Swift and strong and terrible, he ranged the depths of the Glimmerglass,
+seeking what he might devour; and perhaps you can imagine how hastily
+the poor little fishes took their departure whenever they saw him coming
+their way. Sometimes they were not quite quick enough, and then his long
+bill closed upon them, and he swallowed them whole without even waiting
+to rise to the surface.
+
+The chase thus brought to a successful conclusion, or perhaps the supply
+of air in his lungs giving out, he returned to the upper world, and
+again his voice rang out through the darkness and the falling snow. Then
+his wife would answer him from somewhere away off across the lake, and
+they would call back and forth to each other with many a laugh and
+shout, or, drawing closer and closer together, they would cruise the
+Glimmerglass side by side, with the big flakes dropping gently on their
+backs and folded wings, and the ripples spreading out on either hand
+like the swell from the bow of a ship.
+
+Once Mahng stayed down a little longer than usual, and when he came up
+he heard his wife calling him in an excited tone, as if something had
+happened to her. He hurried toward her, and presently he saw a light
+shining dimly through the throng of moving snow-flakes, and growing
+brighter and brighter as he approached until it was fairly dazzling. As
+he drew nearer still he caught sight of his wife sitting on the water
+squarely in front of that light, and watching it with all her eyes. She
+was not calling now. She had forgotten Mahng, she had forgotten to
+paddle, she had forgotten everything, in her wonder at this strange,
+beautiful thing, the like of which had never before been seen upon the
+Glimmerglass. She herself was a rarely beautiful sight--if she had only
+known it--with the dark water rippling gently against her bosom, her big
+black head thrust forward, and the feathers of her throat and breast
+glistening in the glare of the headlight, white as the snow that was
+falling around her.
+
+All this Mahng saw. What he did not see, because his eyes were dazzled,
+was a boat in the shadow behind the light, and a rifle-barrel pointing
+straight at his wife's breast. There was a blinding flash, a sharp,
+crashing report, and a cloud of smoke; and Mahng dived as quick as a
+wink. But his wife would never dive again. The bullet had gone tearing
+through her body, and she lay stretched out on the water, perfectly
+motionless, and apparently dead. And then, just as Mahng came to the
+surface a hundred yards away, and just as my partner put out his hand to
+pick her up, she lifted her head and gave a last wild cry. Mahng heard
+it and answered, but he was too far away to see what happened. He dared
+not return till the light had disappeared, and by that time she was
+gone. She had straggled violently for a moment, and had struck savagely
+at the hunter's hand, and then she had as suddenly collapsed, the water
+turned red, and her eyes closed forever. Did you know that among all
+God's creatures the birds are the only ones whose eyes close naturally
+in death? Even among men it is not so, for when our friends die we lay
+our hands reverently upon their faces, and weight their stiff lids with
+gold. But for the bird, Nature herself performs the last kindly office,
+and as the light fades out from the empty windows of the soul, the
+curtain falls of its own accord.
+
+[Illustration: "_She herself was a rarely beautiful sight._"]
+
+During the next two or three days Mahng's voice was frequently to be
+heard, apparently calling his wife. Sometimes it was a mournful,
+long-drawn cry--"Hoo-WOOOO-ooo"--that might have been heard a mile
+away--a cry that seemed the very essence of loneliness, and that went
+right down where you lived and made you feel like a murderer. And
+sometimes he broke into a wild peal of laughter, as if he hoped that
+that might better serve to call her back to him.
+
+His children had gone south some time before. They had seemed anxious to
+see the world. Perhaps, too, they had dreaded the approach of colder
+weather more than the older birds, who had become somewhat seasoned by
+previous autumns. Anyhow, they had taken the long trail toward the Gulf
+of Mexico, and now that his wife was gone Mahng was entirely alone. At
+last he seemed to make up his mind that he might as well follow them,
+and one afternoon, as he was swimming aimlessly about, I saw him
+suddenly dash forward, working his wings with all their might, beating
+the water at every stroke, and throwing spray like a side-wheeler.
+Slowly--for his body was heavy, and his wings were rather small for his
+size--slowly he lifted himself from the water, all the time rushing
+forward faster and faster. He couldn't have made it if he hadn't had
+plenty of sea-room, but by swinging round and round in long, wide
+circles he managed to rise little by little till at last he was clear of
+the tree-tops. He passed right over my head as he stood away to the
+south--his long neck stretched far out in front, his feet pointing
+straight back beyond the end of his short tail, and his wings beating
+the air with tremendous energy. How they did whizz! He made almost as
+much noise as a train of cars. He laughed as he went by, and you would
+have said that he was in high spirits; but before he disappeared that
+lonely, long-drawn cry came back once more--"Hoo-WOOOO-ooo."
+
+In the course of his winter wanderings through the South he happened to
+alight one day on a certain wild pond down in Mississippi, and there he
+found another loon--a widow whose former husband had lost his life the
+previous summer under rather peculiar circumstances.
+
+Beside a small lake in Minnesota there lives an old Dutchman who catches
+fish with empty bottles. On any calm, still day you may see a lot of
+them floating upright in the water, all tightly corked, and each with
+the end of a fishing-line tied around its neck. They seem very decorous
+and well-behaved, but let a fish take one of the hooks and begin to
+pull, and immediately that particular bottle turns wrong end up, and
+acts as if it had taken a drop too much of its own original contents.
+Then the Dutchman paddles out in his little scow, and perhaps by the
+time he has hauled in his fish and re-baited the hook another bottle is
+excitedly standing on its head. But never before nor since have any of
+them behaved as wildly as the one that a loon got hold of.
+
+The loon--not Mahng, you understand, but the first husband of his new
+acquaintance--had dived in search of his dinner, and the first thing he
+saw that looked as if it might be good to eat was the bait on one of the
+Dutchman's hooks. He swallowed it, of course, and for the next five
+minutes he went charging up and down that pond at a great rate, followed
+by a green glass monster with the name of a millionnaire brewer blown in
+its side. Sometimes he was on the surface, and sometimes he was under
+it; but wherever he went that horrible thing was close behind him,
+pulling so hard that the sharp cord cut the corners of his mouth till it
+bled. Once or twice he tried to fly, but the line caught his wing and
+brought him down again. When he dived, it tangled itself around his legs
+and clogged the machinery; and when he tried to shout, the hook in his
+throat would not let him do anything more than cough. The Dutchman got
+him at last, and eventually Mahng got his widow, as you shall see.
+
+She had her children to take care of, and for a time she was very busy,
+but after a few weeks they flew away to the south, as Mahng's had done,
+and she was free to go where she liked and do what she pleased. For a
+while she stayed where she was, like a sensible person. Minnesota suited
+her very well, and she was in no hurry to leave. But, of course, she
+could not stay on indefinitely, for some frosty night the lake would
+freeze over, and then she could neither dive for fish nor rise upon the
+wing. A loon on ice is about as helpless as an oyster. And so at last
+she, too, went south. She travelled by easy stages, and had a pleasant
+journey, with many a stop, and many a feast in the lakes and rivers
+along the route. I should like to know, just out of curiosity, how many
+fish found their way down her capacious gullet during that pilgrimage
+through Illinois and Kentucky and Tennessee.
+
+Well, no matter about that. The Mississippi pond was in sight, and she
+was just slanting down toward the water, when a hunter fired at her from
+behind a clump of trees. His aim was all too true, and she fell headlong
+to the ground, with a broken wing dangling helplessly at her side.
+
+Now, as you probably know, a loon isn't built for running. There is an
+old story, one which certainly has the appearance of truth, to the
+effect that when Nature manufactured the first of these birds she forgot
+to give him any legs at all, and that he had started off on the wing
+before she noticed her mistake. Then she picked up the first pair that
+came to hand and threw them after him. Unfortunately they were a misfit,
+and, what was, perhaps, still worse, they struck his body in the wrong
+place. They were so very short and so very far aft that, although he
+could stand nearly as straight as a man, it was almost impossible for
+him to move about on them. When he had to travel on land, which he
+always avoided as far as he could, he generally shoved himself along on
+his breast, and often used his wings and his bill to help himself
+forward. All his descendants are just like him, so you can see that the
+widow's chances were pretty small, with the hunter bursting out of the
+bushes, and a broad strip of beach between her and the friendly pond.
+
+But she was a person of resource and energy, and in this great emergency
+she literally rose to the occasion, and did something that she had
+never done before in all her life, and probably will never do again. The
+astonished hunter saw her lift herself until she stood nearly upright,
+and then actually _run_ across the beach toward the water. She was
+leaning forward a trifle, her long neck was stretched out, her two short
+legs were trotting as fast as they could go, and her one good wing was
+wildly waving in a frantic endeavor to get on. It was a sight that very
+few people have ever seen, and it would have been comical if it hadn't
+been a matter of life and death. The hunter was hard after her, and his
+legs were a yard long, while hers were only a few inches, so it was not
+surprising that he caught her just as she reached the margin. She
+wriggled out of his grasp and dashed on through the shallow water, and
+he followed close behind. In a moment he stooped and made another grab
+at her, and this time he got his arms around her body and pinned her
+wings down against her sides. But he had waded out a little too far, and
+had reached the place where the bottom suddenly shelves off from fifteen
+inches to seventy-two. His foot slipped, and in another moment he was
+splashing wildly about in the water, and the loon was free.
+
+A broken wing is not necessarily as serious a matter as you might
+suppose. The cold water kept the inflammation down, and it seemed as if
+all the vital forces of her strong, healthy body set to work at once to
+repair the damage. If any comparative anatomist ever gets hold of the
+widow and dissects her, he will find a curious swelling in the principal
+bone of her left wing, like a plumber's join in a lead pipe, and he will
+know what it means. It is the place where Nature soldered the broken
+pieces together. And it was while Nature was engaged in this soldering
+operation that Mahng arrived and began to cultivate the widow's
+acquaintance.
+
+          "_In the spring a fuller crimson
+                      comes upon the robin's breast,_"
+
+and in the spring the loon puts on his wedding-garment, and his fancy,
+like the young man's, "lightly turns to thoughts of love."
+
+But speaking of Mahng's wedding-garment reminds me that I haven't told
+you about his winter dress. His back and wings were very dark-brown, and
+his breast and under-parts were white. His head and the upper portion of
+his neck were black; his bill was black, or blackish, and so were his
+feet. His coat was very thick and warm, and his legs were feathered
+right down to the heel-joint. More than five feet his wings stretched
+from tip to tip, and he weighed at least twelve pounds, and would be
+still larger before he died.
+
+As to his nuptial finery, its groundwork was much the same, but its
+trimmings were different and were very elegant. White spots appeared all
+over his back and the upper surfaces of his wings, some of them round,
+and some square. They were not thrown on carelessly, but were arranged
+in gracefully curving lines, and they quite changed his appearance,
+especially if one were as near him as one is supposed to be during a
+courting. His spring neckwear, too, was in exceedingly good taste, for
+he put on a sort of collar of very narrow vertical stripes, contrasting
+beautifully with the black around and between them. Higher up on his
+neck and head the deep black feathers gleamed and shone in the sunlight
+with brilliant irridescent tints of green and violet. He was a very
+handsome bird.
+
+And now everything was going north. The sun was going north, the wind
+was going north, the birds were going, and summer herself was sweeping
+up from the tropics as fast as ever she could travel. Mahng was getting
+very restless. A dozen times a day he would spread his wings and beat
+the air furiously, dashing the spray in every direction, and almost
+lifting his heavy body out of the water. But the time was not yet come,
+and presently he would fold his pinions and go back to his courting.
+
+Do you think he was very inconstant? Do you blame him for not being more
+faithful to the memory of the bird who was shot at his side only a few
+months before? Don't be too hard on him. What can a loon do when the
+springtime calls and the wind blows fresh and strong, when the new
+strong wine of life is coursing madly through his veins, and when his
+dreams are all of the vernal flight to the lonely northland, where the
+water is cold and the fish are good, and where there are such delightful
+nesting-places around the marshy ponds?
+
+But how did his new friend feel about it? Would she go with him? Ah!
+Wouldn't she? Had not she, too, put on a wedding-garment just like his?
+And what was she there for, anyhow, if not to be wooed, and to find a
+mate, and to fly away with him a thousand miles to the north, and there,
+beside some lonely little lake, brood over her eggs and her young? Her
+wing was gaining strength all the time, and at last she was ready. You
+should have heard them laugh when the great day came and they pulled out
+for Michigan--Mahng a little in the lead, as became the larger and
+stronger, and his new wife close behind. There had been nearly a week of
+cooler weather just before the start, which had delayed them a little,
+but now the south wind was blowing again, and over and over it seemed to
+say,
+
+          "_And we go, go, go away from here!
+            On the other side the world we're overdue!
+               'Send the road lies clear before you
+                When the old Spring-fret comes o'er you,
+            And the Red Gods call for you._"
+
+And the road was clear, and they went. Up, and up, and up; higher and
+higher, till straight ahead, stretching away to the very edge of the
+world, lay league after league of sunshine and air, only waiting the
+stroke of their wings. Now steady, steady! Beat, beat, beat! And the old
+earth sliding southward fifty miles an hour! No soaring--their wings
+were too short for that sort of work--and no quick wheeling to right or
+left, but hurtling on with whizzing pinions and eager eyes, straight
+toward the goal. Was it any wonder that they were happy, and that
+joyful shouts and wild peals of laughter came ringing down from the sky
+to tell us poor earthbound men and women that somewhere up in the blue,
+beyond the reach of our short-sighted eyes, the loons were hurrying
+home?
+
+[Illustration: "_The old earth sliding southward fifty miles an hour._"]
+
+Over the fresh fields, green with the young wheat; over the winding
+rivers and the smiling lakes; over the--shut your eyes, and dream a
+little while, and see if you can imagine what it was like. Does it make
+you wish you were a loon yourself? Never mind; some day, perhaps, we too
+shall take our wedding-journeys in the air; not on feathered pinions,
+but with throbbing engines and whizzing wheels, and with all the power
+of steam or electricity to lift us and bear us onward. We shall skim the
+prairies and leap the mountains, and roam over the ocean like the
+wandering albatross. To-day we shall breathe the warm, spicy breath of
+the tropic islands, and to-morrow we shall sight the white gleam of the
+polar ice-pack. When the storm gathers we shall mount above it, and
+looking down we shall see the lightning leap from cloud to cloud, and
+the rattling thunder will come upward, not downward, to our ears. When
+the world below is steeped in the shadows of coming night, we shall
+still watch the sunset trailing its glories over the western woods
+and mountains; and when morning breaks we shall be the first to welcome
+the sunrise as it comes rushing up from the east a thousand miles an
+hour. The wind of the upper heavens will be pure and keen and strong,
+and not even a sleigh-ride on a winter's night can set the live blood
+dancing as it will dance and tingle up there above the clouds. And
+riding on the air, alone with the roaring engines that have become for
+the time a part of ourselves, we shall know at last what our earth is
+really like, for we shall see it as the loons see it--yes, as God and
+His angels see it--this old earth, on which we have lived for so many
+thousand years, and yet have never seen.
+
+But, after all, the upper heavens will not be home; and some day, as we
+shoot northward, or southward, or eastward, or westward, we shall see
+beneath us the spot that is to be for us the best and dearest place in
+all the world, and dropping down out of the blue we shall find something
+that is even better than riding on the wings of the wind. That was what
+happened to Mahng and his wife, for one spring evening, as they came
+rushing over the pine-tops and the maples and birches, they saw the
+Glimmerglass just ahead. The water lay like polished steel in the fading
+light, and the brown ranks of the still leafless trees stood dark and
+silent around the shores. It was very quiet, and very, very lonely; and
+the lake and the woods seemed waiting and watching for something. And
+into that stillness and silence the loons came with shouting and
+laughter, sweeping down on a long slant, and hitting the water with a
+splash. The echoes awoke and the Glimmerglass was alive, and summer had
+come to the northland.
+
+They chose a place where the shore was low and marshy, and there, only
+two or three yards from the water's edge, they built a rude nest of
+grass and weeds and lily-pads. Two large greenish eggs, blotched with
+dark-brown, lay in its hollow; and the wife sat upon them week after
+week, and covered them with the warm feathers of her broad, white
+breast. Once in a while she left them long enough to stretch her wings
+in a short flight, or to dive in search of a fish, but she was never
+gone very long. It was a weary vigil that she kept, but she sat there in
+daylight and darkness, through sunshine and storm, till at last the day
+came when there were four loons instead of two at the Glimmerglass.
+
+The chicks were very smart and active, and they took to the water almost
+as soon as they were out of the shell, swimming and diving as if they
+had been accustomed to it for weeks instead of hours. In some ways,
+however, they required a good deal of care. For one thing, their little
+stomachs were not quite equal to the task of assimilating raw fish, and
+the parents had to swallow all their food for them, keep it down till it
+was partly digested, and then pass it up again to the hungry children.
+It made a good deal of delay, and it must have been very unpleasant, but
+it seemed to be the only practicable way of dealing with the situation.
+I am glad to say that it did not last very long, for by the time they
+were two weeks old the young loons were able to take their fish and
+reptiles and insects at first hand.
+
+When they first arrived the chicks were covered all over with stiff
+down, of a dark, sooty gray on their backs, and white underneath. But
+this did not last long, either. The first feathers soon appeared, and
+multiplied rapidly. I can't say that the young birds were particularly
+handsome, for even when their plumage was complete it was much quieter
+and duller of hue than their parents'. But they were fat and plump, and
+I think they thoroughly enjoyed life, especially before they discovered
+that there were enemies as well as friends in the world. That was a kind
+of knowledge that could not be avoided very long, however. They soon
+learned that men, and certain other animals such as hawks and skunks,
+were to be carefully shunned; and you should have seen them run on the
+water whenever a suspicious-looking character hove in sight. Their wings
+were not yet large enough for flying, but they flapped them with all
+their might, and scampered across the Glimmerglass so fast that their
+little legs fairly twinkled, and they actually left a furrow in the
+water behind them. But the bottom of the lake was really the safest
+refuge, and if a boat or a canoe pressed them too closely they would
+usually dive below the surface, while the older birds tried to lure the
+enemy off in some other direction by calling and shouting and making all
+sorts of demonstrations.
+
+Generally these tactics were successful, but not always. Once some boys
+cornered the whole family in a small, shallow bay, where the water was
+not deep enough for diving; and before they could escape one of the
+youngsters was driven up onto the beach. He tried to hide behind a log,
+but he was captured and earned off, and I wish I had time to tell you
+of all the things that happened to him before he was finally killed and
+eaten by a dog. It was pretty tough on the old birds, as well as on him,
+but they still had one chick left, and you can't expect to raise _all_
+your children as long as bigger people are so fond of kidnapping and
+killing them.
+
+Not all the people who came to see them were bent on mischief, however.
+There was a party of girls and boys, for instance, who camped beside the
+Glimmerglass for a few weeks, and who liked to follow them around the
+lake in a row-boat and imitate their voices, just for the fun of making
+them talk back. One girl in particular became so accomplished in the
+loon language that Mahng would often get very much excited as he
+conversed with her, and would sometimes let the boat creep nearer and
+nearer until they were only a few rods apart. And then, all of a sudden,
+he would duck his head and go under, perhaps in the very middle of a
+laugh. The siren was getting a little too close. Her intentions might
+possibly be all right, but it was just as well to be on the safe side.
+
+The summer was nearly gone, and now Mahng did something which I fear you
+will strongly disapprove. I didn't want to tell you about it, but I
+suppose I must. Two or three male loons passed over the Glimmerglass
+one afternoon, calling and shouting as they went, and he flew up and
+joined them, and came back no more that summer. It looked like a clear
+case of desertion, but we must remember that he had stood by his wife
+all through the trying period of the spring and early summer, and that
+the time was at hand when the one chick that was left would go out into
+the world to paddle his own canoe, and when she would no longer need his
+help in caring for a family of young children. But you think he might
+have stayed with her, anyhow? Well, so do I; I'm sorry he didn't. They
+say that his cousins, the Red-throated Loons, marry for life, and live
+together from the wedding-day till death, and I don't see why he
+couldn't have done as well as they. But it doesn't seem to be the custom
+among the Great Northern Divers. Mahng was only following the usual
+practice of his kind, and if his first wife had not been shot it is
+likely that they would have separated before they had gone very far
+south. And yet it does not follow that the marriage was not a
+love-match. If you had seen them at their housekeeping I think you would
+have pronounced him a very good husband and father. Perhaps the conjugal
+happiness of the spring and early summer was all the better for a taste
+of solitude during the rest of the year.
+
+As I said, the time was near when the chick would strike out for
+himself. He soon left his mother, and a little later she too started for
+the Gulf of Mexico. Summer was over, and the Glimmerglass was lonelier
+than ever.
+
+Mahng came back next spring, and of course he brought a wife with him.
+But was she the same wife who had helped him make the Glimmerglass ring
+with his shouting twelve months before? Well, I--I don't quite know. She
+looked very much like her, and I certainly hope she was the same bird. I
+should like to believe that they had been reunited somewhere down in
+Texas or Mississippi or Louisiana, and that they had come back together
+for another season of parental cares and joys. But when I consider the
+difficulties in the way I cannot help feeling doubtful about it. The two
+birds had gone south at different times and perhaps by different routes.
+Before they reached the lower Mississippi Valley they may have been
+hundreds of miles apart. Was it to be reasonably expected that Mahng,
+when he was ready to return, would search every pond and stream from
+the Cumberland to the Gulf? And is it likely that, even if he had tried
+for weeks and weeks, he could ever have found his wife of the previous
+summer? His flight was swift and his sight keen, and his clarion voice
+rang far and wide over the marshes; but it is no joke to find one
+particular bird in a region covering half a dozen States. If they had
+arranged to come north separately, and meet at the Glimmerglass, there
+would not have been so many difficulties in the way, but they didn't do
+that. Anyhow, Mahng brought a wife home. That much, at least, is
+established. They set to work at once to build a nest and make ready for
+some new babies; but, alas! there was little parental happiness or
+responsibility in store for them that year.
+
+If you had been there you might have seen them swimming out from shore
+one bright, beautiful spring morning, when the sun had just risen, and
+the woods and waters lay calm and peaceful in the golden light, fairer
+than words can tell. They were after their breakfast, and presently they
+dived to see what was to be had. The light is dim down there in the
+depths of the Glimmerglass, the weeds are long and slimy, and the mud of
+the bottom is black and loathsome. But what does that matter? One can
+go back whenever one pleases. A few quick, powerful strokes will take
+you up into the open air, and you can see the woods and the sky. Aha!
+There is a herring, his scales shining like silver in the faint green
+light that comes down through the water. And there is a small salmon
+trout, with his gray-brown back and his golden sides. A fish for each of
+us.
+
+The loons darted forward at full speed; but the two fish made no effort
+to escape, and did not even wriggle when the long, sharp bills closed
+upon them. They were dead, choked to death by the fine threads of a
+gill-net. And now those same threads laid hold of the loons themselves,
+and a fearful struggle began.
+
+Mahng and his wife did not always keep their wings folded when they were
+under water. Sometimes they used them almost as they did in flying, and
+just now they had need of every muscle in their bodies. How their
+pinions lashed the water, and how their legs kicked and their long necks
+writhed, and how the soft mud rose in clouds and shut out the dim light!
+But the harder they fought the more tightly did the net grapple them,
+winding itself round and round their bodies, and soon lashing their
+wings down against their sides. Expert divers though they were, the
+loons were drowning. There was a ringing in their ears and a roaring in
+their heads, and the very last atoms of oxygen in their lungs were
+almost gone. Death was drawing very near, and the bright, sunshiny world
+where they had been so happy a moment before, the world to which they
+had thought they could return so quickly and easily, seemed a thousand
+miles away. One last effort, one final struggle, and if that failed
+there would be nothing more to do but go to sleep forever.
+
+Fortunately for Mahng, his part of the net had been mildewed, and much
+of the strength had gone out of the linen threads. He was writhing and
+twisting with all his might, and suddenly he felt something give. One of
+the rotten meshes had torn apart. He worked with redoubled energy, and
+in a moment another thread gave way, and then another, and another. A
+second more and he was free. Quick, now, before the last spark goes out!
+With beating wings and churning paddles he fairly flew up through the
+green water toward the light, and on a sudden he shot out into the air,
+panting and gasping, and staring wildly around at the blue sky, and the
+quiet woods, and the smiling Glimmerglass. And how royally beautiful
+was the sunshine, and how sweet was the breath of life!
+
+But his mate was not with him, and a few hours later the fisherman found
+in his net the lifeless body of a drowned loon.
+
+Mahng went north. He had thought that his spring flight was over and
+that he would go no farther, but now the Glimmerglass was no longer
+home, and he spread his wings once more and took his way toward the
+Arctic Circle. Over the hills, crowded with maple and beech and birch;
+over the Great Tahquamenon Swamp, with its cranberry marshes, its
+tangles of spruce and cedar, and its thin, scattered ranks of tamarack;
+over the sandy ridges where the pine-trees stand tall and stately, and
+out on Lake Superior. The water was blue, and the sunshine was bright;
+the wind was fresh and cool, and the billows rolled and tumbled as if
+they were alive and were having a good time together. Together--that's
+the word. They were together, but Mahng was alone; and he wasn't having
+a good time at all. He wanted a home, and a nest, and some young ones,
+but he didn't find them that year, though he went clear to Hudson Bay,
+and looked everywhere for a mate. There were loons, plenty of them, but
+they had already paired and set up housekeeping, and he found no one who
+was in a position to halve his sorrows and double his joys.
+
+Something attracted his attention one afternoon when he was swimming on
+a little lake far up in the Canadian wilderness--a small red object that
+kept appearing and disappearing in a very mysterious fashion among the
+bushes that lined the beach. Mahng's bump of curiosity was large and
+well developed, and he gave one of his best laughs and paddled slowly in
+toward the shore. I think he had a faint and utterly unreasonable hope
+that it might prove to be what he was looking and longing for, though he
+knew very well that no female loon of his species ever had red
+feathers--nor a male, either, for that matter. It was a most absurd
+idea, and his dreams, if he really had them, were cut short by the
+report of a shotgun. A little cloud of smoke floated up through the
+bushes, and a charge of heavy shot peppered the water all around him.
+But if Mahng was curious he was also quick to take a hint. He had heard
+the click of the gun-lock, and before the leaden hail could reach him he
+was under water. His tail feathers suffered a little, but otherwise he
+was uninjured, and he did not come to the surface again till he was far
+away from that deceitful red handkerchief.
+
+The summer was an entire failure, and after a while Mahng gave it up in
+despair, and started south much earlier than usual. At the Straits of
+Mackinac he had another narrow escape, for he came very near killing
+himself by dashing head first against the lantern of a lighthouse, whose
+brilliant beams, a thousand times brighter than the light which had
+lured his first wife to her death, had first attracted and then dazzled
+and dazed him. Fortunately he swerved a trifle at the last moment, and
+though he brushed against an iron railing, lost his balance, and fell
+into the water, there were no bones broken and no serious damage done.
+
+The southland, as everybody knows, is the only proper place for a loon
+courtship. There, I am pleased to say, Mahng found a new wife, and in
+due time he brought her up to the Glimmerglass. That was only last
+spring, and there is but one more incident for me to relate. This summer
+has been a happy and prosperous one, but there was a time when it seemed
+likely to end in disaster before it had fairly begun.
+
+Just northeast of the Glimmerglass there lies a long, narrow, shallow
+pond. I believe I mentioned it when I was telling you about the Beaver.
+One afternoon Mahng had flown across to this pond, and as he was
+swimming along close to the shore he put his foot into a beaver-trap,
+and sprung it. Of course he did his best to get away, but the only
+result of his struggling was to work the trap out into deeper and deeper
+water until he was almost submerged. He made things almost boil with the
+fierce beating of his wings, but it was no use; he might better have
+saved his strength. He quieted down at last and lay very still, with
+only his head and neck out of water, and there he waited two mortal
+hours for something to happen.
+
+Meanwhile his wife sat quietly on her eggs--there were three of them
+this year--and drowsed away the warm spring afternoon. By and by she
+heard a tramping as of heavy feet approaching, and glancing between the
+tall grasses she saw, not a bear nor a deer, but something far worse--a
+man. She waited till he was within a few yards, and then she jumped up,
+scuttled down to the water as fast as she could go, and dived as if she
+was made of lead. The trapper glanced after her with a chuckle.
+
+"Seems pretty badly scared," he said to himself, but his voice was not
+unkindly. His smile faded as he stood a moment beside the nest, looking
+at the eggs, and thinking of what would some day come forth from them.
+He was a solitary old fellow, with never a wife nor a child, nor a
+relation of any kind. His life in the woods was just what he had chosen
+for himself, and he would not have exchanged it for anything else in the
+world; but sometimes the loneliness of it came over him, and he wished
+that he had somebody to talk to. And now, looking at those eggs, and
+thinking of the fledglings that were coming to the loons, he wondered
+how it would seem if he had some children of his own. Pretty soon he
+glanced out on the lake again, and saw Mahng's wife sitting quietly on
+the water, just out of range.
+
+"Hope she won't stay away till they get cold," he thought, and went on
+his way across the swamp. The loon watched him till he passed out of
+sight, and then she swam in to the beach and pushed herself up her
+narrow runway to her old place. The eggs were still warm.
+
+Half an hour later the trapper stepped out of the bushes beside the
+pond, and caught sight of Mahng's head sticking out of the water. He
+was considerably astonished, but he promptly laid hold of the chain and
+drew bird, trap, and all up onto the bank, and then he sat down on a log
+and laughed till the echoes went flying back and forth across the pond.
+Plastered with mud, dripping wet, and with his left leg fast in the big
+steel killing-machine, Mahng was certainly a comical sight. All the
+fight was soaked out of him, and he lay prone upon the ground and waited
+for the trapper to do what he pleased. But the trapper did nothing--only
+sat on his log, and presently forgot to laugh. He was thinking of the
+sitting loon whom he had disturbed a little while before. This was
+probably her mate, and again there came over him a vague feeling that
+life had been very good to these birds, and had given them something
+which he, the man, had missed. He was growing old. A few more seasons
+and there would be one trapper less in the Great Tahquamenon Swamp; and
+he would die without--well, what was the use of talking or thinking
+about it? But the loons would hatch their young, and care for them and
+protect them until they were ready to go out into the world, and then
+they would send them away to the south. A few weeks later they would
+follow, and next spring they would come back and do it all over again.
+That is--they would if he didn't kill them.
+
+He rose from his log, smiling again at the abject look with which Mahng
+watched him, and putting one foot on each of the two heavy steel
+springs, he threw his weight upon them and crushed them down. Mahng felt
+the jaws relax, and suddenly he knew that he was free. The strength came
+back with a rush to his weary limbs, and he sprang up, scrambled down
+the bank and into the water, and was gone. A few minutes later he
+reappeared far down the pond, and rising on the wing he flew away with a
+laugh toward the Glimmerglass.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAKING OF A GLIMMERGLASS BUCK
+
+
+I DON'T know that he was a record-breaker, but he was certainly much
+larger and more powerful than the average buck, and he was decidedly
+good-looking, even for a deer. There were one or two slight
+blemishes--to be described later--in his physical make-up; but they were
+not very serious, and except for them he was very handsome and
+well-formed. I can't give you the whole story of his life, for that
+would take several books, but I shall try to tell you how he became the
+biggest buck and the best fighter of his day and generation in the woods
+around the Glimmerglass. He was unusually favored by Providence, for
+besides being so large and strong he was given a weapon such as very few
+full-grown Michigan bucks have ever possessed.
+
+He had a good start in life, and it is really no wonder that he
+distanced all his relations. In the first place, he arrived in the woods
+a little earlier in the year than deer babies usually do. This was
+important, for it lengthened his first summer, and gave more opportunity
+for growth before the return of cold weather. If the winter had
+lingered, or if there had been late frosts or snow-storms, his early
+advent might have been anything but a blessing; but the spring proved a
+mild one, and there was plenty of good growing weather for fawns. Then,
+too, his mother as in the very prime of life, and for the time being he
+was her only child. If there had been twins, as there were the year
+before, he would, of course, have had to share her milk with a brother
+or sister; but as it was he enjoyed all the benefits of a natural
+monopoly, and he grew and prospered accordingly, and was a baby to be
+proud of.
+
+[Illustration: "_He was a baby to be proud of._"]
+
+And his mother took good care of him, and never tried to show him off
+before the other people of the woods. She knew that it was far safer and
+wiser to keep him concealed as long as possible, and not let anyone know
+that she had him. So instead of letting him wander with her through the
+woods when she went in search of food, she generally left him hidden in
+a thicket or behind a bush or a fallen tree. There he spent many a long,
+lonely hour, idly watching the waving branches and the moving shadows,
+and perhaps thinking dim, formless, wordless baby thoughts, or looking
+at nothing and thinking of nothing, but just sleeping the quiet sleep
+of infancy, and living, and growing, and getting ready for hard times.
+
+At first the Fawn knew no difference between friends and enemies, but
+the instinct of the hunted soon awoke and told him when to be afraid. If
+a hostile animal came by while the doe was gone, he would crouch low,
+with his nose to the ground and his big ears laid back on his neck; or
+if pressed too closely he would jump up and hurry away to some better
+cover, with leaps and bounds so light and airy that they seemed the very
+music of motion. But that did not happen very often. His hiding-places
+were well chosen, and he usually lay still till his mother came back.
+
+When she thought he was large enough, and strong and swift enough, she
+let him travel with her; and then he became acquainted with several new
+kinds of forest--with the dark hemlock groves, and the dense cedar
+swamps; with the open tamarack, where the trees stand wide apart, and
+between them the great purple-and-white lady's-slippers bloom; with the
+cranberry marshes, where pitcher-plants live, and white-plumed grasses
+nod in the breeze; with sandy ridges where the pine-trees purr with
+pleasure when the wind strokes them; with the broad, beautiful
+Glimmerglass, laughing and shimmering in the sunshine, and with all the
+sights and the sounds of that wonderful world where he was to spend the
+years of his deerhood.
+
+They were a very silent pair. When his breakfast was ready she would
+sometimes call him with a low murmuring, and he would answer her with a
+little bleat; but those were almost the only sounds that were ever heard
+from them, except the rustling of the dry leaves around their feet. Yet
+they understood each other perfectly, and they were very happy together.
+There was little need of speech, for all they had to do the livelong day
+was to wander about while the doe picked up her food, and then, when she
+had eaten her fill, to lie down in some sheltered place, and there rest
+and chew the cud till it was time to move again.
+
+Life wasn't all sunshine, of course. There were plenty of hard things
+for the baby Buck to put up with, and perhaps the worst were the
+mosquitoes and the black-flies and "no-see-'ems" that swarmed in the
+woods and swamps through the month of June. They got into his mouth and
+into his nose; they gathered in circles around his eyes; and they
+snuggled cosily down between the short hairs of his pretty, spotted
+coat, and sucked the blood out of him till it seemed as if he would
+soon go dry. For a while they were almost unbearable, but I suppose the
+woods-people get somewhat hardened to them. Otherwise I should think our
+friends would have been driven mad, for there was never any respite from
+their attacks, except possibly a very stormy day, or a bath in the lake,
+or a saunter on the shore.
+
+At the eastern end of the Glimmerglass there is a broad strip of sand
+beach, where, if there happens to be a breeze from the water, one can
+walk and be quite free from the flies; though in calm weather, or with
+an offshore wind, it is not much better than the woods. There, during
+fly-time, the doe and her baby were often to be found; and to see him
+promenading up and down the hard sand, with his mother looking on, was
+one of the prettiest sights in all the wilderness. The ground-color of
+his coat was a bright bay red, somewhat like that of his mother's summer
+clothing; but deeper and richer and handsomer, and with pure white spots
+arranged in irregular rows all along his neck and back and sides. He was
+so sleek and polished that he fairly glistened in the sunshine, like a
+well-groomed horse; his great dark eyes were brighter than a girl's at
+her first ball; and his ears were almost as big as a mule's, and a
+million times as pretty. But best and most beautiful of all was the
+marvellous life and grace and spirit of his every pose and motion. When
+he walked, his head and neck were thrust forward and drawn back again at
+every step with the daintiest gesture imaginable; and his tiny pointed
+hoofs touched the ground so lightly, and were away again so quickly,
+that you hardly knew what they had done. If anything startled him, he
+stamped with his forefoot on the hard sand, and tossed his head in the
+air with an expression that was not fear, but alertness, and even
+defiance. And when he leaped and ran--but there's no use in trying to
+describe that.
+
+By the middle of July most of the flies were gone, and the deer could
+travel where they pleased without being eaten alive. And then, almost
+before they knew what had happened, the summer was gone, too, and the
+autumn had come. The Fawn's white spots disappeared, and both he and his
+mother put off their thin red summer clothing and donned the blue coat
+of fall, which would by and by fade into the gray of winter--a garment
+made of longer, coarser hairs, which were so thick that they had to
+stand on end because there wasn't room for them to lie down, and which
+made such a warm covering that one who wore it could sleep all night in
+the snow, and rise in the morning dry and comfortable.
+
+The Fawn had thriven wonderfully. Already the budding antlers were
+pushing through the skin on the top of his head, which alone is pretty
+good proof that he was a remarkable baby. But, of course, the infancy of
+a wild animal is always much shorter than that of a human child. It is
+well that this is so, for if the period of weakness and helplessness was
+not shortened for them, there would probably be very few who would ever
+survive its dangers and reach maturity. The Fawn was weaned early in the
+autumn; though he still ran with his mother, and she showed him what
+herbs and leaves were pleasantest to the taste and best for building up
+bone and muscle, and where the beechnuts were most plentiful. The mast
+was good that fall, which isn't always the case, and that was another
+lucky star in young Buck's horoscope. So much depends on having plenty
+to eat the first year.
+
+And now the doe was thriving as well as her son. Through the summer she
+had been thin and poor, for the Fawn had fed on her life and strength,
+and the best of all that came to her she had given to him; but the
+strain was over at last, and there were granted her a few weeks in
+which to prepare for the season of cold and storm and scanty food. She
+made the best of them, and in an amazingly short time she was rolling
+fat.
+
+Everything was lovely and the goose hung high, when all of a sudden the
+peace and quiet of their every-day lives were rudely broken. The hunting
+season had come, and half-a-dozen farmers from lower Michigan had camped
+beside the Glimmerglass. They were not really very formidable. If one
+wants to kill deer, one should learn to shoot straight and to get around
+in the woods without making quite as much noise as a locomotive. But
+their racket was intolerable, and after a day or two the doe and the
+Fawn left home and spent the next three or four weeks near a secluded
+little pond several miles away to the southeast.
+
+By the first of December these troublous times were over, and they had
+returned to their old haunts in the beech and maple woods, where they
+picked up a rather scanty living by scraping the light snow away with
+their forefeet in search of the savory nuts. But before Christmas there
+came a storm which covered the ground so deeply that they could no
+longer dig out enough food to keep them from going hungry; and they
+were forced to leave the high lands and make their way to the evergreen
+swamps around the head-waters of the Tahquamenon. There they lived on
+twigs of balsam and hemlock and spruce, with now and then a mouthful of
+moss or a nutritious lichen. Little by little the fat on their ribs
+disappeared, they grew lank and lean again, and the bones showed more
+and more plainly through their heavy winter coats. If one of those
+November hunters had succeeded in setting his teeth in their flesh he
+would have found that it had a very pleasant, nutty flavor, but in
+February it would have tasted decidedly of hemlock. Yet they were strong
+and healthy, in spite of their boniness, and of course you can't expect
+to be very fat in winter.
+
+There were worse things than hunger. One afternoon they were following a
+big buck down a runway--all three of them minding their own business and
+behaving in a very orderly and peaceable manner--when a shanty-boy
+stepped out from behind a big birch just ahead of them, and said, "Aah!"
+very derisively and insultingly. The wind was blowing from them to him,
+and they hadn't had the least idea that he was there until they were
+within three rods of his tree. The buck was so startled that for an
+instant he simply stood still and stared, which was exactly what the
+shanty-boy had expected him to do. He had stopped so suddenly that his
+forefeet were thrust forward into the snow, and he was leaning backward
+a trifle. His head was up, his eyes were almost popping out of their
+sockets, and there was such a look of astonishment on his face that the
+man laughed as he raised his gun and took aim. In a second the deer had
+wheeled and was in the air, but a bullet broke his back just as he left
+the ground, and he came tumbling down again in a shapeless heap. His
+spinal cord was cut, and half his body was dead; but he would not give
+up even then, and he half rose on his forefeet and tried to drag himself
+away. The shanty-boy stepped to his side with a knife in his hand, the
+deer gave one loud bleat of fear and pain, and then it was all over.
+
+But by that time the doe and the Fawn were far down the runway--out of
+sight, and out of danger. Next day they passed that way again, and saw a
+Canada lynx standing where the buck had fallen, licking his chops as if
+he had just finished a good meal. It is hard work carrying a deer
+through the woods, and the shanty-boy had lightened his load as much as
+possible. Lynxes are not nice. The mother and son pulled their freight
+as fast as they could travel.
+
+When the world turned green again they went back to the Glimmerglass,
+but they had not been there long before the young Buck had his nose put
+out of joint by the arrival of two new babies. Thenceforth his mother
+had all she could do to take care of them, without paying any further
+attention to him. The days of his fawnhood were over, and it was time
+for him to strike out into the world and make his own living.
+
+However, I don't think he was very lonesome. There were plenty of other
+deer in the woods, and though he did not associate with any of them as
+he had with his mother, yet he may have enjoyed meeting them
+occasionally in his travels. And there was ever so much to do and to
+think about. Eating took up a good deal of time, for he was very active
+and was still growing, and his strong young body was constantly calling
+for more food. And it wasn't enough merely to find the food and swallow
+it, for no sooner was his stomach full than he had to lie down and chew
+the cud for an hour or so. And, of course, the black-flies and
+mosquitoes and "no-see-'ems" helped to make things interesting, just as
+they had the year before. Strictly speaking, it is impossible to be
+lonely in the woods during fly-time. He changed his clothes, too, and
+put on a much handsomer dress, though I doubt if he took as much
+interest in that operation as most of us would. The change contributed
+greatly to his comfort, for his light summer garment was much better
+adapted to warm weather than his winter coat, but it did not require any
+conscious effort on his part. On hot days he sometimes waded out into
+the lake in search of lily-pads, and the touch of the cool water was
+very grateful. Occasionally he would take a long swim, and once or twice
+he paddled clear across the Glimmerglass, from one shore to the other.
+
+And it was during this summer that he raised his first real antlers.
+Those of the previous autumn had been nothing but two little buds of
+bone, but these were pointed spikes, several inches in length, standing
+straight up from the top of his head without a fork or a branch or a
+curve. They did not add very much to his good looks, and, of course,
+they dropped off early in the following winter, but they were the
+forerunners of the beautiful branching antlers of his later years, and
+if he thought about them at all they were probably as welcome as a
+boy's first mustache.
+
+Late in the following autumn an event occurred which left its mark on
+him for the rest of his life. One night he wandered into a part of the
+woods where some lumbermen had been working during the day. On the
+ground where they had eaten their lunch he found some baked beans and a
+piece of dried apple-pie, and he ate them greedily and was glad that he
+had come. But he found something else, too. One of the road-monkeys had
+carelessly left his axe in the snow with the edge turned up. The Buck
+stepped on it, and it slipped in between the two halves of his cloven
+hoof, and cut deep into his foot. The wound healed in the course of
+time, but from that night the toes--they were those of his left hind
+foot--were spread far apart, instead of lying close together as they
+should have done. Sticks and roots sometimes caught between them in a
+way that was very annoying, and his track was different from that of any
+other deer in the woods, which was not a thing to be desired. He was not
+crippled, however, for he could still leap almost, if not quite, as far
+as ever, and run almost as fast.
+
+He continued to grow and prosper, and the next summer he raised a pair
+of forked antlers with two tines each.
+
+And now he is well started down the runway of life, and we must leave
+him to travel by himself for two or three years. He ranged the woods far
+and near, and came to know them as a man knows his own house; but no
+matter what places he visited, the old haunts that his mother had shown
+him were the best of all, as the deer have learned by the experience of
+generation after generation. He always came back again to the
+Glimmerglass, and as the seasons went by I often saw his broad,
+spreading hoof-print on the sandy beach where they two had so often
+walked in that first summer. He evidently had plenty of company, and was
+probably enjoying life, for all around were other foot-prints that were
+narrow and delicately pointed, as a deer's should be. Some of them, of
+course, were his own, left by his three perfect feet; but others were
+those of his friends and acquaintances, and it is quite possible that
+some of the tiniest and daintiest were made by his children.
+
+That beach is a delightful place for a promenade on a summer night, and
+besides the deer-tracks one can sometimes find there the trails of the
+waddling porcupines, the broad, heavy print left by a black bear as he
+goes shambling by, and the handwriting of many another of the
+woods-people. Strange and interesting scenes must often be enacted on
+the smooth, hard sand that lies between the woods and the water, and it
+is a pity that the show always comes to a sudden close if any would-be
+spectators appear, and that we never see anything but the foot-prints of
+the performers.
+
+With each recurring hunting season the Buck and the other deer that made
+their homes around the Glimmerglass were driven away for a time. A few
+stayed, or at least remained as near as they dared; but compared with
+summer the neighborhood was almost depopulated. And in his fourth year,
+in spite of all his efforts to keep out of harm's way, the Buck came
+very near losing his life at the hands of a man who had really learned
+how to hunt--not one of the farmers who went ramming about the woods,
+shooting at everything in sight, and making noise enough to startle even
+the porcupines.
+
+One afternoon, late in the autumn, the judge left his court-room in
+Detroit and started for his house. He bought an evening paper as he
+boarded the street-car; and, as Fate would have it, the first thing that
+met his eye as he unfolded it was the forecast for upper Michigan:
+"Colder; slight snow-fall; light northerly winds." The judge folded the
+paper again and put it in his pocket, and all the rest of the way home
+he was dreaming of things that he had seen before--of the white and
+silent woods, of deer-tracks in the inch-deep snow, of the long
+still-hunt under dripping branches and gray November skies, of a huge
+buck feeding unconcernedly beneath the beech-trees, of nutty venison
+steaks broiling on the coals, and, finally, of another pair of antlers
+for his dining-room. Court had adjourned for three days, and that night
+he took the train for the north. And while he travelled, the snow came
+down softly and silently, melting at first as fast as it fell, and then,
+as the cold grew sharper, clothing the woods in a thin, white robe, the
+first gift of the coming winter.
+
+Next day the Buck was lying behind a fallen tree, chewing his cud, when
+the breeze brought him a whiff of an unpleasant human odor. He jumped up
+and hurried away, and the judge heard him crash through the bushes, and
+searched until he had found his trail. An hour later, as the Buck was
+nosing for beechnuts in the snow, a rifle cracked and a bullet went
+zipping by and carried off the very tip of his left antler. He dropped
+his white flag and was off like a shot.
+
+Chase a wounded deer, and he will run for miles; leave him alone, and if
+he is badly hurt he will soon lie down. The chances are that he will
+never get up again. The judge knew that the Buck was hit, for he had
+seen his tail come down. But was he hit hard? There was no blood on the
+trail, and the judge decided to follow.
+
+The Buck hurried on, but before long his leaps began to grow shorter.
+After a mile or so he stopped, looked back, and listened. The woods were
+very, very still, and for all that he could see or hear there was not
+the least sign of danger. Yet he was afraid, and in a few minutes he
+pushed on again, though not as rapidly as before. As the short afternoon
+wore away he travelled still more slowly, and his stops were longer and
+more frequent. And at last, just before sunset, as he stood and watched
+for the enemy who might or might not be on his trail, he heard a twig
+snap, and saw a dark form slip behind a tree. This time he ran as he had
+never run before in all his life.
+
+The judge spent the night at the nearest lumber-camp, and the next
+morning he was out again as soon as he could see, following his own
+trail back to where he had left that of the Buck. On the way he crossed
+the tracks of two other deer, but they had no temptations for him. He
+wanted to solve the mystery of that spreading hoof-print, and to make
+sure that his shot had not been a clean miss. And now began a day which
+was without precedent in the Buck's whole history. Those woods are not
+the best in the world for a deer who has to play hide-and-seek with a
+man, for there are few bare ridges or half-wooded slopes from which he
+can look back to see if anyone is following him. Even the glades and the
+open cranberry swamps are small and infrequent. An almost unbroken
+forest sweeps away in every direction, and everywhere there is cover for
+the still-hunter. And when the ground is carpeted with snow an inch and
+a half deep, as it was then, and at every step a deer must leave behind
+him a trail as plain as a turnpike road, then it is not strange if he
+feels that he has run up against a decidedly tough proposition. Eyes,
+ears, and nose are all on the alert, and all doing their level best, but
+what eye can penetrate the cedar swamp beyond a few yards; or what ear
+can always catch the tread of a moccasin on the moss and the snow before
+it comes within rifle range; or what nose, no matter how delicate, can
+detect anything but what happens to lie in its owner's path, or what the
+wind chooses to bring it? Many a foe had crossed the Buck's trail in the
+course of his life; but none had ever followed him like this--silently
+and relentlessly--slowly, but without a moment's pause. A few leaps were
+always enough to put the judge out of sight, and half an hour's run left
+him far behind; but in a little while he was there again, creeping
+cautiously through the undergrowth, and peering this way and that for a
+glimpse of a plump, round, blue-gray body. Once he fired before the deer
+knew that he was at hand, and if a hanging twig had not turned the
+bullet a trifle from its course, the still-hunt would have ended then
+and there.
+
+But late in the afternoon the Buck thought that he had really shaken his
+pursuer off, and the judge was beginning to think so, too. They had not
+seen each other for two or three hours, the day was nearly over, and
+there were signs of a change in the weather. If the Buck could hold out
+till nightfall, and then the snow should melt before morning, he would
+be comparatively safe.
+
+In his fear of the enemy lurking in the rear, he had forgotten all other
+dangers; and without quite realizing what he was doing he had come back
+to the Glimmerglass, and was tramping once more up and down the old
+familiar runways. Presently he came upon a huge maple, lying prostrate
+on the ground. He walked around its great bushy head and down toward its
+foot; and there he found a broad, saucer-shaped hollow, left when the
+tree was torn up by the roots in some wild gale. On one side rose a mass
+of earth, straight as a stone wall and four or five feet in height; and
+against its foot lay one of the most tempting beds of dead leaves that
+he had ever seen, free from snow, dry as a whistle, soft and downy. The
+sight of it was too much for him. He was very weary, his limbs fairly
+ached with fatigue, and for the last hour his spread hoof had given him
+a good deal of pain. His enemy was nowhere in sight, and in spite of his
+misgivings he sank down on the couch with a sigh of comfort, and began
+to chew his cud.
+
+The judge was about ready to give up for the night when he, too, came
+upon that fallen maple. He saw the wall of earth and twisted roots, with
+the deer-tracks leading toward it; and slowly, softly, silently, he
+crept down toward the Buck's shelter.
+
+There was no wind that evening, and the woods seemed perfectly still;
+but now, unnoticed by the judge, a faint, faint puff came wandering
+among the trees, as if on purpose to warn the deer of his danger.
+Suddenly he started, sniffed the air, and was up and away like a
+race-horse--not leaping nor bounding now, but running low, with his head
+down, and his antlers laid back on his neck. If he had been in the cedar
+swamp he would have escaped unhurt, but up in the hardwood the trees do
+not stand so close, and one can see a little farther. The judge fired
+before he could get out of sight, and he dropped with three ribs broken
+and a bullet lodged behind his right shoulder. He was up again in an
+instant, but there were blood-stains on the snow where he had lain, and
+this time the judge did not follow. Instead of giving chase he went
+straight back to the lumber-camp, feeling almost as sure of that new
+pair of antlers as if he had carried them with him.
+
+The Buck ran a little way, with his flag lowered and the blood spurting,
+and then he lay down to rest, just as the judge knew he would. The
+bleeding soon stopped, but it left him very weak and tired, and that
+night was the most miserable he had ever known. The darkness settled
+down thick and black over the woods, the wind began to blow, and by and
+by the rain commenced to fall--first a drizzle, and then a steady pour.
+Cold and wet, wounded and tired and hungry, the Buck was about as
+wretched as it is possible for a mortal to be. And yet that rain was the
+one and only thing that could save him. Under its melting touch the snow
+began to disappear, and before morning the ground was bare again. Even
+the blood-stains were washed away. It would take a better nose than the
+judge's to track him now.
+
+Yet the danger was not over, by any means. The judge knew very nearly
+where to look for him, and could probably find him if he did not get up
+and move on. And to move on, or even to rise to his feet, seemed utterly
+impossible. The least motion sent the most exquisite pain shooting
+through his whole body, and I believe he would have died where he lay,
+either at the hands of the judge or from exhaustion, if another man
+hadn't come along. The judge would have advanced slowly and quietly, and
+the deer might never have known he was coming till a rifle bullet hit
+him; but this man's errand must have been a different one, for he came
+striding noisily through the trees and bushes and over the dead leaves,
+whistling "I Want Yer, Ma Honey," at the top of his whistle. If you are
+obliged to be out in the woods during the hunting season, and don't care
+to kill anything, it is always best to make as much noise as you can.
+There is less danger that some other fool will take you for a deer and
+shoot you dead. The Buck heard him, of course, and tried to rise, only
+to sink back with a groan. He couldn't do it, or at least he thought he
+couldn't. But when the man came around a little balsam only two rods
+away, then his panic got the better of his pain, and he jumped up and
+made off at a clumsy, limping run. Every joint seemed on fire, and he
+ached from the top of his head to the toes of that poor left hind-foot.
+But after the first plunge it was not quite so bad. The motion took some
+of the stiffness out of his limbs, and by the time the judge arrived he
+was a mile away and was thinking about breakfast.
+
+We must do the sportsman the justice of saying that his remorse was very
+keen when he stepped aboard the train that night, bound for Detroit. He
+had wounded a deer and had let it get away from him, to suffer, and
+probably to die a painful, lingering death. The whole day--the last of
+the hunting season and of his court recess--had been spent in an
+unavailing search; not merely because he wanted some venison and a pair
+of antlers to carry home with him, but because he wanted to put the Buck
+out of his misery. He had failed everywhere, and he felt sorry and
+ashamed, and wished he had stayed at home. But, as it happened, the Buck
+did not want to be put out of his misery. Just as the judge took the
+train he was lying down for the night. He would be stiff when he rose
+again, but not as stiff as he had been that morning. He would be weak
+and tired, but he would still be able to travel and find food. He would
+lose his plumpness and roundness, no doubt, and lose them very rapidly.
+The winter would probably be a hard one, with such a misfortune as this
+at its very beginning. But no matter, it would pass. He wasn't the first
+Buck who had had his ribs smashed by an injection of lead and had lived
+to tell the tale.
+
+The next year it was his antlers that got him into trouble--his antlers
+and his quarrelsomeness. Two round, black, velvet-covered knobs had
+appeared in spring on the top of his head, and had pushed up higher and
+higher till they formed cylindrical columns, each one leaning outward
+and a little backward. They were hot as fever with the blood that was
+rushing through them, building up the living masonry; and at the upper
+ends, where the work was newest, they were soft and spongy, and very
+sensitive, so that the least touch was enough to give pain. Longer and
+longer they grew, and harder and harder; by and by curving forward and
+inward; and one after another the tines appeared. And at last, in the
+early autumn, the tall towers of bone were complete, the blood ceased to
+course through them, and the Buck rubbed them against the tree-trunks
+until the velvety skin was all worn off, and they were left smooth and
+brown and polished. They were a handsome pair, spreading and branching
+very gracefully over his forehead, and bearing four tines to each beam.
+It is a mistake to suppose, as so many people do, that the number of
+tines on each antler invariably corresponds to the number of years that
+its owner has lived; but it very often does, especially before he has
+passed the prime of life.
+
+No sooner were the antlers finished than the Buck began to grow fat. He
+had been eating heartily for months, but he hadn't been able to put much
+flesh on his ribs as long as he had that big, bony growth to feed. Bucks
+and does are alike in this, that for both of them the summer is a season
+of plenty, but not of growing plump and round and strong. The
+difference between them is that the does give their strength and
+vitality to the children they are nursing, while the bucks pile theirs
+up on their own foreheads.
+
+[Illustration: "_The buck was nearing the prime of life._"]
+
+And there was another change which came with the autumn. Through the
+summer he had been quiet and gentle, and had attended very strictly to
+his own affairs; but now the life and vigor and vitality which for weeks
+and months had been pouring into that tall, beautiful structure on his
+forehead were all surging like a tide through his whole body; and he
+became very passionate and excitable, and spent much time in rushing
+about the woods in search of other deer, fighting those of his own sex,
+and making love to the does. The year was at its high-water mark, and
+the Buck was nearing his prime. Food was plenty; everywhere the
+beechnuts were dropping on the dry leaves; the autumn sunshine was warm
+and mellow; the woods were gay with scarlet and gold and brown, and the
+very taste of the air was enough to make one happy. Was it any wonder if
+he sometimes felt as if he would like to fight every other buck in
+Michigan, and all of them at once?
+
+One afternoon in October he fought a battle with another buck who was
+very nearly his match in size and strength--a battle that came near
+being the end of both of them. There was a doe just vanishing among the
+bushes when the fuss began, and the question at issue was which should
+follow her and which shouldn't. It would be easy enough to find her,
+for, metaphorically speaking, "her feet had touched the meadows, and
+left the daisies rosy." Wherever she went, a faint, faint fragrance
+clung to the dead leaves, far too delicate for a human nose to detect,
+yet quite strong enough for a buck to follow. But the trail wasn't broad
+enough for two, and the first thing to be done was to have a scrap and
+see which was the better and more deserving deer. And, as it turned out,
+the scent grew cold again, and the doe never heard that eager patter of
+hoofs hurrying down the runway behind her.
+
+The bucks came together like two battering-rams, with a great clatter
+and clash of antlers, but after the first shock the fight seemed little
+more than a pushing-match. Each one was constantly trying to catch the
+other off his guard and thrust a point into his flesh, but they never
+succeeded. A pair of widely branching antlers is as useful in warding
+off blows as in delivering them. Such a perfect shield does it make,
+when properly handled, that at the end of half an hour neither of the
+bucks was suffering from anything but fatigue, and the issue was as far
+as ever from being settled. There was foam on their lips, and sweat on
+their sides; their mouths were open, and their breath came in gasps;
+every muscle was working its hardest, pushing and shoving and guarding;
+and they drove each other backward and forward through the bushes, and
+ploughed up the ground, and scattered the dry leaves in their struggles;
+and yet there was not a scratch on either shapely body.
+
+Finally, they backed off and rushed together again with such violence
+that our Buck's antlers were forced apart just a trifle, and his enemy's
+slipped in between them. There was a little snap as they sprang back
+into position, and the mischief was done. The two foes were locked
+together in an embrace which death itself could not loosen.
+
+The next few weeks were worse than a nightmare. If one went forward, the
+other had to go backward; and neither could go anywhere or do anything
+without getting the consent of the other or else carrying him along by
+main force. Many things could not be done at all--not even when both
+were willing and anxious to do them. They could not run or leap. They
+could not see, except out of the corners of their eyes. They would never
+again toss those beautiful antlers in the air, for they had come
+together with their heads held low, and in that position they must
+remain. They could not even lie down without twisting their necks till
+they ached as if they were breaking. With their noses to the ground, and
+with anger and misery in their hearts, they pushed and hauled each other
+this way and that through the woods. And wherever they went, they were
+always struggling and fighting and striving for every mouthful of food
+that came within reach. It was little enough that they found at the
+best, and it would have been better for both of them if they could have
+agreed to divide it evenly, but of course that would have been asking
+too much of deer nature. Each took all he could get, and at first they
+were so evenly matched that each secured somewhere near his fair share.
+They spied a beechnut on the ground, or a bit of lichen, or a tender
+twig; and together they made a dive for it. Two noses were thrust
+forward--no, not forward, sidewise--and two mouths were open to grasp
+the precious morsel which would enable its possessor to keep up the
+fight a little longer. Sometimes one got it, and sometimes the other;
+but from the very beginning our Buck was a shade the stronger, and his
+superiority grew with every mouthful that he managed to wrest from his
+fellow-prisoner. Both of them were losing flesh rapidly, but he kept his
+longer than the other. And at last they reached the point where, by
+reason of his greater strength, he got everything and the other nothing,
+and then the end was near. It would have come long before if both had
+not been in prime condition on the day of the battle.
+
+[Illustration: "_Wherever they went they were always struggling and
+fighting._"]
+
+One dark, stormy night the two deer were stumbling and floundering over
+roots and bushes, trying to find their way down to the beach for a
+drink. Both of them were pretty well used up; and one was so weak that
+he could hardly stand, and could only walk by leaning heavily on the
+head and antlers of the other, who supported him because he was obliged
+to, and not out of friendliness. They were within a few rods of the
+beach when he whose strength was least stepped into a hole and fell, and
+his leg-bone snapped like a dry twig. He struggled and tried to rise;
+but his story was told, and before morning he was dead. For once our
+Buck's instinct of self-preservation had carried him too far. He had
+taken all the food for himself, and had starved his enemy; and now he
+was bound face to face to a corpse.
+
+Well, we won't talk about that. He stayed there twenty-four hours, and
+there would soon have been two dead bucks instead of one if something
+had not happened which he did not in the least expect--something which
+seemed like a blessed miracle, yet which was really the simplest and
+most natural thing in the world. A buck has no fixed time for the
+casting of his antlers. It usually occurs during the first half of the
+winter, but it has been known to take place as early as November and as
+late as April. The second night passed, and as it began to grow light
+again our friend lifted himself on his knees and his hind-legs, and
+wrestled mightily with his horrible bed-fellow; and suddenly his left
+antler came loose from his head. The right one was still fast, but it
+was easily disengaged from the tangle of branching horns, and in a
+moment he stood erect. The blood was running down his face from the
+pedicel where the antler had stood, and he was so weak and dizzy that
+his legs could hardly carry him, and so thin and wasted that he seemed
+the mere shadow of his former self. But he was free, and that long,
+horrible dream was over at last.
+
+He tried to walk toward the lake, but fell before he had taken
+half-a-dozen steps; and for an hour he lay still and rested. It was like
+a taste of heaven, just to be able to hold his neck straight. The sun
+had risen by the time he was ready to try it again, and through the
+trees he saw the shimmer and sparkle of the Glimmerglass. He heard the
+wind talking to itself in the branches overhead, and the splashing of
+the ripples on the beach; and he staggered down to the margin and drank
+long and deep.
+
+That December was a mild one. The first light snow had already come and
+gone, and the next two weeks were bright and sunshiny. The Buck ate as
+he had never eaten before, and it was astonishing to see how rapidly he
+picked up, and how much he gained before Christmas. His good luck seemed
+to follow him month after month, for the winter was comparatively open,
+the snow was not as deep as usual, and the spring came early. By that
+time the ill effects of his terrible experience had almost entirely
+disappeared, and he was in nearly as good condition as is usual with the
+deer at that season of the year--which, of course, isn't really saying
+very much.
+
+Again, Nature's table was spread with good things, and again he set to
+work to build a pair of antlers--a pair that should be larger and
+handsomer than any that had gone before. But as the summer lengthened it
+became evident that there was something wrong with those antlers, or at
+least with one of them. One seemed to be quite perfect. It was
+considerably longer than those of last year, its curve was just right,
+and it had five tines, which was the correct number and all that he
+could have asked. But the other, the left, was nothing but a straight,
+pointed spike, perhaps eight inches in length, shaped almost exactly
+like those of his first pair. The Buck never knew the reason for this
+deformity, and I'm not at all certain about it myself, though I have a
+theory. One stormy day in the early summer, a falling branch, torn from
+a tree-top by the wind, had struck squarely on that growing antler, then
+only a few inches long. It hurt him so that for a moment he was fairly
+blind and dizzy, and it is quite possible that the soft, half-formed
+bone was so injured that it could never reach its full development.
+Anyhow, it made him a rather queer-looking buck, with one perfect antler
+and one spike. But in everything else--except his spread hoof--he was
+without spot or blemish. He had well fulfilled the promise of his youth,
+and he was big and strong and beautiful. Something he had lost, no
+doubt, of the grace and daintiness of his baby days; but he had also
+gained much--gained in stateliness and dignity, as well as in size and
+weight and strength. And even that spike antler was not without its
+advantages, as he learned a little later.
+
+As the autumn came round he was just as excitable and passionate, just
+as ready for fighting or love-making, as ever, and not one whit subdued
+by the disaster of the year before. And so one day he had another battle
+with another buck, while another doe--or perhaps the same one--made off
+through the trees and left a fragrant trail behind her. He and his
+adversary went at each other in the usual way, and for some time it
+seemed unlikely that either of them could ever do anything more than
+tire the other out by hard pushing. There was little danger that their
+antlers would get locked this time, with one pair so badly mismated; and
+it bade fair to be a very ordinary, every-day sort of a fight. But by
+and by our Buck saw his opportunity. The enemy exposed his left side, in
+an unguarded moment, and before he could recover himself that deformed
+antler had dealt him a terrible thrust. If the force of the blow had
+been divided among five tines it would probably have had but little
+effect, but the single straight spike was as good as a sword or a
+bayonet, and it won the day. The deer with the perfect antlers was not
+only vanquished, but killed; and the victor was off on the trail of the
+doe.
+
+And so our friend became the champion of the Glimmerglass, and in all
+the woods there was not a buck that could stand against him.
+
+But his brother deer were not his only enemies. With the opening of the
+hunting season those farmers from lower Michigan came again, and day
+after day they beat the woods in search of game. This time, however, the
+Buck did not leave, or at least he did not go very far. For the last
+month he had been fighting everyone who would fight back, and perhaps
+his many easy victories had made him reckless. At any rate he was bolder
+than usual, and all through the season he stayed within a few miles of
+the Glimmerglass.
+
+The farmers had decidedly poor luck, and after hunting for two or three
+weeks without a single taste of venison they began to feel desperate.
+Finally, they secured the help of a trapper who owned a big English
+foxhound. Hunting with dogs was against the law, and at home they
+claimed to be very law-abiding citizens, but they had to have a deer, no
+matter what happened.
+
+The morning after the hound's arrival he got onto the trail of a doe and
+followed it for hours, until, as a last resort, she made for the
+Glimmerglass, jumped into the water, and started to swim across to the
+farther shore. The dog's work was done, and he stood on the bank and
+watched her go. For a few minutes she thought that she was out of
+danger, and that the friendly Glimmerglass had saved her; but presently
+she heard a sound of oars, and turning half-way round she lifted her
+head and shoulders out of the water, and saw a row-boat and three men
+bearing down upon her. A look of horror came into her face as she sank
+back, and her heart almost broke with despair; but she was game, and she
+struck out with all her might. Her legs tore the water frantically, the
+straining muscles stood out like ropes on her sides and flanks and
+shoulders, and she almost threw herself from the water. But it was no
+use, the row-boat was gaining.
+
+The farmers fired at her again and again, but they were too wildly
+excited to hit anything until finally the trapper pulled up alongside
+her and threw a noose over her head. And then, while she lay on her side
+in the water, with the rope around her neck, kicking and struggling in
+a blind agony of despair, one of the farmers shot her dead at a range of
+something less than ten feet. When he went home he bragged that he was
+the only one of the party who had killed a deer, but he never told just
+how the thing was done.
+
+That is the kind of fate that you are very likely to meet if you are a
+deer. But vengeance came on the morrow, for that day it was the Buck's
+turn to be chased by that horrible fog-horn on four legs. Hour after
+hour he heard the hound's dreadful baying behind him as he raced through
+the woods, and at last he, too, started for the water, just as the doe
+had done. But he never reached it, or at least not on that trip. He was
+within a few rods of the beach when his spread hoof caught on a root and
+threw him, and the hound was so close behind that they both went down in
+a heap. They sprang to their feet at the same instant, and stood for a
+second glaring at each other. The dog had not meant to fight, only to
+drive the other into the water, where the hunters would take care of
+him; but he was game, and he made a spring at the deer's throat. The
+Buck drew back his forefoot, with its sharp, pointed hoof, and met the
+enemy with a thrust like that of a Roman soldier's short-sword; and the
+hound went down with his shoulder broken and a great gash in his side.
+And then, with a sudden twist and turn of his head, the Buck caught him
+on the point of that terrible spike antler, ripped his body open, and
+tossed him in the air.
+
+The worst enemy was disposed of. But that wasn't all. The man who killed
+the doe was waiting on the beach and had heard the scuffle, and now he
+came creeping quietly through the bushes to see what was going on. The
+Buck was still trampling the body of the dog, and noticed nothing till a
+rifle bullet grazed his right flank, inflicting just enough of a wound
+to make him still more furious. He faced around and stood for a moment
+staring at this new enemy; and then he did something which very few wild
+deer have ever done. Probably he would not have done it himself if he
+had not been half crazy with rage and excitement, and much emboldened by
+his easy victory over the hound. He put his head down and his antlers
+forward, and charged on a man!
+
+The farmer was jerking frantically at the lever of his repeating rifle,
+but a cartridge had stuck in the magazine, and he couldn't make it work.
+The hound's fate had shown him what that spike antler could do; and
+when he saw it bearing down on him at full tilt he dropped his gun and
+ran for his life to his dug-out canoe. He reached it just in time. I
+almost wish he hadn't.
+
+One more adventure the Buck had that fall. Providence, or Fate, or
+someone took a hand in affairs, and rid the Glimmerglass of all hunters,
+not for that season alone, but for many years to come. One night, down
+beside a spring in the cedar swamp, the Buck found a half-decayed log on
+which a bag of salt had been emptied. He stayed there for an hour or
+two, alternately licking the salt and drinking the cold water, and it
+was as good as an ice-cream soda. The next night he returned for another
+debauch; but in the meantime two other visitors had been there, and both
+had seen his tracks and knew that he would come again. As he neared the
+spring, treading noiselessly on the soft moss, he heard two little
+clicks, and stopped short to see what they meant. Both were quick and
+sharp, and both had come at exactly the same instant; yet they were not
+quite alike, for one had come from the shutter of a camera, and one from
+the lock of a rifle. Across the salt-lick a photographer and a hunter
+were facing each other in the darkness, and each saw the gleam of the
+other's eyes and took him for a deer. So close together were the two
+clicks that neither man heard the sound of the other's weapon, and both
+were ready to fire--each in his own way.
+
+The Buck stood and watched, and suddenly there came two bursts of
+flame--one of them so big and bright that it lit the woods like
+sheet-lightning. Two triggers had been touched at the same instant, and
+each did its work well. The flash-light printed on the sensitive plate a
+picture of a hunter in the act of firing, and the rifle sent a bullet
+straight through the photographer's forehead. The Buck saw it all as in
+a dream--the white flame of the magnesium powder; the rifle, belching
+out its fire and smoke; the camera, silent and harmless, but working
+just as surely; the two men, each straining his eyes for a sight of his
+game; the water gleaming in the fierce light, and the dark ranks of the
+cedars all around. And then, in the tenth of a second, it was all over,
+and the Buck was bumping against trees, and stumbling and floundering
+over roots, in his dazed haste to get away from this terrifying mystery.
+He heard one horrified shout from the hunter, but nothing from the
+photographer--and the woods were silent again.
+
+That was the end of the hunting season at the Glimmerglass. With the
+hunter's trial for manslaughter, we and the Buck are not concerned; and
+there is nothing more to tell except that the next year the owners of
+the lands around the lake gave warning that all trespassers would be
+prosecuted. They wanted no more such tragedies on their property.
+
+And so the Buck and his sweethearts and his rivals lived in peace,
+except that the rivals still quarrelled among themselves, as Nature
+meant them to. The Buck had reached his prime, but you are not to
+suppose that he began to age immediately afterward. It was long before
+his eye was dimmed or his natural force abated; and as the years went
+by, with their summers of lily-pads and tender young browse, and their
+autumns of beechnuts and fighting and love-making, the broad cloven
+track of his split foot was often to be found in the hard, smooth sand
+of the beach. Perhaps it is there now. I wish I could go and see.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Duplicate titles were removed.
+
+Page 51, "weasles" changed to "weasels" (frogs, and weasels)
+
+Page 156, "fore-paws" changed to "forepaws" to match rest of usage
+(forepaws. He also)
+
+Page 165, "blottod" changed to "blotted" (were all blotted out)
+
+Page 229, "where-ever" changed to "wherever" It was orginally split over
+two lines. (woods. And wherever)
+
+
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Forest Neighbors, by William Davenport Hulbert</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Forest Neighbors, by William Davenport
+Hulbert, Illustrated by A. R. Dugmore, Walter M. Hardy, Gleeson, and
+Arthur Hemming</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Forest Neighbors</p>
+<p>       Life Stories of Wild Animals</p>
+<p>Author: William Davenport Hulbert</p>
+<p>Release Date: January 29, 2009  [eBook #27933]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOREST NEIGHBORS***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Emmy,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 321px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="321" height="500" alt="Cover" title="" />
+</div><hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h1>FOREST NEIGHBORS</h1>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<i>"And the Northern Lights come down,</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;"><i>To dance with the houseless snow;</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>And God, Who clears the grounding berg,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;"><i>And steers the grinding floe,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;"><i>He hears the cry of the little kit-fox,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;"><i>And the lemming, on the snow."</i></span><br />
+</div>
+<div class='sig'>
+<span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling.</span><br /></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 263px;">
+<img src="images/gs001.jpg" width="263" height="400" alt="The Beaver Lumbering." title="" />
+<span class="caption">The Beaver Lumbering.</span>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h1>FOREST NEIGHBORS</h1>
+
+<h2>LIFE STORIES OF WILD ANIMALS</h2>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>WILLIAM DAVENPORT HULBERT</h2>
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+<div class='center'><i>ILLUSTRATED</i></div>
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+<div class='center'>
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; CO.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Garden City</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">New York</span><br />
+1914<br /></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='copyright'>
+<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1900, 1901, and 1902, by</span><br />
+THE S. S. McCLURE CO.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1902, by</span><br />
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; CO.<br /></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<i>To my Sister</i><br />
+KATHARINE GRACE HULBERT<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_xi">xi</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Biography of a Beaver</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The King of the Trout Stream</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Strenuous Life of a Canada Lynx</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Pointers from a Porcupine Quill</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Adventures of a Loon</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_163">163</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Making of a Glimmerglass Buck</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="List of Illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'>The Beaver Lumbering</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_iii"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"On the grass in the warm, quiet sunshine of an autumn afternoon"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Building the Dam</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Nesting Grounds</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"He tried jumping out of the water"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"The hole was suddenly darkened, and a round, hairy face looked in"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"He was a very presentable young lynx"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"They both stood still and looked at each other"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"High up in the top of a tall hemlock"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"He quickly made his way to the beach"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"He went under as simply as you would step out of bed"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_166">166</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"She herself was a rarely beautiful sight"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_170">170</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"The old earth sliding southward fifty miles an hour"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_180">180</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"He was a baby to be proud of"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"The buck was nearing the prime of life"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_226">226</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"Wherever they went they were always struggling and fighting"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_230">230</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><i>INTRODUCTION</i></h2>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span><br /><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<div class='cap'>Some <i>thirty years ago, while out on one of his landlooking
+trips in the woods of Northern Michigan, my father
+came upon a little lake which seemed to him the loveliest
+that he had ever seen, though he had visited many in the
+course of his explorations. The wild ponds are very apt
+to be shallow and muddy, with low, marshy shores; but
+this one was deep and clear, and its high banks were
+clothed with a splendid growth of beech, maple and
+birch. Tall elms stood guard along the water's edge,
+and here and there the hardwood forest was broken by
+dark hemlock groves, and groups of lordly pine-trees,
+lifting their great green heads high above their deciduous
+neighbors. Only in one place, around the extreme eastern
+end, the ground was flat and wet; and there the tamarack
+swamp showed golden yellow in October, and light, delicate
+green in late spring. Wild morning-glories grew on the
+grassy point that put out from the northern shore, and in
+the bays the white water-lilies were blossoming. Nearly two
+miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide, it lay basking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</a></span>
+and shimmering in the sunshine, a big, broad, beautiful
+sheet of water set down in the very heart of the woods.</i></div>
+
+<p><i>There were no settlers anywhere near, nor even any
+Indians, yet there was no lack of inhabitants. Bears and
+wolves and a host of smaller animals were to be found, and
+along the shores were runways that had been worn deep
+in the soil by the tread of generation after generation of
+dainty little cloven hoofs. I suppose that some of those
+paths have been used by the deer for hundreds, and perhaps
+thousands, of years.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>The lands around the entire lake were offered for sale
+by the United States Government at the ridiculously low
+price which Uncle Sam has asked for most of his possessions;
+and with the help of some friends my father bought
+the whole shore. During the years which followed he was
+occupied in various ways, and some of the best recollections
+of my boyhood are of the days and the nights which I spent
+with him on his fishing-tug, steaming about the Straits of
+Mackinac and the northern part of Lake Huron. But he
+could not forget the Glimmerglass, that little wild lake up
+in the woods. He had fallen in love with it at first sight,
+and at last he took his family and went there to live.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Human neighbors were scarce around the lake, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[xv]</a></span>
+perhaps that was one reason why we took such a lively
+interest in the other residents&mdash;those who were there ahead
+of us. "Him and me's chums," my small sister said of
+the red-squirrel that hung around the log-barn. And some
+of the animals seemed to take a very lively interest in us.
+The chipmunks came into the house occasionally, on foraging
+expeditions; and so, I regret to say, did the skunks.
+There was a woodchuck who used to come to the back door,
+looking for scraps, and who learned to sit bolt upright
+and hold a pancake in his fore paws while he nibbled at it,
+without being in the least disturbed by the presence and the
+comments of half a dozen spectators. The porcupines
+became a never-ending nuisance, for they made almost
+nightly visits to the woodshed. To kill them was of little
+use, for the next night&mdash;or perhaps before morning&mdash;there
+were others to take their places. Once in a while one of
+them would climb up onto the roof of the house; and
+between his teeth and his feet and the rattling of his quills
+on the shingles, the racket that he made was out of all proportion
+to his size.</i></p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+It is sweet to lie at evening in your little trundle-bed,<br />
+And to listen to a porky gnawing shingles overhead;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Porky, porky, porky, porky;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gnawing shingles overhead.</span><br />
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[xvi]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>The wolves had been pretty nearly exterminated since my
+father's first visit to the lake, and we saw little or nothing
+of 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.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[xvii]</a></span>
+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.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>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&mdash;or at least the loons were&mdash;and
+the same small girl who had made friends with the
+red-squirrel learned to talk to the big birds.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>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.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>One after another our neighbors introduced themselves,
+each in his own way. And they were good neighbors, all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[xviii]</a></span>
+of them. Even the porcupines and the skunks were interesting&mdash;in
+their peculiar fashion&mdash;and I wish there were
+none worse than they in the city's slums.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>I have said good-by to the Glimmerglass, and it may be
+that I shall never again make my home by its shores. But
+the life of the woods goes on, and will still go on as long
+as man will let it. I suppose that, even as I write, the
+bears are "holeing up" for the winter, and the deer are
+growing anxious because the snow is covering the best of
+their food, and they of the cat tribe are getting down to
+business, and hunting in deadly earnest. The loons and
+the ducks have pulled out for the Gulf of Mexico, and the
+squirrels are glad that they have such a goodly store of
+nuts laid up for the next four months. The beavers have
+retired to their lodges&mdash;that is, if Charley Roop and his
+fellows have left any of them alive. The partridges&mdash;well,
+the partridges will just have to get along the best way they
+can. I guess they'll pull through somehow. The porcupines
+are all right, as you will presently see if you read this
+book. They don't have to worry. Down in the bed of the
+trout stream the trout eggs are getting ready&mdash;getting
+ready. And out on the lake itself the frost is at work,
+and the ice-sheet is forming, and under that cold, white lid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[xix]</a></span>
+the Glimmerglass will wait till another year brings round
+another spring-time&mdash;the spring-time that will surely come
+to all of us if only we hold on long enough.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Chicago, December, 1901.</i></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BEAVER</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='cap'>A &nbsp;BROAD, flat tail came down on the water with a
+whack that sent the echoes flying back and forth across
+the pond, and its owner ducked his head, arched his back,
+and dived to the bottom. It was a very curious tail, for
+besides being so oddly paddle-shaped it was covered with
+what looked like scales, but were really sections and indentations
+of hard, horny, blackish-gray skin. Except its
+owner's relations, there was no one else in all the animal
+kingdom who had one like it. But the strangest thing
+about it was the many different ways in which he used it.
+Just now it was his rudder&mdash;and a very good rudder, too.</div>
+
+<p>In a moment his little brown head reappeared, and he
+and his brothers and sisters went chasing each other
+round and round the pond, ducking and diving and
+splashing, raising such a commotion that they sent the
+ripples washing all along the grassy shores, and having
+the jolliest kind of a time. It isn't the usual thing for
+young beavers to be out in broad daylight, but all this
+happened in the good old days before the railways came,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+when northern Michigan was less infested with men than
+it is now.</p>
+
+<p>When the youngsters wanted a change they climbed up
+onto a log, and nudged and hunched each other, poking
+their noses into one another's fat little sides, and each
+trying to shove his brother or sister back into the water.
+By and by they scrambled out on the bank, and then, when
+their fur had dripped a little, they set to work to comb
+it. Up they sat on their hind legs and tails&mdash;the tail
+was a stool now, you see&mdash;and scratched their heads and
+shoulders with the long brown claws of their small, black,
+hairy hands. Then the hind feet came up one at a time,
+and combed and stroked their sides till the moisture was
+gone and the fur was soft and smooth and glossy as
+velvet. After that they had to have another romp.
+They were not half as graceful on land as they had been
+in the water. In fact they were not graceful at all, and
+the way they stood around on their hind legs, and shuffled,
+and pranced, and wheeled like baby hippopotami,
+and slapped the ground with their tails, was one of the
+funniest sights in the heart of the woods. And the funniest
+and liveliest of them all was the one who owned that
+tail&mdash;the tail which, when I last saw it, was lying on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+the ground in front of Charlie Roop's shack. He was
+the one whom I shall call the Beaver&mdash;with a big B.</p>
+
+<p>But even young beavers will sometimes grow tired of
+play, and at last they all lay down on the grass in the
+warm, quiet sunshine of the autumn afternoon. The
+wind had gone to sleep, the pond glittered like steel in
+its bed of grassy beaver-meadow, the friendly woods stood
+guard all around, the enemy was far away, and it was a
+very good time for five furry little babies to take a nap.</p>
+
+<p>The city in which the tail first made its appearance was
+a very ancient one, and may have been the oldest town on
+the North American continent. Nobody knows when
+the first stick was laid in the dam that changed a small
+natural pond into a large artificial one, and thus opened
+the way for further municipal improvements; but it was
+probably centuries ago, and for all we can tell it may
+have been thousands of years back in the past. Generation
+after generation of beavers had worked on that dam,
+building it a little higher and a little higher, a little
+longer and a little longer, year after year; and raising
+their lodges as the pond rose around them. Theirs was
+a maritime city, for most of its streets were of water, like
+those of Venice; rich cargoes of food-stuffs came floating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+to its very doors, and they themselves were navigators
+from their earliest youth, and took to the water as naturally
+as ducks or Englishmen. They were lumbermen,
+too, and when the timber was all cut from along the
+shores of the pond they dug canals across the low, level,
+marshy ground, back to the higher land where the birch
+and the poplar still grew, and floated the branches and
+the smaller logs down the artificial water-ways. And
+there were land roads, as well as canals, for here and
+there narrow trails crossed the swamp, showing where
+generations of busy workers had passed back and forth
+between the felled tree and the water's edge. Streets,
+canals, public works, dwellings, commerce, lumbering,
+rich stores laid up for the winter&mdash;what more do you
+want to constitute a city, even if the houses are few in
+number, and the population somewhat smaller than that
+of London or New York?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs002.jpg" width="500" height="326" alt="&quot;On the grass in the warm, quiet sunshine of an autumn afternoon.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;On the grass in the warm, quiet sunshine of an autumn afternoon.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>There was a time, not very long before the Beaver was
+born, when for a few years the city was deserted. The
+trappers had swept through the country, and the citizens'
+skulls had been hung up on the bushes, while their skins
+went to the great London fur market. Few were left alive,
+and those few were driven from their homes and scattered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+through the woods. The trappers decided that the ground
+was worked out, and most of them pushed on to the north
+and west in search of regions not yet depopulated. Then,
+one by one, the beavers came back to their old haunts.
+The broken dam was repaired; new lodges were built, and
+new beavers born in them; and again the ancient town was
+alive with the play of the babies and the labors of the civil
+engineers. Not as populous, perhaps, as it had once been,
+but alive, and busy, and happy. And so it was when our
+Beaver came into the world.</p>
+
+<p>The first year of his life was an easy one, especially the
+winter, when there was little for anyone to do except to
+eat, to sleep, and now and then to fish for the roots of the
+yellow water-lily in the soft mud at the bottom of the
+pond. During that season he probably accomplished
+more than his parents did, for if he could not toil he could
+at least grow. Of course they may have been growing,
+too, but it was less noticeable in them than in him. Not
+only was he increasing in size and weight, but he was storing
+up strength and strenuousness for the work that lay
+before him. It would take much muscle to force those
+long yellow teeth of his through the hard, tough flesh of
+the maple or the birch or the poplar. It would take vigor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+and push and enterprise to roll the heavy billets of wood
+over the grass-tufts to the edge of the water. And, most
+of all, it would take strength and nerve and determination
+to tear himself away from a steel trap and leave a foot
+behind. So it was well for the youngster that for a time
+he had nothing to do but grow.</p>
+
+<p>Spring came at last, and many of the male beavers prepared
+to leave home for a while. The ladies seemed to
+prefer not to be bothered by the presence of men-folk
+during the earliest infancy of the children; so the men,
+probably nothing loath, took advantage of the opportunity
+to see something of the world, wandering by night
+up and down the streams, and hiding by day in burrows
+under the banks. For a time they enjoyed it, but as the
+summer dragged by they came straggling home one after
+another. The new babies who had arrived in their
+absence had passed the most troublesome age, and it was
+time to begin work again. The dam and the lodges
+needed repairs, and there was much food to be gathered
+and laid up for the coming winter.</p>
+
+<p>Now, on a dark autumn night, behold the young Beaver
+toiling with might and main. His parents have felled a
+tree, and it is his business to help them cut up the best<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+portions and carry them home. He gnaws off a small
+branch, seizes the butt end between his teeth, swings it
+over his shoulder, and makes for the water, keeping his
+head twisted around to the right or left so that the end
+of the branch may trail on the ground behind him. Sometimes
+he even rises on his hind legs, and walks almost upright,
+with his broad, strong tail for a prop to keep him
+from tipping over backward if his load happens to catch
+on something. Arrived at the canal or at the edge of the
+pond, he jumps in and swims for town, still carrying the
+branch over his shoulder, and finally leaves it on the growing
+pile in front of his father's lodge. Or perhaps the
+stick is too large and too heavy to be carried in such a
+way. In that case it must be cut into short billets and
+rolled, as a cant-hook man rolls a log down a skidway.
+Only the Beaver has no cant-hook to help him, and no
+skidway, either. All he can do is to push with all his
+might, and there are so many, many grass-tufts and little
+hillocks in the way! And sometimes the billet rolls down
+into a hollow, and then it is very hard to get it out again.
+He works like a beaver, and pushes and shoves and toils
+with tremendous energy, but I am afraid that more than
+one choice stick never reaches the water.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These were his first tasks. Later on he learned to fell
+trees himself. Standing up on his hind legs and tail, with
+his hands braced against the trunk, he would hold his head
+sidewise, open his mouth wide, set his teeth against the
+bark, and bring his jaws together with a savage nip that
+left a deep gash in the side of the tree. A second nip
+deepened the gash, and gave it more of a downward slant,
+and two or three more carried it still farther into the
+tough wood. Then he would choose a new spot a little
+farther down, and start a second gash, which was made
+to slant up toward the first. And when he thought
+that they were both deep enough he would set his teeth
+firmly in the wood between them, and pull and jerk and
+twist at it until he had wrenched out a chip&mdash;a chip perhaps
+two inches long, and from an eighth to a quarter of an
+inch thick. He would make bigger ones when he grew to
+be bigger himself, but you mustn't expect too much at first.
+Chip after chip was torn out in this way, and gradually
+he would work around the tree until he had completely
+encircled it. Then the groove was made deeper, and after
+a while it would have to be broadened so that he could
+get his head farther into it. He seemed to think it was
+of immense importance to get the job done as quickly as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+possible, for he worked away with tremendous energy and
+eagerness, as if felling that tree was the only thing in the
+world that was worth doing. Once in a while he would
+pause for a moment to feel of it with his hands, and to
+glance up at the top to see whether it was getting ready
+to fall, and several times he stopped long enough to take
+a refreshing dip in the pond; but he always hurried back,
+and pitched in again harder than ever. In fact, he sometimes
+went at it so impetuously that he slipped and rolled
+over on his back. Little by little he dug away the tree's
+flesh until there was nothing left but its heart, and at last
+it began to crack and rend. The Beaver jumped aside to
+get out of the way, and hundreds and hundreds of small,
+tender branches, and delicious little twigs and buds came
+crashing down where he could cut them off and eat them
+or carry them away at his leisure.</p>
+
+<p>And so the citizens labored, and their labor brought its
+rich reward, and everybody was busy and contented, and
+life was decidedly worth living.</p>
+
+<p>But one black November night our hero's father, the
+wisest old beaver in all the town, went out to his work
+and never came home again. A trapper had found the
+rebuilt city&mdash;a scientific trapper who had studied his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+profession for years, and who knew just how to go to
+work. He kept away from the lodges as long as he
+could, so as not to frighten anyone; and before he set
+a single trap he looked the ground over very carefully,
+located the different trails that ran back from the water's
+edge toward the timber, visited the stumps of the felled
+trees, and paid particular attention to the tooth-marks
+on the chips. No two beavers leave marks that are
+exactly alike. The teeth of one are flatter or rounder
+than those of another, while a third has large or small
+nicks in the edges of his yellow chisels; and each tooth
+leaves its own peculiar signature behind it. By noting
+all these things the trapper concluded that a particular
+runway in the wet, grassy margin of the pond was the
+one by which a certain old beaver always left the water
+in going to his night's labor. That beaver, he decided,
+would best be the first one taken, for he was probably the
+head of a family, and an elderly person of much wisdom
+and experience; and if one of his children should be
+caught first he might become alarmed, and take the lead
+in a general exodus.</p>
+
+<p>So the trapper set a heavy double-spring trap in the
+edge of the water at the foot of the runway, and covered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+it with a thin sheet of moss. And that night, as the old
+beaver came swimming up to the shore, he put his foot
+down where he shouldn't, and two steel jaws flew up and
+clasped him around the thigh. He had felt that grip
+before. Was not half of his right hand gone, and three
+toes from his left hind foot? But this was a far more
+serious matter than either of those adventures. It was
+not a hand that was caught this time, nor yet a toe, or
+toes. It was his right hind leg, well up toward his
+body, and the strongest beaver that ever lived could not
+have pulled himself free. Now when a beaver is frightened,
+he of course makes for deep water. There, he
+thinks, no enemy can follow him; and, what is more, it
+is the highway to his lodge, and to the burrow that he
+has hollowed in the bank for a refuge in case his house
+should be attacked. So this beaver turned and jumped
+back into the water the way he had come; but, alas! he
+took his enemy with him. The heavy trap dragged him
+to the bottom like a stone, and the short chain fastened
+to a stake kept him from going very far toward home.
+For a few minutes he struggled with all his might, and
+the soft black mud rose about him in inky clouds. Then
+he quieted down and lay very, very still; and the next<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+day the trapper came along and pulled him out by the
+chain.</p>
+
+<p>Something else happened the same night. Another
+wise old beaver, the head man of another lodge, was
+killed by a falling tree. He ought to have known better
+than to let such a thing happen. I really don't see how
+he could have been so careless. But the best of us will
+make mistakes at times, and any pitcher may go once too
+often to the well. I suppose that he had felled hundreds
+of trees and bushes, big and little, in the course of his
+life, and he had never yet met with an accident; but this
+time he thought he would take one more bite after the
+tree had really begun to fall. So he thrust his head
+again into the narrowing notch, and the wooden jaws
+closed upon him with a nip that was worse than his own.
+He tried to draw back, but it was too late, his skull
+crashed in, and his life went out like a candle.</p>
+
+<p>And so, in a few hours, the city lost two of its best
+citizens&mdash;the very two whom it could least afford to lose.
+If they had been spared they might, perhaps, have
+known enough to scent the coming danger, and to lead
+their families and neighbors away from the doomed
+town, deeper into the heart of the wilderness. As it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+was, the trapper had things all his own way, and by
+working carefully and cautiously he added skin after skin
+to his store of beaver-pelts. I haven't time to tell you
+of all the different ways in which he set his traps, nor
+can we stop to talk of the various baits that he used,
+from castoreum to fresh sticks of birch or willow, or of
+those other traps, still more artfully arranged, which had
+no bait at all, but were cunningly hidden where the poor
+beavers would be almost certain to step into them before
+they saw them. After all, it was his awful success that
+mattered, rather than the way in which he achieved it.
+Our friend's mother was one of the next to go, and the
+way his brothers and sisters disappeared one after another
+was a thing to break one's heart.</p>
+
+<p>One night the Beaver himself came swimming down the
+pond, homeward bound, and as he dived and approached
+the submarine entrance of the lodge he noticed some
+stakes driven into the mud&mdash;stakes that had never been
+there before. They seemed to form two rows, one on
+each side of his course, but as there was room enough
+for him to pass between them he swam straight ahead
+without stopping. His hands had no webs between the
+fingers, and were of little use in swimming, so he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+folded them back against his body; but his big feet
+were working like the wheels of a twin-screw steamer,
+and he was forging along at a great rate. Suddenly,
+half-way down the lines of stakes, his breast touched the
+pan of a steel trap, and the jaws flew up quick as a
+wink and strong as a vise. Fortunately there was nothing
+that they could take hold of. They struck him so
+hard that they lifted him bodily upward, but they
+caught only a few hairs.</p>
+
+<p>Even a scientific trapper may sometimes make mistakes,
+and when this one came around to visit his trap, and
+found it sprung but empty, he thought that the beavers
+must have learned its secret and sprung it on purpose.
+There was no use, he decided, in trying to catch such intelligent
+animals in their own doorway, and he took the
+trap up and set it in a more out-of-the-way place. And
+so one source of danger was removed, just because the
+Beaver was lucky enough to touch the pan with his
+breast instead of with a foot.</p>
+
+<p>A week later he was really caught by his right hand,
+and met with one of the most thrilling adventures of his
+life. Oh, but that was a glorious night! Dark as a
+pocket, no wind, thick black clouds overhead, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+rain coming down in a steady, steady drizzles&mdash;just the
+kind of a night that the beavers love, when the friendly
+darkness shuts their little city in from all the rest of the
+world, and when they feel safe and secure. Then, how
+the long yellow teeth gouge and tear at the tough wood,
+how the trees come tumbling down, and how the branches
+and the little logs come hurrying in to augment the winter
+food-piles! Often of late the Beaver had noticed an
+unpleasant odor along the shores, an odor that frightened
+him and made him very uneasy, but to-night the rain
+had washed it all away, and the woods smelled as sweet
+and clean as if God had just made them over new. And
+on this night, of all others, the Beaver put his hand
+squarely into a steel trap.</p>
+
+<p>He was in a shallow portion of the pond, and the chain
+was too short for him to reach water deep enough to
+drown him; but now a new danger appeared, for there
+on the low, mossy bank was an otter, glaring at him
+through the darkness. Beaver-meat makes a very acceptable
+meal for an otter, and the Beaver knew it. And
+he knew, also, how utterly helpless he was, either to fly
+or to resist, with that heavy trap on his arm, and its
+chain binding him to the stake. His heart sank like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+lead, and he trembled from his nose to the end of his
+tail, and whimpered and cried like a baby. But,
+strange to say, it was the trapper who saved him, though,
+of course, it was done quite unintentionally. As the
+otter advanced to the attack there came a sudden sharp
+click, and in another second he too was struggling for
+dear life. Two traps had been set in the shallow
+water. The Beaver had found one, and the otter the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>The full story of that night, with all its details of fear
+and suffering and pain, will never be written; and probably
+it is as well that it should not be. But I can give you
+a few of the facts, if you care to hear them. The Beaver
+soon found that he was out of the otter's reach, and with
+his fears relieved on that point he set to work to free himself
+from the trap. Round and round he twisted, till there
+came a little snap, and the bone of his arm broke short off
+in the steel jaws. Then for a long, long time he pulled
+and pulled with all his might, and at last the tough skin
+was rent apart, and the muscles and sinews were torn out
+by the roots. His right hand was gone, and he was so
+weak and faint that it seemed as if all the strength and
+life of his whole body had gone with it. No matter. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+was free, and he swam away to the nearest burrow and
+lay down to rest. The otter tried to do the same, but he
+was caught by the thick of his thigh, and his case was a
+hopeless one. Next day the trapper found him alive, but
+very meek and quiet, worn out with fear and useless
+struggles. In the other trap were a beaver's hand and
+some long shreds of flesh and sinew that must once have
+reached well up into the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>We shall have to hurry over the events of the next winter&mdash;the
+last winter in the city's history. By the time the
+Beaver's wound was healed&mdash;Nature was good to him, and
+the skin soon grew over the torn stump&mdash;the pond was
+covered with ice. The beavers, only half as numerous as
+they had been a few weeks before, kept close in their
+lodges and burrows, and for a time they lived in peace and
+quiet, and their numbers suffered no further diminution.
+Then the trapper took to setting his traps through the
+ice, and before long matters were worse than ever. By
+spring the few beavers that remained were so thoroughly
+frightened that the ancient town was again abandoned&mdash;this
+time forever. The lodges fell to ruins, the burrows
+caved in, the dam gave way, the pond and canals were
+drained, and that was the end of the city.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Yet not quite the end, after all. The beavers have vanished
+from their old habitation, but their work remains
+in the broad meadows cleared of timber by their teeth,
+and covered with rich black soil by the inundations from
+their dam. There is an Indian legend which says that
+after the Creator separated the land from the water He
+employed gigantic beavers to smooth it down and prepare
+it for the abode of men. However that may be, the farmers
+of generations to come will have reason to rise up
+and bless those busy little citizens&mdash;but I don't suppose
+they will ever do it.</p>
+
+<p>One city was gone, but there were two that could
+claim the honor of being our Beaver's home at different
+periods of his life. The first, as we have already seen,
+was ancient and historic. The second was brand-new.
+Let us see how it had its beginning. The Beaver got
+married about the time he left his old home; and this, by
+the way, is a very good thing to do when you want to
+start a new town. Except for his missing hand, his wife
+was so like him that it would have puzzled you to tell
+which was which. I think it is very likely that she was
+his twin sister, but of course that's none of our business.
+Do you want to know what they looked like? They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+measured about three feet six inches from tip of nose to
+tip of tail, and they weighed perhaps thirty pounds
+apiece. Their bodies were heavy and clumsy, and were
+covered with thick, soft, grayish under-fur, which in turn
+was overlaid with longer hairs of a glistening chestnut-brown,
+making a coat that was thoroughly water-proof as
+well as very beautiful. Their heads were somewhat like
+those of gigantic rats, with small, light-brown eyes, little
+round ears covered with hair, and long orange-colored incisors
+looking out from between parted lips. One portrait
+will answer for both of them.</p>
+
+<p>They wandered about for some time, looking for a suitable
+location, and examining several spots along the beds of
+various little rivers, none of which seemed to be just right.
+But at last they found, in the very heart of the wilderness,
+a place where a shallow stream ran over a hard stony bottom,
+and here they set to work. It was a very desirable
+situation in every respect. At one side stood a large
+tree, so close that it could probably be used as a buttress
+for the dam when the latter was sufficiently lengthened to
+reach it; while above the shallow the ground was low and
+flat on both sides for some distance back from the banks,
+so that the pond would have plenty of room to spread<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+out. If they could have spoken they would probably
+have said that the place was a dam site better than any
+other they had seen.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs003.jpg" width="500" height="317" alt="Building the Dam." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Building the Dam.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Alder bushes laid lengthwise of the current were the first
+materials used, and for a time the water filtered through
+them with hardly a pause. Then the beavers began laying
+mud and stones and moss on this brush foundation,
+scooping them up with their hands, and holding them
+under their chins as they waddled or swam to the dam.
+The Beaver himself was not very good at this sort of
+work, for his right hand was gone, as we know, and it
+was not easy for him to carry things; but he did the best
+he could, and together they accomplished a great deal.
+The mud and the grass and such-like materials were
+deposited mainly on the upper face of the dam, where
+the pressure of the water only sufficed to drive them
+tighter in among the brush; and thus, little by little, a
+smooth bank of earth was presented to the current,
+backed up on the lower side by a tangle of sticks and
+poles. Its top was very level and straight, and along its
+whole length the water trickled over in a succession of
+tiny rills. This was important, for if all the overflow
+had been in one place the stream might have been so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+strong and rapid as to eat into the dam, and perhaps
+carry away the whole structure.</p>
+
+<p>The first year the beavers did not try to raise the stream
+more than a foot above its original level. There was
+much other work to be done&mdash;a house to be built, and
+food to be laid in for the winter&mdash;and if they spent too
+much time on the dam they might freeze or starve before
+spring. A few rods up-stream was a grassy point which
+the rising waters had transformed into an island, and here
+they built their lodge, a hollow mound of sticks and mud,
+with a small, cave-like chamber in the centre, from which
+two tunnels led out under the pond&mdash;"angles," the trappers
+call them. The walls were masses of earth and
+wood and stones, so thick and solid that even a man with
+an axe would have found it difficult to penetrate them.
+Only at the very apex of the mound there was no mud,
+nothing but tangled sticks through which a breath of
+fresh air found its way now and then. In spite of this
+feeble attempt at ventilation I am obliged to admit that
+the atmosphere of the lodge was often a good deal like
+that of the Black Hole of Calcutta, but beavers are so
+constituted that they do not need much oxygen, and they
+did not seem to mind it. In all other respects the house<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+was neat and clean. The floor was only two or three
+inches above the level of the water in the angles, and
+would naturally have been a bed of mud; but they mixed
+little twigs with it, and stamped and pounded it down
+till it was hard and smooth. I think likely the Beaver's
+tail had something to do with this part of the work, as
+well as with finishing off the dam, for he was fond of
+slapping things with it, and it was just the right shape
+for such use. In fact, I fear that if it had not been for
+the tail, and for other tails like it, neither of the cities
+would ever have been as complete as they were. With
+the ends of projecting sticks cut off to leave the walls
+even and regular, and with long grass carried in to make
+the beds, the lodge was finished and ready.</p>
+
+<p>And now you might have seen the beavers coming home
+to rest after a night's labor at felling timber&mdash;swimming
+across the pond toward the island, with only the tops
+of their two little heads showing above the water. In
+front of the lodge each tail-rudder gives a slap and a
+twist, and they dive for the submarine door of one of the
+angles. In another second they are swimming along the
+dark, narrow tunnel, making the water surge around
+them. Suddenly the roof of the passage rises, and their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+heads pop up into the air. A yard or two farther, and
+they enter the chamber of the lodge, with its level floor
+and its low, arched roof. And there in the darkness
+they lie down on their grass beds and go to sleep. It is
+good to have a home of your own where you may take
+your ease when the night's work is done.</p>
+
+<p>Near the upper end of the pond, where the bank was
+higher, they dug a long burrow, running back ten or fifteen
+feet into the ground. This was to be the last
+resort if, by any possibility, the lodge should ever be invaded.
+It was a weary task, digging that burrow, for its
+mouth was deep under the water, and every few minutes
+they had to stop work and come to the surface for breath.
+Night after night they scooped and shovelled, rushing the
+job as fast as they knew how, but making pretty slow
+progress in spite of all their efforts. It was done at
+last, however, and they felt easier in their minds when
+they knew that it was ready for use in case of necessity.
+From its mouth in the depths of the pond it sloped
+gradually upward to a dry chamber under the roots of a
+large birch; and here, where a few tiny holes were not
+likely to be noticed from the outside, two or three small
+openings, almost hidden by the moss and dead leaves, let<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+in the air and an occasional ray of light. The big tree
+made a solid roof overhead, and the chamber was large
+enough, with a little crowding, to accommodate a whole
+family of beavers.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one other heavy task, and that was the
+gathering of the wood, which, with its bark, was to serve
+as food through the winter. This too was finally finished,
+and the very last things that the beavers did that
+fall were to put another coat of mud on the outside of the
+lodge, and to see that the dam was in the best possible
+condition. No repairing could be done after the ice made;
+and if the dam should give way at any time during the
+winter, the pond would be drained, and the entrances of
+the lodge and the burrow would be thrown open to any
+prowling marauders that might happen to pass that way.
+So it was imperative to have things in good order before
+cold weather came on.</p>
+
+<p>There came a quiet, windless day, when the sky was gray,
+and when the big snow-flakes came floating lazily down,
+some to lose themselves in the black water, and some to
+robe the woods and the shores in white. At nightfall the
+clouds broke up, the stars shone forth, and the air grew
+odder and keener till long crystal spears shot out across<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+the pond, and before morning a sheet of glass had spread
+from shore to shore. I do not think it was unwelcome.
+The beavers were shut in for the winter, or could only go
+abroad with considerable difficulty, but they had each
+other, and there was a little world of their own down under
+the ice and snow. The chamber of the lodge was home,
+and just outside was their food storehouse&mdash;the big pile
+of wood which it had cost so much labor to gather. One
+of the entrances was shorter and straighter than the other,
+and through this they used to bring in sticks from the
+heap, and lay them on the floor between the beds, where
+they could devour the bark at their leisure. If they grew
+restless, and wanted to go farther afield, there was the
+bottom of the pond to be explored, and the big luscious
+lily-roots to be dug up for a change of diet. It was a
+peaceful time, a time of rest from the labors of the past
+year, and of growing fat and strong for those of the year
+to come. We have much goods laid up for many months;
+let us eat, drink, and be merry, and hope that the trappers
+will not come to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>The babies came in May, and I suppose that the young
+father and mother were almost as proud and happy as
+some of you who are in similar circumstances. The Beaver<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+did not wander very far from home that spring and summer,
+nor was he away very long at a time.</p>
+
+<p>There were five of the children, and they were very pretty&mdash;about
+as large as rats, and covered with thick, soft,
+silky, reddish-brown fur, but without any of the longer,
+coarser, chestnut-colored hairs that formed their parents'
+outer coats. They were very playful, too, as the father and
+mother had been in their own youthful days. For a while
+they had to be nursed, like other babies; but by and by
+the old beavers began to bring in little twigs for them,
+about the size of lead-pencils; and if you had been there,
+and your eyes had been sharp enough to pierce the gloom,
+you might have seen the youngsters exercising their brand
+new teeth, and learning to sit up and hold sticks in their
+baby hands while they ate the bark. And wouldn't you
+have liked to be present on the night when they first went
+swimming down the long, dark tunnel; and, rising to the
+surface, looked around on their world of woods and water&mdash;on
+the quiet pond, with its glassy smoothness broken
+only by their own ripples; on the tall trees, lifting their
+fingers toward the sky; and on the stars, marching silently
+across the heavens, and looking down with still, unwinking
+eyes on another family of babies that had come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+to live and love and be happy for a little while on God's
+earth?</p>
+
+<p>One of the children was killed by an otter before the
+summer was over, but I am glad to say that the other
+four grew up and were a credit to their parents.</p>
+
+<p>The babies were not the only addition to the new city
+during that year, for about mid-summer another pair of
+beavers came and built a lodge near the upper end of the
+pond. It was a busy season for everybody&mdash;for our old
+friends as well as for the new-comers. The food-sticks which
+had been peeled off their bark during the winter furnished
+a good supply of construction material, and the dam was
+built up several inches higher, and was lengthened to the
+buttress-tree on one side, and for a distance of two or
+three rods on the other, so as to keep the water from flowing
+around the ends. As the water-level rose it became
+necessary to build up the floor of the lodge in order to
+keep it from being flooded; and that, in turn, necessitated
+raising the roof by the simple process of hollowing it out
+from within and adding more material on the outside.
+In the same way the lodge was made both longer and
+broader, to accommodate the growing family and the still
+further increase that was to be expected the following<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+spring. More burrows were dug in the shore of the pond&mdash;you
+can't have too many of them&mdash;and a much larger stock
+of food wood was gathered, for there were six mouths, instead
+of two, to be fed through the coming winter. The
+father and mother worked very hard, and even the babies
+helped with the lighter tasks, such as carrying home small
+branches, and mending little leaks in the dam. The
+second pair of beavers was also busy with lodge and burrow
+and storehouse, and so the days slipped by very
+rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>Only once that year did a man come to town, and
+then he did not do anything very dreadful. He was
+not a trapper, he was only an amateur naturalist who
+wanted to see the beavers at their work, and who
+thought he was smart enough to catch them at it. His
+plan was simple enough; he made a breach in the dam
+one night, and then climbed a tree and waited for them
+to come and mend it. It was bright moonlight, and he
+thought he would see the whole thing and learn some
+wonderful secrets.</p>
+
+<p>The Beaver was at work in the woods not very far
+away, and presently he came down to the edge of the
+pond, rolling a heavy birch cutting before him. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+noticed at once that the water was falling, and he
+started straight for the dam to see what was the matter.
+The amateur naturalist saw him coming, a dark speck
+moving swiftly down the pond, with a long V-shaped
+ripple spreading out behind him like the flanks of a
+flock of wild geese. But the beaver was doing some
+thinking while he swam. He had never before known
+the water to fall so suddenly and rapidly; there must be
+a very bad break in the dam. How could it have happened?
+It looked suspicious. It looked very suspicious
+indeed; and just before he reached the dam he stopped
+to reconnoitre, and at once caught sight of the naturalist
+up in the tree. His tail rose in the air and came down
+with the loudest whack that had 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 well say, as he looked
+around on the community which he and his wife had
+founded, that he was a citizen of no mean city.</p>
+
+<p>But this could not last. A great calamity was coming&mdash;a
+calamity beside which the slow destruction of the former
+town would seem tame and uninteresting.</p>
+
+<p>One bright February day the Beaver and his wife left
+their lodge to look for lily-roots. They had found a big
+fat one and were just about to begin their feast, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+they heard foot-steps on the ice over their heads, and the
+voices of several men talking eagerly. They made for
+the nearest burrow as fast as they could go, and stayed
+there the rest of the day, and when they returned to
+their lodge they found&mdash;but I'm going too fast.</p>
+
+<p>The men were Indians and half-breeds, and they were
+in high feather over their discovery. Around this pond
+there must be enough beaver-skins to keep them in groceries
+and tobacco and whiskey for a long time to come.
+But to find a city is one thing, and to get hold of its inhabitants
+is another and a very different one. One of
+the Indians was an elderly man who in the old days had
+trapped beaver in Canada for the Hudson Bay Company,
+and he assumed the direction of the work. First of all
+they chopped holes in the ice and drove a line of stakes
+across the stream just above the pond, so that no one
+might escape in that direction. Then, by pounding on
+the ice, and cutting more holes in it here and there, they
+found the entrances to all the lodges and most of the burrows,
+and closed them also with stakes driven into the
+bottom. Fortunately they did not find the burrow
+where our Beaver and his wife had taken refuge. They
+were about to break open the roofs of the lodges when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+the old man proposed that they should play a trick on
+one of the beaver families&mdash;a trick which his father had
+taught him when he was a boy, and when the beavers
+were many in the woods around Lake Superior. He described
+it with enthusiasm, and his companions agreed
+that it would be great fun. For a time there was much
+chopping of ice and driving of stakes, and then all was
+quiet again.</p>
+
+<p>By and by one of our Beaver's children began to feel
+hungry, and as his father and mother had not come home
+he decided to go out to the wood-pile and get something
+to eat. So he took a header from his bed into the water,
+and swam down the angle. The door had been unbarred
+again, and he passed out without difficulty, but when he
+reached the pile he found it surrounded by a fence made
+of stakes set so close together that he could not pass between
+them. He swam clear around it, and at last found
+one gap just wide enough to admit his body. He passed
+in, and as he did so his back grazed a small twig which
+had been thrust down through a hole in the ice, and the
+watching Indians saw it move, and knew that a beaver
+had entered the trap. He picked out a nice stick of convenient
+size, and started to return to the lodge. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+where was that gap in the fence? This was the place,
+he was sure. Here were two stakes between which he
+had certainly passed as he came in, but now another
+stood squarely between them, and the gate was barred.
+He swam all round the wood-pile, looking for a way out,
+and poking his little brown nose between the stakes, but
+there was no escape, and when he came back to the
+entrance and found it still closed his last hope died, and
+he gave up in despair. His heart and lungs and all his
+circulatory apparatus had been so designed by the Great
+Architect that he might live for many minutes under
+water, but they could not keep him alive indefinitely.
+Overhead was the ice, and all around was that cruel
+fence. Only a rod away was home, where his brothers
+and sisters were waiting for him, and where there was air
+to breathe and life to live&mdash;but he could not reach it.
+You have all read or heard how a drowning man feels,
+and I suppose it is much the same with a drowning
+beaver. They say it is an easy death.</p>
+
+<p>By and by a hooked stick came down through a hole
+in the ice and drew him out, the gate was unbarred, the
+twig was replaced, and the Indians waited for another
+hungry little beaver to come for his dinner. That's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+enough. You know now what the parents found when
+they came home&mdash;or rather what they didn't find.</p>
+
+<p>It would have taken too long to dispose of the whole city
+in this way, so the Indians finally broke the dam and let
+the water out of the pond, and then they tore open the
+lodges and all the burrows they could find, and the inhabitants
+were put to the&mdash;not the sword, but the axe
+and the club. Of all those who had been so happy
+and prosperous, the old Beaver and his wife were the
+only ones who escaped; and their lives were spared only
+because the Indians failed to find their hiding-place.</p>
+
+<p>That was the end of the second city, but it was not quite
+the end of the beavers. A few miles up-stream they dug
+a short burrow in the bank and tried to make a new home.
+In May another baby came, but only one, and it was dead
+before it was born. Next day the mother died too, and
+the Beaver left the burrow and went out into the world
+alone. I really think his heart was broken, though it
+continued to beat for several months longer.</p>
+
+<p>Just northeast of the Glimmerglass there lies a long,
+narrow pond, whose shores are very low and swampy, and
+whose waters drain into the larger lake through a short
+stream only a few rods in length. Hundreds, perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+thousands, of years ago the narrow strip of land that
+separates them may possibly have been a beaver-dam, but
+to-day it is hard to tell it from one of Nature's own formations.
+In the course of his lonely wanderings the
+Beaver reached this pond, and here he established himself
+to spend his last few weeks. He was aging rapidly. Such
+a little while ago he had seemed in the very prime of life,
+and had been one of the handsomest beavers in the woods,
+with fur of the thickest and softest and silkiest, and a
+weight of probably sixty pounds. Now he was thin and
+lean, his hair was falling out, his teeth were losing their
+sharp edges and becoming blunt and almost useless, and
+even his flat tail was growing thicker and more rounded,
+and its whack was not as startling as of old when he
+brought it down with all his might on the surface of the
+water.</p>
+
+<p>Yet even now the old instinct flamed up and burned feebly
+for a little while. Or shall we say the old love of work,
+and of using the powers and faculties that God had given
+him? Why should the thing that is called genius in a
+man be set down as instinct when we see it on a somewhat
+smaller scale in an animal? Whatever it was, the ruling
+passion was still strong. All his life he had been a civil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+engineer; and now, one dark, rainy autumn night, he left
+his shallow burrow, swam down the pond to its outlet, and
+began to build a dam. The next day, pushing up the
+shallow stream in my dug-out canoe, I saw the alder-cuttings
+lying in its bed, with the marks of his dull teeth on
+their butts. God knows why he did it, or what he was
+thinking about as he cut those bushes and dragged them
+into the water. I don't; but sometimes I wonder if a
+wild dream of a new lodge, a new mate, a new home, and
+a new city was flitting through his poor, befogged old
+brain.</p>
+
+<p>It was only a few nights later that he put his foot into
+Charlie Roop's beaver-trap, jumped for deep water, and
+was drowned like his father before him. Charlie afterward
+showed me the pelt, which he had stretched on a
+hoop made of a little birch sapling. It was not a very
+good pelt, for, as I said, the Beaver had been losing his
+hair, but Charlie thought he might get a dollar or two
+for it. Whether he needed the dollar more than the
+Beaver needed his skin was a question which it seemed
+quite useless to discuss.</p>
+
+<p>As we left the shack I noticed the tail lying on the
+ground just outside the door.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you eat it?" I asked. "Don't you know
+that a beaver's tail is supposed to be one of the finest delicacies
+in the woods?"</p>
+
+<p>"Huh!" said Charlie. "I'd rather have salt pork."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE KING OF THE TROUT STREAM</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<div class='cap'>IT was winter, and the trout stream ran low in its
+banks, hidden from the sky by a thick shell of ice and
+snow, and not seeing the sun for a season. But the
+trout stream was used to that, and it slipped along in
+the darkness, undismayed and not one whit disheartened;
+talking to itself in low, murmuring tones, and dreaming
+of the time when spring would come back and all the
+rivers would be full.</div>
+
+<p>Mingled with its waters, and borne onward and downward
+by the ceaseless flow of its current, went multitudes of the
+tiniest air-bubbles, most of them too small ever to be seen
+by a human eye, yet large enough to be the very breath
+of life to thousands and thousands of creatures. Some of
+them found their way to the gills of the brook trout, and
+some to the minnows, and the herrings, and the suckers,
+and the star-gazers; some fed the little crustacea, and the
+insect larv&aelig;, and the other tiny water animals that make up
+the lower classes of society; and some passed undetained
+down the river and out into Lake Superior. But there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+were others that worked down into the gravel of the riverbed;
+and there, in the nooks and crannies between the
+pebbles, they found a vast number of little balls of yellow-brown
+jelly, about as large as small peas, which seemed to
+be in need of their kindly ministrations. And the air-bubbles
+touched the trout eggs gently and lovingly, and
+in some mysterious and wonderful way their oxygen
+passed in through the pores of the shells, and the embryos
+within were quickened and stirred to a new vigor and a
+more rapid growth.</p>
+
+<p>Not all of the eggs were alive. Some had been
+crushed between the stones; some were buried in sediment,
+which had choked the pores and kept away the
+friendly oxygen until they smothered; and some had
+never really lived at all. But one danger they had been
+spared, for there were no saw-mills on the stream to send
+a flood of fungus-breeding sawdust down with the current.
+And in spite of all the misfortunes and disasters
+to which trout eggs are liable, a goodly number of
+them were doing quite as well as could be expected. I
+suppose one could hardly say that they were being incubated,
+for, according to the dictionaries, to incubate is
+to sit upon, and certainly there was no one sitting on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+them. Their mothers had not come near them since the
+day they were laid. But the gravel hid them from the
+eyes of egg-eating fishes and musk-rats; the water kept
+them cold, but not too cold; the fresh oxygen came and
+encouraged them if ever they grew tired and dull, and so
+the good work went on.</p>
+
+<p>Through each thin, leathery, semi-transparent shell you
+could have seen, if you had examined it closely, a pair
+of bright, beady eyes, and a dark little thread of a backbone
+that was always curled up like a horseshoe because
+there wasn't room for it to lie straight. But
+along the outside of the curve of each spinal column a
+set of the tiniest and daintiest muscles was getting ready
+for a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull all together.
+And one day, late in the winter, when the
+woods were just beginning to think about spring, the
+muscles in one particular egg tugged with all their little
+might, the backbone straightened with a great effort,
+the shell was ripped open, and the tail of a brand-new
+brook trout thrust itself out into the water and wiggled
+pathetically.</p>
+
+<p>But his head and shoulders were still inside, and for a
+while it looked as if he would never get them free. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+tail was shaped somewhat like a paddle set on edge, for
+a long, narrow fin ran from the middle of his back clear
+around the end of it and forward again on the under
+side of his body, and with this for an oar he struggled
+and writhed and squirmed, and went bumping blindly
+about among the pebbles like a kitten with its head in
+the cream pitcher. And at last, with the most vigorous
+squirm and wriggle of all, he backed clear of the shell in
+which he had lain for so many weeks and months, and,
+weak and weary from his exertions, lay down on a stone
+to rest.</p>
+
+<p>He had to lie on his side, for attached to his breast was
+a large, round, transparent sac which looked very much
+like the egg out of which he had just come. In fact it
+really was the egg, or at least a portion of it, for it held
+a large part of what had been the yolk. If you could
+have examined him with a microscope you would have
+seen a most strange and beautiful thing. His little body
+was so delicate and transparent that one could see the
+arteries pulsing and throbbing in time with the beating
+of his heart, and some of those arteries found their way
+into the food-sac, where they kept branching and dividing,
+and growing smaller and more numerous. And in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+the very smallest of the tiny tubes a wonderful process
+was going on&mdash;as wonderful as the way in which the
+oxygen fed the embryos through the shell. Somehow,
+by life's marvellous alchemy, the blood was laying hold
+of the material of the yolk, turning it into more blood,
+and carrying it away to be used in building up bone and
+muscle everywhere from the tip of his nose to the end of
+his tail. You might not have detected the actual
+transformation, but you could have seen the beating of
+the engine, and the throbbing rush of the little red
+rivers, all toiling with might and main to make a big,
+strong trout out of this weak and diminutive baby.
+And you could have seen the corpuscles hurrying along
+so thick and fast that at times they blocked up the passages,
+and the current was checked till the heart could
+bring enough pressure to bear to burst the dam and
+send them rushing on again. For the corpuscles of
+a trout's blood are considerably larger than those of
+most fishes, and they sometimes get "hung up," like a
+drive of logs sent down a stream hardly large enough to
+float it.</p>
+
+<p>With a full haversack to be drawn upon in such a
+convenient manner the Troutlet was not obliged to take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+food through his mouth or to think about hustling
+around in search of a living. This was very fortunate,
+for the stream was full of hungry beasts of prey who
+would be very likely to gobble him up quick the first
+time he went abroad; and, besides, his frail little body
+was still so weak and delicate that he could not bear the
+light of day. So, instead of swimming away to seek his
+fortune, he simply dived down deeper into the gravel,
+and stayed there. For some weeks he led a very quiet
+life among the pebbles, and the only mishap that befell
+him during that time was the direct result of his retiring
+disposition. In his anxiety to get as far away from
+the world as possible he one day wedged himself into a
+cranny so narrow that he couldn't get out again. He
+couldn't even breathe, for his gill-covers were squeezed
+down against the sides of his head as if he were in a
+vise. A trout's method of respiration is to open his
+mouth and fill it with water, and then to close it again
+and force the water out through his gills, between his
+cheeks and his shoulders, about where his neck would be
+if he had one. It's very simple when you once know
+how, but you can't do it with your gill-covers clamped
+down. His tail wiggled more pathetically than ever,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+and did its level best to pull him out, but without success.
+He was wedged in so tightly that he couldn't
+move, and he was fast smothering, like a baby that has
+rolled over on its face upon the pillow. But at the last
+moment, when his struggles had grown feebler and
+feebler until they had almost ceased, something stirred
+up the gravel around him and set him free. He never
+knew what did it. Perhaps a deer or a bear waded
+through the stream; or a saw-log may have grounded
+for a moment in the shallow; or possibly it was only the
+current, for by this time most of the snow had melted,
+and the little river was working night and day to carry
+the water out of the woods. But whatever it was, he was
+saved.</p>
+
+<p>He stayed in the gravel nearly a month, but his yolk-sac
+was gradually shrinking, and after a time it drew
+itself up into a little cleft in his breast and almost disappeared.
+There was nothing left of it but a little amber-colored
+bead, and it could no longer supply food enough
+for his growing body. There were times when he felt
+decidedly hungry. And other changes had come while
+he lay and waited in the gravel. The embryonic fin
+which had made his tail so like a paddle was gone, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+true dorsal and caudal and anal fins had taken their
+proper shape, and he looked a little less like a tadpole
+and a little more like a fish. He was stronger than he
+had been at first, and he was losing his dread of the sunlight;
+and so at last he left the gravel-bed, to seek his
+rightful place in the world of moving, murmuring waters.</p>
+
+<p>He was rather weak and listless at first, and quite
+given to resting in the shallows and back water, and
+taking things as easily as possible. But that was to be
+expected for a time, and he was much better off than
+some of the other trout babies. He saw one that had
+two heads and only one body, and another with two
+heads and two bodies joined together at the tail. Still
+others there were who had never been strong enough to
+straighten their backbones, and who had lain in the egg
+till the shell wore thin and let them out head first, which
+is not at all the proper way for a trout to hatch. Even
+now they still retained the horseshoe curve, and could
+never swim straight ahead, but only spin round and
+round like whirligigs. These cripples and weaklings
+seemed to have got on pretty well as long as their food-sacs
+lasted, but now that they had to make their own
+living they were at a serious disadvantage. They all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+disappeared after a day or two, and our friend never saw
+them again. They couldn't stand the real struggle of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Many a strong, healthy baby disappeared at the same
+time, and if there had not been so many of them it is not
+likely that any would have survived the first few days and
+weeks. Even as it was, I doubt if more than one fish out
+of each thousand eggs ever lived to grow up. It is not
+difficult to guess where they went. Our Trout had hardly
+emerged from his hiding-place in the gravel when a queer,
+ugly, big-headed little fish darted at him from under a
+stone, with his jaws open and an awful cavity yawning
+behind them. The Troutlet dodged between a couple of
+pebbles and escaped, but another youngster just beyond
+him was caught and swallowed alive. That was his first
+meeting with the star-gazer, who kills more babies than
+ever Herod did. Then there were minnows, and herrings,
+and lizards, and frogs, and weasels, and water-snakes, and
+other butchers of all sorts and sizes, too numerous to mention.
+And perhaps the worst of all were the older trout,
+who never seemed to have the least compunction about
+eating their small relations, and who were so nimble and
+lively that it was almost impossible to keep out of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+way. Our friend spent most of his time in the shallow
+water near the banks, where larger fishes were not so
+likely to follow him, but even there he had many narrow
+escapes and was obliged to keep himself hidden as much
+as possible under chips and dead leaves, and behind
+stones.</p>
+
+<p>Often he found himself in great peril when he least
+suspected it. Once he lay for some time in the edge of a
+dark forest of water-weeds, only an inch from a lumpish,
+stupid-looking creature, half covered with mud, that was
+clinging to one of the stems. The animal appeared so
+dull and unintelligent that the young Trout paid little
+attention to him until another baby came up and approached
+a trifle closer. Then, quick as a flash, the creature
+shot out an arm nearly three-quarters of an inch
+long, bearing on its end two horrible things which were
+not exactly claws, nor fingers, nor teeth, but which partook
+of the nature of all three, and which came together
+on the infant's soft, helpless little body like a pair of tongs
+or the jaws of a steel trap, and drew him in to where the
+real jaws were waiting to make mince-meat of him. Our
+friend fled so precipitately that he did not see the end of
+the tragedy, but neither did he ever see that baby again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+Before the summer had passed, the dull, lumpish-looking
+creature had become a magnificent insect, with long, gauzy
+wings, clad in glittering mail, and known to everybody as
+a dragon-fly, but I doubt if any of his performances in the
+upper air were ever half as dragon-like as the deeds of
+darkness that he did when he was an ugly, shapeless
+larva down under the water.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, not all the larv&aelig; in the stream were thus
+to be feared. Many were so small that the Troutlet could
+eat them, instead of letting them eat him; and nowhere
+were they more plentiful than in this same forest of water-weeds.
+His first taste of food was a great experience, and
+gave him some entirely new ideas of life. One day he
+was lying with his head up-stream, as was his usual habit,
+when a particularly fat, plump little larva, torn from his
+home by the remorseless river, came drifting down with the
+current. He looked very tempting, and our friend sallied
+out from under a stick and caught him on the fly, just
+as he had seen the star-gazer catch his own brother. The
+funny little creature wriggled deliciously on his tongue,
+and he held him between his jaws for a moment in a kind
+of ecstasy; but he couldn't quite make up his mind to
+swallow him, and presently he spat him out again and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+went back to the shadow of his stick to rest and think
+about it. It was the first time in his life that he had
+ever done such a thing, and he felt rather overwhelmed,
+but an hour or two later he tried it again, and this time
+the living morsel did not stop in his mouth, but went
+straight on down.</p>
+
+<p>It was really something more than a new experience&mdash;this
+first mouthful of food&mdash;for it marked a turning-point
+in his career. Up to this time he had lived entirely
+on the provisions which his parents had left him,
+but henceforth he was independent and could take care
+of himself. He was no longer an embryo; he was a real
+fish, a genuine <i>Salvelinus fontinalis</i>, as carnivorous as the
+biggest and fiercest of all his relations. The cleft in his
+breast might close up now, and the last remnant of his
+yolk-sac vanish forever. He was done with it. He had
+graduated from the nursery, and had found his place on
+the battle-field of life.</p>
+
+<p>It must be admitted, however, that he did not look
+much like a mature trout, even now. He was less than
+three-quarters of an inch long, and his big head, bulging
+eyes, and capacious mouth were out of all proportion to
+his small and feeble body. But time and food were all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+that was needed to set these matters right; and now that
+he had learned how, he set to work and did his level best.
+I should be afraid to guess how many tiny water-creatures,
+insects and larv&aelig; and crustace&aelig;, found their way down
+his throat, but it is pretty safe to say that he often ate
+more than his own weight in a single day. And so he
+grew in size and strength and symmetry, and from being
+a quiet, languid baby, always hiding in dark corners, and
+attending strictly to his own affairs, he became one of the
+liveliest and most inquisitive little fishes in all the stream.
+To a certain extent he developed a fondness for travelling,
+and in company with other troutlets of his own age and
+size he often journeyed from place to place in search of
+new surroundings and new things to eat. In fly-time he
+found a bountiful food-supply in the mosquitoes and
+black-flies that swarmed over the stream, and it was fun
+to see him leap from the water, catch one of them in his
+mouth, and drop back with a triumphant little splash.
+It wasn't really very considerate in him to prey on those
+biting, stinging flies, for in after years they would be his
+best defenders against anglers and fishermen, but consideration
+doesn't seem to be one of the strong points in a
+brook trout's character.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It would take too long to tell of all his youthful
+doings during the next year, and of all his narrow
+escapes, and the many tight places that he got into and
+out of. It was a wonder that he ever pulled through at
+all, but I suppose it is necessary that a few trout should
+grow up, for, if they didn't, who would there be to eat
+the little ones?</p>
+
+<p>Once a kingfisher dived for him, missed him by a hair's-breadth,
+and flew back, scolding and chattering, to his
+perch on an old stub that leaned far out over the water.
+And once he had a horrible vision of an immense loon
+close behind him, with long neck stretched out, and huge
+bill just ready to make the fatal grab. He dodged and
+got away, but it frightened him about as badly as anything
+can frighten a creature with no more nerves than a
+fish. And many other such adventures he had&mdash;too
+many to enumerate. However, I don't think they ever
+troubled him very much except for the moment. He
+grew more wary, no doubt, but he didn't do much worrying.
+Somehow or other he always escaped by the skin of
+his teeth, and the next spring he was swallowing the new
+crop of young fry with as little concern as his older relations
+had shown in trying to swallow him. So far he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+seemed to be one of the few who are foreordained to eat
+and not be eaten, though it was more than likely that in
+the end he, too, would die a violent death.</p>
+
+<p>When he was about a year and a half old he noticed
+that all the larger trout in the stream were gathering in
+places where the water was shallow, the bottom pebbly,
+and the current rapid; and that they acted as if they
+thought they had very important business on hand. He
+wanted to do as the others did, and so it happened that
+he went back again to the gravelly shallow where the air-bubbles
+had first found him. By this time he was about
+as large as your finger, or possibly a trifle larger, and he
+had all the bumptiousness of youth and was somewhat
+given to pushing himself in where he wasn't wanted.</p>
+
+<p>The male trout were the first to arrive, and they
+promptly set to work to prepare nests for their mates,
+who were expected a little later. It was a simple process.
+All they did was to shove the gravel aside with their
+noses and fins and tails, and then fan the sediment away
+until they had made nice, clean little hollows in the bed
+of the stream; but there was a good deal of excitement
+and jealousy over it, and every little while they had to
+stop and have a scrap. The biggest and strongest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+always wanted the best places, and if they happened to
+take a fancy for a location occupied by a smaller and
+weaker fish, they drove him out without ceremony and
+took possession by right of the conqueror. For the most
+part their fighting seemed rather tame, for they did little
+more than butt each other in the ribs with their noses,
+but once in a while they really got their dander up and
+bit quite savagely. And when the lady trout came to
+inspect the nests that had been prepared for them, then
+times were livelier than ever, and the jealousy and rivalry
+ran very high, indeed.</p>
+
+<p>Of course our Trout was too young to bear a very
+prominent part in these proceedings, but he and some
+companions of about his own age skirmished around the
+edges of the nesting grounds, and seemed to take a wicked
+delight in teasing the old males and running away just in
+time to escape punishment. And when the nests began
+to be put to practical use, the yearlings were very much
+in evidence. Strictly fresh eggs are as good eating down
+under the water as they are on land, and, partly on this
+account, and partly because direct sunshine is considered
+very injurious to them, the mothers always covered them
+with gravel as quickly as possible. But in spite of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+best of care the current was constantly catching some of
+them and sweeping them away, and our young friend
+would creep up as near as he dared, and whenever one of
+the yellow-brown balls came his way he would gobble it
+down with as little remorse as he had felt for his first
+larva. Now and then an irate father would turn upon
+him fiercely and chase him off, but in a few minutes he
+would be back again, watching for eggs as eagerly as ever.
+Once, indeed, he had a rather close call, for the biggest
+old male in all the stream came after him with mouth
+open as if he would swallow him whole, as he could very
+easily have done. Our friend was almost caught when
+the big fellow happened to glance back and saw another
+trout coming to visit his wife, and promptly abandoned
+the chase and went home to see about it.</p>
+
+<p>A year later our Trout went again to the gravelly
+shallow, and this time, being six inches long and about
+thirty months old, he decided to make a nest of his own.
+He did so, and had just induced a most beautiful young
+fish of the other sex to come and examine it, with a view
+to matrimony, when that same big bully appeared on the
+scene, promptly turned him out of house and home, and
+began courting the beautiful young creature himself. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+was very exasperating, not to say humiliating, but it was
+the sort of thing that one must expect when one is only a
+two-year-old.</p>
+
+<p>The next year he had better luck. As another summer
+passed away, and the cooler weather came on, he arrayed
+himself in his wedding finery, and it almost seemed as if
+he had stolen some of the colors of the swamp maples, in
+their gay fall dress, and was using them to deck himself
+out and make a brave display. In later years he was
+larger and heavier, but I don't think he was ever much
+handsomer than he was in that fourth autumn of his life.
+His back was a dark, dusky, olive-green, with mottlings
+that were still darker and duskier. His sides were lighter&mdash;in
+some places almost golden yellow; and scattered
+irregularly over them were the small, bright carmine spots
+that gave him one of his <i>aliases</i>, the "Speckled Trout."
+Beneath he was usually of a pale cream color, but now that
+he had put on his best clothes his vest was bright orange,
+and some of his fins were variegated with red and white,
+while others were a fiery yellow. He was covered all over
+with a suit of armor made of thousands and thousands of
+tiny scales, so small and fine that the eye could hardly
+separate them, and from the bony shoulder-girdle just behind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+his gills a raised line, dark and slightly waving, ran
+back to his tail, like the sheer-line of a ship. There were
+other fishes that were more slender and more finely modelled
+than he, and possibly more graceful, but in him
+there was something besides beauty&mdash;something that told
+of power and speed and doggedness. He was like a
+man-o'-war dressed out in all her bunting for some great
+gala occasion, but still showing her grim, heavy outlines
+beneath her decorations. His broad mouth opened clear
+back under his eyes, and was armed with rows of backward-pointing
+teeth, so sharp and strong that when they
+once fastened themselves upon a smaller fish they never
+let him go again. The only way out from between those
+jaws was down his throat. His eyes were large and
+bright, and were set well apart; and the bulge of his
+forehead between them hinted at more brains than are
+allotted to some of the people of the stream. Altogether,
+he was a most gallant and knightly little fish,
+and it would certainly have been a pity if he hadn't
+found a mate.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 286px;">
+<img src="images/gs004.jpg" width="286" height="450" alt="Nesting Grounds." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Nesting Grounds.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And now he started the third time for the gravelly
+shallow, and travelled as he had never travelled before in
+all his life. Streams are made to swim against&mdash;every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+brook trout knows that&mdash;and the faster they run, the
+greater is the joy of breasting them. The higher the
+water-fall, the prouder do you feel when you find you can
+leap it. And our friend was in a mood for swimming,
+and for swimming with all his might. Never had he felt
+so strong and vigorous and so full of life and energy, and
+he made his fins and his tail go like the oars of a racing-shell.
+Now he was working up the swift current of a
+long rapid like a bird in the teeth of the wind. Now he
+was gathering all his strength for the great leap to the
+top of the water-fall. And now, perhaps, he rested for a
+little while in a quiet pool, and presently went hurrying
+on again, diving under logs and fallen trees, swinging
+round the curves, darting up the still places where the
+water lay a-dreaming, and wriggling over shallow bars
+where it was not half deep enough to cover him; until at
+last he reached the old familiar place where so many generations
+of brook trout had first seen the light of day
+and felt the cold touch of the snow-water.</p>
+
+<p>As before, he and the other males arrived at the nesting
+grounds some days in advance of their mates, and spent
+the intervening time in scooping hollows in the gravel
+and quarrelling among themselves. Two or three times<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+he was driven from a choice location by someone who
+was bigger than he, but he always managed in some way
+to regain it, or else stole another from a smaller fish;
+and when the ladies finally appeared he had a fine large
+nest in a pleasant situation a little apart from those of
+his rivals. But for some reason the first candidates who
+came to look at it declined to stay. Perhaps they were
+not quite ready to settle down, or perhaps they were
+merely disposed to insist on the feminine privilege of
+changing their minds. But finally there came one who
+seemed to be quite satisfied, and with whom the Trout
+himself had every reason to be pleased.</p>
+
+<p>She was not a native of the stream, but of one of the
+hatcheries of the Michigan Fish Commission; and while
+he was lying in the gravel she was one of a vast company
+inhabiting a number of black wooden troughs that stood
+in a large, pleasant room filled with the sound of running
+water. Here there were no yearlings nor musk-rats nor
+saw-bill ducks looking for fresh eggs, nor any dragons
+nor star-gazers lying in wait for the young fry. Instead
+there were nice, kind men, who kept the hatching troughs
+clean and the water at the right temperature, and who
+gently stirred up the troutlets with a long goose-feather<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+whenever too many of them crowded together in one
+corner, trying to get away from the hateful light. Under
+this sort of treatment most of the thirty million babies
+in the hatchery lived and thrived. Only a few thousands
+of them were brook trout, but among those thousands
+one of the smartest and most precocious was the one in
+whom we are just now most interested. She was always
+first into the dark corners, as long as dark corners seemed
+desirable; and later, when they began to come up into the
+light and partake of the pulverized beef-liver which their
+attendants offered them, there was no better swimmer or
+more voracious feeder than she. All this was especially
+fortunate because there was a very hard and trying experience
+before her&mdash;one in which she would have need
+of all her strength and vitality, and in which her chances
+of life would be very small, indeed. It came with planting
+time, when she and a host of her companions were
+whisked through a rubber tube and deposited in a big
+can made of galvanized iron, in which they were borne
+away to the trout stream. The journey was a long one,
+they were pretty badly cramped for room, and before
+they reached their destination the supply of oxygen in
+the water became exhausted. The baby trout began to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+think they had blown out the gas, and they all crowded
+to the surface, where, if anywhere, the minute bubbles
+that keep one alive are to be found. They gulped down
+great mouthfuls of water and forced it out through their
+gills as fast as ever they could, but, somehow, all the life
+seemed to be gone out of it, and it did them no good
+whatever. Pretty soon a few turned over on their backs
+and died, and every last one of them would have suffocated
+if the man who had charge of the party hadn't noticed
+what was going on and come to the rescue. Picking
+up a dipperful of water and troutlets, and holding it
+high in the air, he poured it back into the can with much
+dashing and splashing. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny
+bubbles were caught in the rush and carried down to the
+bottom, and so the oxygen came back again to the tired
+gills, and the danger was over.</p>
+
+<p>The emigrants reached the trout stream at last, and
+one would have supposed that their troubles were ended.
+In reality the chapter of trials and tribulations had only
+just begun, for the same fishes and frogs and lizards that
+had so persecuted our friend and his brothers and sisters
+were on hand to welcome the new arrivals, and very few
+escaped. And so, in spite of its quiet beginnings in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+peaceful surroundings of the hatchery, this young lady
+trout's life proved quite as exciting and adventurous as
+our friend's, and it is possible that the good care which
+she received during her early infancy really served to
+make things all the harder for her when she came to be
+thrown entirely on her own resources. The mere change
+in the temperature of the water when she was turned out
+of the can was quite a shock to her nervous system; and,
+whereas most trout are somewhat acquainted with the
+dangers and hardships of the stream, almost from the
+time they rip their shells open, she did not even know
+that there was such a place until she was set down in it
+and told to shift for herself.</p>
+
+<p>However, by dint of strength, speed, agility, and good
+judgment in selecting hiding-places&mdash;and also, in all
+probability, by a run of remarkably good luck&mdash;she
+made her way unharmed through all the perils of babyhood
+and early youth, and now she was one of the most
+beautiful little three-year-old pirates that ever swooped
+down upon a helpless victim.</p>
+
+<p>As she and our friend swam side by side, her nose and
+the end of her tail were exactly even with his. Her
+colors were the same that he had worn before he put on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+his wedding garments, and if you had seen them together
+in the early summer I don't believe you could ever have
+told them apart. They were a well-matched pair, more
+evenly mated, probably, than is usual in fish marriages.</p>
+
+<p>But they were not to be allowed to set up housekeeping
+together without fighting for the privilege. Hardly
+had she finished inspecting the nest, and made up her
+mind that it would answer, and that he was, on the
+whole, quite eligible as a husband, when a third trout
+appeared and attempted to do as the big bully had done
+the year before. This time, however, our young friend's
+blood was up, and, though the enemy was considerably
+larger than he, he was ready to strike for his altars and
+his fires. He made a quick rush, like a torpedo-boat
+attacking a man-of-war, and hit the intruder amidships,
+ramming him with all his might. Then the enemy
+made as sudden a turn, and gave our Trout a poke in
+the ribs, and for a few minutes they dodged back and
+forth, and round and round, and over and under each
+other, each getting in a punch whenever he had a
+chance. So far it seemed only a trial of strength and
+speed and dexterity, and if our Trout was not quite as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+large and powerful as the other, yet he proved himself
+the quicker and the more agile and lively. But before
+it was over he did more than that, for, suddenly ranging
+up on the enemy's starboard quarter, he opened his
+mouth, and the sharp teeth of his lower jaw tore a row
+of bright scales from his adversary's side, and left a long,
+deep gash behind. That settled it. The big fellow lit
+out as fast as he could go, and our Trout was left in undisputed
+possession.</p>
+
+<p>The nesting season cannot last forever, and by and by,
+when the days were very short and the nights were
+very long, when the stars were bright, and when each
+sunrise found the hoar-frost lying thick and heavy on
+the dead and fallen leaves, the last trout went in search
+of better feeding grounds, and again the gravelly
+shallow seemed deserted. But it was only seeming.
+There were no eggs in sight&mdash;the frogs, the rats, the
+ducks, and the yearlings had taken care of that, and I
+am very much afraid that our friend may have eaten a
+few himself, on the sly, when his wife wasn't looking&mdash;but
+hidden away among the pebbles there were thousands,
+and the old, old miracle was being re-enacted, and
+multitudes of little live creatures were getting ready for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+the time when something should tell them to tear their
+shells open and come out into the world.</p>
+
+<p>One of the Trout's most remarkable adventures, and
+the one which probably taught him more than any other,
+came during the hot weather of the following summer.
+The stream had grown rather too warm for comfort, and
+lately he had got into the habit of frequenting certain
+deep, quiet pools where icy springs bubbled out of the
+banks and imparted a very grateful coolness to the slow
+current. It was delightful to spend a long July afternoon
+in the wash below one of these fountains, having a
+lazy, pleasant time, and enjoying the touch of the cold
+water as it went sliding along his body from nose
+to tail. One sunshiny day, as he lay in his favorite
+spring-hole, thinking about nothing in particular, and
+just working his fins enough to keep from drifting down
+stream, a fly lit on the surface just over his head&mdash;a
+bright, gayly colored fly of a species which was entirely
+new to him, but which looked as if it must be very
+finely flavored. As it happened, there had been several
+days of very warm, sultry weather, and even the fish
+had grown sullen and lazy, but this afternoon the wind
+had whipped around to the north, straight off Lake Superior,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+and all the animals in the Great Tahquamenon
+Swamp felt as if they had been made over new. How
+the brook trout could have known of it so quickly, down
+under the water, is a mystery; but our friend seemed
+to wake up all of a sudden, and to realize that he hadn't
+been eating as much as usual, and that he was hungry.
+He made a dash at the fly and seized it, but he had no
+sooner got it between his lips than he spat it out again.
+There was something wrong with it. Instead of being
+soft and juicy and luscious, as all flies ought to be, it
+was stiff, and dry, and hard, and it had a long, crooked
+stinger that was different from anything belonging to
+any other fly that he had ever tasted. It disappeared as
+suddenly as it had come, and the Trout sank back to the
+bottom of the pool.</p>
+
+<p>But presently three more flies came down together,
+and lit in a row, one behind another. They were different
+from the first, and he decided to try again. He
+chose the foremost of the three, and found it quite as ill-tasting
+as the other had been; but this time he didn't
+spit it out, for the stinger was a little too quick for him,
+and before he could let go it was fast in his lip. For the
+next few minutes he tore around the pool as if he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+crazy, frightening some of the smaller fishes almost out
+of their wits, and sending them rushing up-stream in a
+panic. He himself had more than once been badly
+scared by seeing other trout do just what he was doing,
+but he had never realized what it all meant. Now he
+understood.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing he did was to go shooting along the
+surface for several feet, throwing his head from side to
+side as he went, and doing his best to shake that horrible
+fly out of his mouth. But it wouldn't shake, so he tried
+jumping out of the water and striking at the line with
+his tail. That wasn't any better, and next he rushed off
+up the stream as hard as he could go. But the line kept
+pulling him round to the left with gentle but irresistible
+force, and before he knew it he was back in the pool
+again. Wherever he went, and whatever he did, it was
+always pulling, pulling, pulling&mdash;not hard enough to
+tear the hook away, but just enough to keep him from
+getting an inch of slack. If there had been any chance
+to jerk he would probably have got loose in short order.
+He rushed around the pool so hard that he soon grew
+weary, and presently he sank to the bottom, hoping to
+lie still for a few minutes, and rest, and perhaps think of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+some new way of escape. But even there that steady
+tugging never ceased. It seemed as if it would pull his
+jaw out of his head if he didn't yield, and before long he
+let himself be drawn up again to the surface. Once he
+was so close to the shore that the angler made a thrust
+at him with the landing-net, and just grazed his side.
+It frightened him worse than ever, and he raced away
+again so fast that the reel sang, and the line swished
+through the water like a knife.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 292px;">
+<img src="images/gs005.jpg" width="292" height="450" alt="&quot;He tried jumping out of the water.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;He tried jumping out of the water.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The other two flies were trailing behind, and the short
+line that held them was constantly catching on his fins
+and twisting itself around his tail in a way that annoyed
+him greatly. He almost thought he could get away if
+they were not there to hinder him. And yet, as it finally
+turned out, it was one of those flies that saved his life.
+He was coming slowly back from that last unsuccessful
+rush for liberty, fighting for every inch, and only yielding
+to a strength a thousand times greater than his own,
+when the trailer caught on a sunken log and held fast.
+Instantly the strain on his mouth relaxed. The angler
+was no longer pulling on him, but on the log. He could
+jerk now, and he immediately began to twitch his head
+this way and that, backward and forward, right and left,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+tearing the hole in his lip a little larger at every yank,
+until the hook came away and he was free.</p>
+
+<p>It was a painful experience, and he carried the scar as
+long as he lived, but the lesson he learned was worth all
+it cost. I won't say that he never touched bait again,
+but he was much more cautious, and no other artificial
+fly ever stung him as badly as that one.</p>
+
+<p>The years went by, and the Trout increased in size
+and strength and wisdom, as a trout should. One after
+another his rivals went away to the happy hunting-grounds,
+most of them losing their lives because they
+could not resist the temptation to taste a made-up fly, or
+to swallow a luscious angle-worm festooned on a dainty
+little steel hook; and the number of fish who dared dispute
+his right to do whatever he pleased grew beautifully
+less. And at last there was only one trout left in all the
+stream who was larger and stronger than he. That was
+the same big fellow who had come so near swallowing
+him on the occasion of his first visit to the nesting-grounds;
+and the way the fierce, solemn old brute finally
+departed this life deserves a paragraph all to itself.</p>
+
+<p>It happened one morning in early spring, just after the
+ice had gone out. Our friend was still a trifle sleepy and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+lazy after the long, dull winter, though he had an eye
+open, as always, for anything particularly good to eat. I
+doubt if he would have jumped at any kind of a fly, for
+it was not the right time of year for flies, and he did not
+believe in eating them out of season; but almost anything
+else was welcome. He was faring very well that
+morning, as it chanced, for the stream was running high,
+and many a delicious grub and earthworm had been
+swept into it by the melting snow. And presently, what
+should come drifting down with the current but a poor
+little field-mouse, struggling desperately in a vain effort
+to swim back to the shore. Once before our friend had
+swallowed a mouse whole, just as you would take an
+oyster from the half-shell, and he knew that they were
+very nice, indeed. He made a rush for the unlucky little
+animal, and in another second he would have had him;
+but just then the big bully came swaggering up with an
+air which seemed to say: "That's my meat. You get
+out of this!"</p>
+
+<p>Our friend obeyed, the big fellow gave a leap and seized
+the mouse, and then&mdash;his time had come. He fought
+bravely, but he was fairly hooked, and in a few minutes
+he lay out on the bank, gasping for breath, flopping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+wildly about, and fouling his beautiful sides with sand
+and dirt. If he had understood English he might have
+overheard an argument which immediately took place
+between the angler and a girl, and which began something
+like this:</p>
+
+<p>"There!" in a triumphant tone; "who says mice
+aren't good bait? This is the biggest trout that's been
+caught in this stream for years."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, George, don't kill him! He's so pretty! Put
+him back in the water."</p>
+
+<p>"Put him back in the water? Well, I should say
+not! What do you take me for?"</p>
+
+<p>Evidently the girl took him for one who could be easily
+influenced by the right person, for she kept up the argument,
+and in the end she won her case. The trout was
+tossed back into the stream, where he gave himself a
+shake or two, to get rid of the sand, and then swam
+away, apparently as well as ever. But girls don't always
+know what is good for trout. It would really have been
+kinder if the angler had hit him over the head with the
+butt of his fishing-rod, and then carried him home and
+put him in the frying-pan. In his struggles a part of the
+mucus had been rubbed from his body, and that always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+means trouble for a fish. A few days later our friend
+met him again, and noticed that a curious growth had
+appeared on his back and sides&mdash;a growth which bore a
+faint resemblance to the bloom on a peach, and which
+had taken the exact shape of the prints of the angler's
+fingers. The fungus had got him. He was dying, slowly
+but surely, and within a week he turned over on his back
+and drifted away down the stream. A black bear found
+him whirling round and round in a little eddy under the
+bank, and that was the end of him.</p>
+
+<p>And so our friend became the King of the Trout
+Stream.</p>
+
+<p>You are not to suppose, however, that he paid very
+much attention to his subjects, or that he was particularly
+fond of having them about him and giving them orders.
+On the contrary, he had become very hermit-like in his
+habits. In his youth he had been fond of society, and he
+and his companions had often roamed the stream in little
+schools and bands, but of late years his tastes seemed to
+have undergone a change, and he kept to himself and
+lurked in the shady, sunless places till his skin grew
+darker and darker, and he more and more resembled the
+shadows in which he lived. His great delight was to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+watch from the depths of some cave-like hollow under an
+overhanging bank until a star-gazer, or a herring, or a
+minnow, or some other baby-eater came in sight, and
+then to rush out and swallow him head first. He took
+ample revenge on all those pesky little fishes for all that
+they had done and tried to do to him and his brethren
+in the early days. The truth is that every brook trout
+is an Ishmaelite. The hand of every creature is against
+him, from that of the dragon-fly larva to that of the man
+with the latest invention in the way of patent fishing-tackle.
+It is no wonder if he turns the tables on his
+enemies whenever he has a chance, or even if he sometimes
+goes so far, in his general ruthlessness, as to eat his
+own offspring.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, in spite of our friend's moroseness and solitary
+habits, there were certain times and seasons when he did
+come more or less in contact with his inferiors. In late
+spring and early summer he liked to sport for a while in
+the swift rapids&mdash;perhaps to stretch his muscles after
+the dull, quiet life of the winter-time, or possibly to
+free himself from certain little insects which sometimes
+fastened themselves to his body, and which, for lack of
+hands, it was rather difficult to get rid of. Here he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+often met some of his subjects, and later, when the hot
+weather came on, they all went to the spring-holes which
+formed their summer resorts. And at such times he
+never hesitated to take advantage of his superior size and
+strength. He always picked out the coolest and most
+comfortable places in the pools, and helped himself to the
+choicest morsels of food; and the others took what was
+left, without question. And when the summer was gone,
+and the water grew cold and invigorating, and once more
+he put on his wedding-garment and hurried away to the
+gravelly shallows, how different was his conduct from
+what it had been when he was a yearling! Then he was
+only a hanger-on; now he selected his nest and his mate
+to suit himself; and nobody ever dared to interfere.
+Whether he ever again chose that beautiful little fish
+from the hatchery, whom he had been so fond of when he
+was a three-year-old, is a question which I would rather
+not try to answer. Among all the vicissitudes, dangers,
+and rivalries of life in a trout stream, a permanent marriage
+seems to be almost an impossibility; and I fear
+that the affections of a fish are not remarkable for depth
+or constancy.</p>
+
+<p>The Trout had altered in many ways besides his relations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+to his fellows. The curving lines of his body were
+not quite as graceful as they had once been, and sometimes
+he wore a rather lean and dilapidated look, especially
+in the six months from November to May. His
+tail was not as handsomely forked as when he was young,
+but was nearly square across the end, and was beginning
+to be a little frayed at the corners. His lower jaw had
+grown out beyond the upper, and its extremity was
+turned up in a wicked-looking hook which was almost a
+disfigurement, but which he often found very useful in
+hustling a younger trout out of the way. Even his complexion
+had grown darker, as we have already seen. Altogether
+he was less prepossessing than of old, but of
+a much more formidable appearance, and the very look
+of him was enough to scare a minnow out of a year's
+growth.</p>
+
+<p>But, notwithstanding all changes, the two great interests
+of his every-day life continued to be just what they
+had always been&mdash;namely, to get enough to eat, and to
+keep out of the way of his enemies; for enemies he still
+had, and would have as long as he lived. The fly-fishermen,
+with their feather-weight rods and their scientific
+tackle, came every spring and summer; and only the wisdom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+born of experience kept him from falling into their
+hands. Several times he met with an otter, and had to
+run for his life. Once, a black bear, fishing for suckers,
+came near catching a brook trout. And perhaps the
+very closest of all his close calls came one day when some
+river-drivers exploded a stick of dynamite in the water to
+break up a log-jam. The trout was some distance up
+the stream at the time, but the concussion stunned him
+so that he floated at the surface, wrong side up, for
+several minutes before his senses gradually came back.
+That is a fish's way of fainting.</p>
+
+<p>His luck stayed by him, however, and none of these
+things ever did him any serious harm. His reign proved
+a long one, and as the years went by he came to exercise
+a more and more autocratic sway over the smaller fry.
+For in spite of his age he was still growing. A trout
+has an advantage over a land animal in this, that he is
+not obliged to use any of his food as fuel for keeping
+himself warm. He can't keep warm anyhow&mdash;not as
+long as he lives in the water&mdash;and so he doesn't try, but
+devotes everything he eats to enlarging his body and repairing
+wear and tear. If nothing happens to put a
+stop to the process, he seems to be able to keep it up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+almost indefinitely. But the size of the stream in which
+he lives appears to limit him to a certain extent. Probably
+the largest trout stream in the world is the Nepigon,
+and they say that seventeen-pounders were caught there
+in the early days. Our friend's native river was a rather
+small one. In the course of time, however, he attained
+a weight of very nearly three pounds, and I doubt if he
+would ever have been much larger. Perhaps it was fitting
+that his reign should end there.</p>
+
+<p>But it seems a great pity that it could not have
+ended in a more imposing manner. The last act of the
+drama was so inglorious that I am almost ashamed to
+tell it. He was the King of the Trout Stream; over
+and over he had run Fate's gauntlet, and escaped with his
+body unharmed and his wits sharper than ever; he knew
+the wiles of the fly-fishermen better than any other trout
+in the river; and yet, alas! he fell a victim to a little
+Indian boy with a piece of edging for a rod, coarse string
+for a line, and salt pork for bait.</p>
+
+<p>I'm sure it wouldn't have happened if he had stayed at
+home; but one spring he took it into his head to go
+on an exploring expedition out into Lake Superior. I
+understand that his cousins in the streams of eastern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+Canada sometimes visit salt water in somewhat the same
+manner, and that they thereupon lose the bright trimmings
+of their coats and become a plain silver-gray.
+Superior did not affect our friend in that way, but something
+worse happened to him&mdash;he lost his common-sense.
+Perhaps his interest in his new surroundings was so great
+that he forgot the lessons of wisdom and experience
+which it had cost him so much to learn.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of his wanderings he came to where a
+school of perch were loafing in the shadow of a wharf;
+and just as he pushed his way in among them, that little
+white piece of fat pork sank slowly down through the
+green water. It was something new to the trout; he
+didn't quite know what to make of it. But the perch
+seemed to think it was good, and they would be sure to
+eat it if he didn't; and so, although the string was in
+plain sight and ought to have been a sufficient warning,
+he exercised his royal prerogative, shouldered those yellow-barred
+plebeians out of the way, and took the tid-bit
+for himself. It is too humiliating; let us draw a veil
+over that closing scene.</p>
+
+<p>The King of the Trout Stream had gone the way of
+his fathers, and another reigned in his stead.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE STRENUOUS LIFE OF A CANADA LYNX</h2>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<div class='cap'>THE Canada lynx came down the runway that follows
+the high bank along the northern shore of the Glimmerglass,
+his keen, silvery eyes watching the woods for foe or
+prey, and his big feet padding softly on the dead leaves.
+He was old, was the Canada lynx, and he had grown very
+tall and gaunt, but this afternoon his years sat lightly on
+him. And in a moment more they had vanished entirely,
+and he was as young as ever he was in his life, for,
+as he stepped cautiously around a little spruce, he came
+upon another lynx, nearly as tall as he, and quite as
+handsome in her early winter coat. They both stopped
+short and stared. And no wonder. Each of them was
+decidedly worth looking at, especially if the one who
+did the looking happened to be another lynx of the
+opposite sex.</div>
+
+<p>He was some twenty-odd inches in height and about
+three and a half feet in length, and had a most villanous
+cast of countenance, a very wicked-looking set of teeth,
+and claws that were two inches long and so heavy and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+strong and sharp that you could sometimes hear them
+crunch into the bark when he climbed a tree. His long
+hind legs, heavy buttocks, thick fore-limbs, and big,
+clumsy-looking paws told of a magnificent set of muscles
+pulling and sliding and hauling under his cloak.
+She was nearly as large as he, and very much like him in
+general appearance. Both of them wore long, thick fur,
+of a lustrous steel-gray color, with paler shades underneath,
+and darker trimmings along their back-bones and
+up and down their legs. Their paws were big and broad
+and furry, their tails were stubby and short, and they
+wore heavy, grizzled whiskers on the sides of their jaws
+and mustachios under their noses, while from the tips
+of their ears rose tassels of stiff, dark hairs that had an
+uncommonly jaunty effect. Altogether they looked very
+fierce and imposing and war-like&mdash;perhaps rather more
+so than was justified by their actual prowess. So it was
+not surprising that they took to each other. Perhaps he
+wasn't really quite as heroic as he appeared, but that's
+not uncommon among other lovers besides those belonging
+to the lynx tribe, and what difference did it make,
+anyhow, as long as she didn't know it?</p>
+
+<p>That winter was a hard one. The cold was intense,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+the snow was very deep, and the storms came often.
+Spruce hens and partridges were scarce, even rabbits were
+hard to find, and sometimes it seemed to the two lynxes
+as if they were the only animals left in the woods. Except
+the deer. There were always plenty of deer down
+in the cedar swamp, and their tracks were as plain as a
+lumberman's logging road. But although the lynxes
+sometimes killed and ate young fawns in the summertime,
+they seldom tasted venison in the winter. It was
+well for them that they had each other, for when one
+failed in the hunt the other sometimes succeeded, yet I
+cannot help thinking that the old male, especially, might
+perhaps have been of more use to his mate if he had not
+confined his hunting so entirely to the smaller animals.
+More than once he sat on a branch of a tree and watched
+a buck or doe go by, and his claws twitched and his eyes
+blazed, and he fairly trembled with eagerness and excitement
+as he saw the big gray creature pass, all unconscious,
+beneath his perch. Splendidly armed as he was,
+it would seem as though he must have succeeded if only
+he had jumped and risked a tussle. But he never tried
+it. I suppose he was afraid. And yet&mdash;such were the
+contradictions of his nature&mdash;one dark night he trotted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+half a mile after a shanty-boy who was going home with
+a haunch of venison over his shoulder, and was just gathering
+himself for a spring, intending to leap on him from
+behind, when another man appeared. Two against one
+was not fair, he thought, and he gave it up and beat a
+retreat without either of them seeing him. They found
+his footprints the next morning in their snow-shoe
+tracks, and wondered how far behind them he had been.
+I don't know whether it was a vein of real courage that
+nerved him up to doing such a foolhardy thing as to
+follow a man with the intention of attacking him, or
+whether it was simply a case of recklessness. The probability
+is, however, that he was hungrier than usual, and
+that the smell of the warm blood made him forget everything
+else. Anyhow, he had a pretty close call, for the
+shanty-boy had a revolver in his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>Aside from any question of heroism, I am afraid that
+he was not really as wise and discriminating as he looked.
+I have an idea that when Nature manufactured him she
+thought he did not need as much wisdom or as many wits
+as some of the other people of the woods, inasmuch as he
+was larger and stronger and better armed than most of
+them. Except possibly the bear, who was altogether too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+easy-going to molest him, there was not one of the animals
+that could thrash him, and they all knew it and let
+him alone. You can often manage very well without
+brains if only you have the necessary teeth and muscle
+and claws; and the old lynx had them, without a doubt.
+But I fear that Nature, in adapting a wild animal to his
+environment, now and then forgets to allow for the
+human element in the problem. Brains are a good thing
+to have, after all. Even to a lynx the time is pretty
+sure to come, sooner or later, when he needs them in his
+business. Your fellow-citizens of the woods may treat
+you with all due respect, but the trapper won't, and he'll
+get you if you don't watch out.</p>
+
+<p>One day he found some more snow-shoe tracks, just like
+those that the shanty-boy had left, and instead of running
+away, as he ought to have done, and as most of the
+animals would have had sense enough to do, he followed
+them up to see where they led. He wasn't particularly
+hungry that day, and there was absolutely no excuse for
+what he did. It certainly wasn't bravery that inspired
+him, for he had not the least idea of attacking anyone.
+It was simply a case of foolish curiosity. He followed
+the trail a long way, not walking directly in it, but keeping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+just a little to one side, wallowing heavily as he went,
+for a foot and a half of light, fluffy snow had fallen the
+day before, and the walking was very bad. Presently he
+caught sight of a little piece of scarlet cloth fastened to a
+stick that stood upright in a drift. It ought to have
+been another warning to him, but it only roused his curiosity
+to a still higher pitch, as the trapper knew it would.
+He sat down in the snow and considered. The thing
+didn't really look as if it were good to eat, and yet it
+might be. The only way to find out would be to go up
+to it and taste it. But, eatable or not, such a bright bit
+of color was certainly very attractive to the eye. You
+would think so yourself if you hadn't seen anything scarlet
+since last summer's wild-flowers faded. Finally, he
+got up and walked slowly toward it, and the first thing
+he knew a steel trap had him by the right foreleg.</p>
+
+<p>The way of the foolish is sometimes as hard as that
+of the transgressor. For a few minutes he was the very
+maddest cat in all the Great Tahquamenon Swamp, and he
+yelled and howled and caterwauled at the top of his voice,
+and jumped and tore around as if he was crazy. But,
+of course, that sort of thing did him no good, and after
+a while he quieted down and took things a little more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+calmly. Instead of being made fast to a tree, the trap
+was bound by a short chain to a heavy wooden clog, and
+he found that by pulling with all his might he could drag
+it at a snail's pace through the snow. So off he went on
+three legs, hauling the trap and clog by the fourth, with
+the blood oozing out around the steel jaws and leaving a
+line of bright crimson stains behind him. The strain on
+his foot hurt him cruelly, but a great fear was in his
+heart, and he knew that he must go away or die. So he
+pushed on, hour after hour, stopping now and then to
+rest for a few minutes in a thicket of cedar or hemlock,
+but soon gathering his strength for another effort. How
+he growled and snarled with rage and pain, and how his
+great eyes flamed as he looked ahead to see what was
+before him, or back along his trail to know if the trapper
+was coming!</p>
+
+<p>It was a terrible journey that he made that night, and
+the hours dragged by slow as his pace and heavy as his
+clog. He was heading toward the hollow tree by the
+Glimmerglass that he and his mate called home, but he
+had not made more than half the distance, and his
+strength was nearly gone. Half-way between midnight
+and dawn he reached the edge of a steep and narrow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+gully that lay straight across his path. The moon had
+risen some time before, and the white slopes gleamed and
+shone in the frosty light, all the whiter by contrast with
+the few bushes and trees that were scattered up and down
+the little valley. The lynx stood on the brink and
+studied the proposition before him. It would be hard,
+hard work to climb the farther side, dragging that heavy
+clog, but at least it ought to be easy going down. He
+scrambled over the edge, hauling the clog after him till it
+began to roll of its own accord. The chain slackened,
+and he leaped forward. It was good to be able to jump
+again. But he jumped too far, or tried to, and the chain
+tightened with a jerk that brought him down head-first
+in the snow. Before he could recover himself the clog
+shot past him, and the chain jerked again and sent him
+heels over head. And then cat, trap, and clog all went
+rolling over and over down the slope, and landed in a
+heap at the bottom. All the breath and the spirit were
+knocked out of him, and for a long time he could do
+nothing but lie still in the snow, trembling with weakness
+and pain, and moaning miserably. It must have
+been half an hour before he could pull himself together
+again, and then, just as he was about to begin the climb<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+up the far side of the gully, he suddenly discovered that
+he was no longer alone. Off to the left, among some
+thick bushes, he saw the lurking form of a timber-wolf.
+He looked to the right, and there was another. Behind
+him was a third, and he thought he saw several others
+still farther away, slinking from bush to bush, and gradually
+drawing nearer. Ordinarily they would hardly have
+dreamed of tackling him, and, if they had mustered up
+sufficient courage to attempt to overpower him by mere
+force of numbers, he would simply have climbed a tree
+and laughed at them. But now it was different.</p>
+
+<p>The lynx cowered down in the snow and seemed to
+shrink to half his normal size; and then, as all the horror
+and the hopelessness of it came over him, he lifted up his
+voice in such a cry of abject fear, such a wail of utter
+agony and despair, as even the Great Tahquamenon
+Swamp had very seldom heard. I suppose that he had
+killed and eaten hundreds of smaller animals in his time,
+but I doubt if any of his victims ever suffered as he did.
+Most of them were taken unawares, and were killed and
+eaten almost before they knew what was coming; but he
+had to lie still and see his enemies slowly closing in upon
+him, knowing all the time that he could not fight to any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+advantage, and that to fly was utterly impossible. But
+when the last moment arrived he must have braced up
+and given a good account of himself. At least that was
+what the trapper decided when he came a few hours later
+to look for his trap. The lynx was gone&mdash;not even a
+broken bone of him was left&mdash;but there in the trodden
+and blood-stained snow was the record of an awful
+struggle. There must have been something heroic
+about him, after all.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest of the winter his widow had to hunt alone.
+This was not such a great hardship in itself, for they
+had frequently gone out separately on their marauding
+expeditions&mdash;more often, perhaps, than they had gone
+together. But now there was never anyone to curl up
+beside her in the hollow tree and help her keep warm, or
+to share his kill with her when her own was unsuccessful.
+And when the spring should come and bring her a family
+of kittens, she would have to take on her own shoulders
+the whole burden of parental responsibility. Or, rather,
+the burden was already there, for if she did not find
+enough meat to keep herself in good health the babies
+would be weak and wizened and unpromising, with small
+chance of growing up to be a credit to her or a satisfaction<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+to themselves. So she hunted night and day, and,
+on the whole, with very good results. To tell the truth,
+I think she was rather more skilful in the chase than her
+mate had been, and this seems to be a not uncommon
+state of things in cat families. Perhaps feminine fineness
+of instinct and lightness of tread are better adapted to
+the still-hunt than the greater clumsiness and awkwardness
+of masculinity. Or, is there something deeper than
+that? Has something whispered to these savage mothers
+that on their success depends more than their own lives,
+and that it is their sacred duty to kill, kill, kill? However
+that may be, she proved herself a mighty huntress
+before the Lord. Her eye was keen, and her foot was
+sure, and she made terrible havoc among the rabbits and
+partridges.</p>
+
+<p>And yet there were times when even she was hungry
+and tired and disheartened. Once, on a clear, keen, cold
+winter night when all the great white world seemed
+frozen to death, she serenaded a land-looker who had
+made his bed in a deserted lumber-camp and was trying
+to sleep. She had eaten almost nothing for several days,
+and she knew that her strength was ebbing. That very
+evening she had fallen short in a flying leap at a rabbit,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+and had seen him dive head-first into his burrow, safe by
+the merest fraction of an inch. She had fairly screeched
+with rage and disappointment, and as the hours went by
+and she found no other game, she grew so blue and discouraged
+that she really couldn't contain herself any
+longer. Perhaps it did her good to have a cry. For
+two hours the land-looker lay in his bunk and listened
+to a wailing that made his heart fairly sink within him.
+Now it was a piercing scream, now it was a sob, and now
+it died away in a low moan, only to rise again, wilder
+and more agonized than ever. He knew without a doubt
+that it was only some kind of a cat&mdash;knew it just as well
+as he knew that his compass needle pointed north. Yet
+there had been times in his land-looking experience when
+he had been ready to swear that the needle was pointing
+south-southeast; and to-night, in spite of his certain
+knowledge that the voice he heard was that of a lynx or
+a wild-cat or cougar, he couldn't help being almost dead
+sure that it came from a woman in distress, there was in
+it such a note of human anguish and despair. Twice he
+got half-way out of bed to go to her assistance, and then
+lay down again and called himself a fool. At last he
+could stand it no longer, and taking a burning brand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+from the broken stove that stood in the centre of the
+room, he went to the door and looked out. The great
+arc-light of the moon had checkered the snow-crust with
+inky shadows, and patches of dazzling white. The cold
+air struck him like needles, and he said to himself that it
+was no wonder that either a cat or a woman should cry
+if she had to stay out in the snow on such a night. The
+moaning and wailing ceased as he opened the door, but
+now two round spots of flame shone out of a black
+shadow and stared at him unwinkingly. The lynx's
+pupils were wide open, and the golden-yellow tapeta in
+the backs of her eyeballs were glowing like incandescent
+lamps. It was no woman. No human eyes could ever
+shine like that. The land-looker threw the brand with
+all his might; an ugly snarl came from the shadow, and
+he saw a big gray animal go tearing away across the
+hard, smooth crust in a curious kind of gallop, taking
+three or four yards at a bound, coming down on all
+four feet at once, and spring forward again as if she
+was made of rubber. He shut the door and went back
+to bed.</p>
+
+<p>That was the end of the concert, and, as it turned out,
+it was also the end of the lynx's troubles, at least for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+time being. Half an hour later, as she was loping along
+in the moonlight, she thought she heard a faint sound
+from beneath her feet. She stood still to listen, and the
+next minute she was sure. During the last heavy snow-storm
+three partridges had dived into a drift for shelter
+from the wind and the cold, and such a thick, hard crust
+had formed over their heads that they had not been able
+to get out again. She resurrected them in short order
+and reinterred them after a fashion of her own, and then
+she went home to her hollow tree and slept the sleep of
+those who have done what Nature tells them to, and
+whose consciences are clear and whose stomachs full.</p>
+
+<p>That was her nearest approach to starvation. She
+never was quite so hungry again, and in the early spring
+she had a great piece of luck. Not very far from her
+hollow tree she met a buck that had been mortally
+wounded by a hunter. He had had strength enough to
+run away, and to throw his pursuer off his track, but
+there was very little fight left in him. In such a case as
+this she was quite ready to attack, and it did not take
+her long to finish him. Probably it was a merciful release,
+for he had suffered greatly in the last few days.
+Fortunately no wolves or other large animals found him,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+and he gave her meat till after the kittens had come and
+she had begun to grow well and strong again.</p>
+
+<p>The kittens were a great success&mdash;two of the finest she
+had ever had, and she had had many. But at first, of
+course, they were rather insignificant-looking&mdash;just two
+little balls of reddish-brown fur that turned over once in
+a while and mewed for their dinner. Some of the scientific
+men say that a new-born baby has no mind, but
+only a blank something that appears to be capable of
+receiving and retaining impressions, and that may in certain
+cases have tendencies. There is reason for thinking
+that the baby lynxes had tendencies. But imagine, if you
+can, what their first impressions were like. And remember
+that they were blind, and that if their ears heard
+sounds they certainly did not comprehend them. Sometimes
+they were cold and hungry and lonesome, and that
+was an impression of the wrong sort. They did not
+know what the trouble was, but something was the matter,
+that was certain, and they cried about it, like other
+babies. Then would come a great, warm, comforting
+presence, and all would be right again; and that was a
+very pleasant impression, indeed. I don't suppose they
+knew exactly what had been done to them. Probably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+they were not definitely aware that their empty stomachs
+had been filled, or that their shrinking, shivering little
+bodies were snuggled down in somebody's thick fur coat,
+or that somebody's warm red tongue was licking and
+stroking and caressing them. Much less could they have
+known how that big, strong, comforting somebody came
+to be there, or how many harmless and guiltless little
+lives had been snuffed out to give her life and to enable
+her to give it to them. But they knew that all was well
+with them, and that everything was just as it should be&mdash;and
+they took another nap.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 290px;">
+<img src="images/gs006.jpg" width="290" height="450" alt="&quot;The hole was suddenly darkened, and a round, hairy face looked in.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;The hole was suddenly darkened, and a round, hairy face looked in.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>By and by they began to look about for impressions,
+and were no longer content with lying still and taking
+only what came to them. They seemed to acquire a
+mental appetite for impressions that was almost as ravenous
+as their stomachs' appetite for milk, and their weak
+little legs were forced to lift their squat little bodies and
+carry them on exploring expeditions around the inside of
+the hollow tree, where they bumped their heads against
+the walls, and stumbled and fell down over the inequalities
+of the floor. They got a good many impressions
+during these excursions, and some of them were mental
+and some were physical. And sometimes they explored<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+their mother, and went scrambling and sprawling all over
+her, probably getting about as well acquainted with her
+as it is possible to be with a person whom one has never
+seen. For their eyes were still closed, and they must
+have known her only as a big, kind, loving, furry thing,
+that fed them, and warmed them, and licked them, and
+made them feel good, and yet was almost as vague and
+indefinite as something in a dream. But the hour came
+at last when for the first time they saw the light of day
+shining in through the hole in the side of their tree.
+And while they were looking at it&mdash;and probably blinking
+at it&mdash;a footstep sounded outside, the hole was suddenly
+darkened, and a round, hairy face looked in&mdash;a
+face with big, unwinking eyes, pointed, tufted ears, and
+a thick whisker brushed back from under its chin. Do
+you suppose they recognized their mother? I don't believe
+they did. But when she jumped in beside them,
+then they knew her, and the impression they gained that
+day was one of the most wonderful of all.</p>
+
+<p>In looks, these kittens of the woods were not so very
+different from those of the backyard, except that they
+were bigger and perhaps a little clumsier, and that their
+paws were very large, and their tails very short and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+stubby. They grew stronger as the days went on, and
+their legs did not wobble quite so much when they went
+travelling around the inside of the tree. And they
+learned to use their ears as well as their eyes. They
+knew what their mother's step meant at the entrance,
+and they liked to hear her purr.</p>
+
+<p>Other sounds there were which they did not understand
+so well, and to most of which they gave little heed&mdash;the
+scream of the rabbit when the big gray cat leaps
+on him from behind a bush; the scolding of the red
+squirrel, disturbed and angry at the sight, and fearful
+that he may be the next victim; the bark of the fox; the
+rasping of the porcupine's teeth; and oftenest of all the
+pleasant rustling and whispering of the trees, for by this
+time the sun and the south wind had come back and done
+their work, and the voice of the leaves was heard in the
+land. All these noises of the woods, and many others
+besides, came to them from outside the walls of the tree,
+from a vast, mysterious region of which as yet they knew
+nothing except that their mother often went there. She
+was beginning to think that they were big enough and
+old enough to learn something more about it, and so one
+day she led them out of the hole, and they saw the sunshine,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+and the blue of the sky, and the green of the trees,
+and the whiteness of the sailing clouds, and the beauty of
+the Glimmerglass. But I don't think they appreciated
+the wonder and the glory of it all, or paid as much attention
+to it as they ought. They were too much interested
+in making their legs work properly, for their knees
+were still rather weak, and were apt to give out all of a
+sudden, and to let a fellow sit down when he didn't want
+to. And the dry leaves and little sticks kept sliding
+around under one's feet so that one never knew what was
+going to happen next. It was very different from the hollow
+tree, and they were glad when their mother picked
+them up one at a time by the back of the neck, carried
+them home, gave them their supper, and told them to lie
+still and take a nap while she went after another rabbit.</p>
+
+<p>But they had really done very well, considering that it
+was their first day out. One of them in particular was
+very smart and precocious, and she had taken much
+pleasure in watching the independent way in which he
+went staggering about, looking for impressions. And
+the other was not far behind him. Her long hours of
+still-hunting had brought their rich reward, and her
+babies were all that she could ask.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She was in the habit of occasionally bringing something
+home for them to play with&mdash;a wood-mouse, perhaps,
+or a squirrel, or a partridge, or even a larger animal;
+and they played with it with a vengeance, shaking
+and worrying it, and spitting and growling and snarling
+over it in the most approved fashion. And you should
+have seen them the first time they saw their mother catch
+a rabbit. They did not try to help her, for she had told
+them not to, but they watched her as if it was a matter
+of life and death&mdash;as, indeed, it was, but not to them.
+The rabbit was nibbling some tender young sprouts.
+The old lynx crept up behind him very quietly and
+stealthily, and the kittens' eyes stuck out farther and
+farther as they saw her gradually work up within leaping
+distance. They nearly jumped out of their skins with
+excitement when at last she gave a bound and landed
+with both forepaws on the middle of his back. And
+when the rabbit screamed out in his fright and pain, they
+could not contain themselves any longer, but rushed
+in and helped finish him. They seemed to understand
+the game as perfectly as if they had been practising it
+for years. I suppose that was where their tendencies
+came in.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A few days later they had another experience&mdash;or at
+least one of them did. Their mother happened to see
+two little wood-mice run under a small, half-decayed log,
+and she put her forefeet against it and rolled it half-way
+over; and then, while she held it there, the larger Kitten&mdash;the
+one who had made the better record the day they
+first left the den&mdash;thrust his paw under and grabbed one
+of them. The other mouse got away, but I don't think
+the Kitten cared very much. He had made his first kill,
+and that was glory enough for one day.</p>
+
+<p>From wood-mice the kittens progressed to chipmunks,
+and from them to larger game. With use and exercise
+their soft baby muscles grew hard and strong, and it was
+not long before they were able to follow the old lynx
+almost anywhere, to the tops of the tallest trees, over
+the roughest ground, and through the densest thickets.
+And they learned other things besides how to walk and
+climb and hunt. Their mother was a good teacher and
+a rather rigid disciplinarian, and very early in life they
+were taught that they must obey promptly and without
+question, and that on certain occasions it was absolutely
+necessary to keep perfectly still and not make the slightest
+sound. For instance, there was the time when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+whole family lay sprawled out on a limb of a tree, fifteen
+or twenty feet up from the ground, and watched the
+land-looker go by with his half-axe over his shoulder, his
+compass in his hand, and a note-book sticking out of his
+pocket. They were so motionless, and the grayish color
+of their fur matched so well with the bark of the tree,
+that he never saw them, although for a moment they
+were right over his head, and could have leaped to his
+shoulders as easily as not.</p>
+
+<p>In short, the kittens were learning to take care of
+themselves, and it was well that they were, for one day
+their mother was taken from them in a strange, sad way,
+and there was nothing they could do but cry, and try to
+follow her, and at last see her pass out of sight, still
+looking back and calling to them pitifully. It was the
+river that carried her off, and it was a floating saw-log
+that she rode upon, an unwilling passenger. The trouble
+began with a steel trap, just as it did in their father's
+case. Traps are not nearly as much to be feared in summer
+or early fall as in winter, for the simple reason that
+one's fur is not as valuable in warm weather as in cold.
+The lynx's, for instance, was considerably shorter and
+thinner than it had been in the preceding December,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+when she and her mate first met, and it had taken on a
+reddish tinge, as if the steel had begun to rust a trifle.
+But the killing machines are to be found occasionally
+at all seasons of the year, and somebody had set this one
+down by the edge of the water&mdash;not the Glimmerglass,
+but a branch of the Tahquamenon River&mdash;and had
+chained it to a log that had been hung up in last spring's
+drive. When she first felt its grip on her leg she yelled
+and tore around just as her mate had done, while the kittens
+looked on in wonder and amazement. They had seen
+their mother in many moods, but never in one like this.
+But by and by she grew weary, and a little later it began
+to rain. She was soon soaking wet, and as the hours
+dragged on every ounce of courage and gumption seemed
+to ooze out of her. If the trapper had come then he
+would have found her very meek and limp. Possibly
+she would have been ready to fight him for her children's
+sakes, but nothing else could have nerved her to it. But
+she was not put to any such test; the trapper did not
+come.</p>
+
+<p>It rained very hard, and it rained very long. In fact
+it had been raining most of the time for two or three
+days before the lynx found the trap, and in a few more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+hours the Great Tahquamenon Swamp was as full of
+water as a soaked sponge, and the river was rising
+rapidly. The lynx was soon lying in a puddle, and to
+get out of it she climbed upon the log and stretched herself
+out on the wet, brown bark. Still the river rose,
+and by and by the log began to stir in its bed, as if it
+were thinking of renewing its voyage. At last, when she
+had been there nearly twenty-four hours, and was faint
+with hunger, as well as cold and wet, it quietly swung
+out into the current and drifted away down the stream.
+She was an excellent swimmer, and she promptly jumped
+overboard and tried to reach the shore, but of course the
+chain put a stop to that. Weakened by fasting, and
+borne down by the weight of the trap, she came very
+near drowning before she could scramble up again over
+the end of the log and seat herself amidships.</p>
+
+<p>The kittens were foraging among the bushes, but she
+called to them in a tone which told them plainly enough
+that some new trouble had befallen her, and they hurried
+down to the water's edge, and stood there, mewing
+piteously. She implored them to follow her, and after
+much persuasion the bigger and bolder of the two
+plunged bravely in. But he didn't get very far. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+was very cold and very wet, and he wasn't used to swimming.
+Besides, the water got into his nose and made
+him sneeze, which distracted his attention so that for a
+moment he forgot all about his mother, and just turned
+around and hustled back to the shore as fast as he could
+go. After that he, contented himself with following
+along the bank and keeping as near her as he could.
+Once the log drifted in so close that she thought she
+could jump ashore, and the Kitten watched eagerly as she
+gathered herself for the spring. But the chain was too
+short, and she fell into the water. Her forepaw just
+grazed the grass-tuft where the Kitten was standing, and
+for an instant she felt the blades slipping between her
+toes; but the next moment she was swimming for the log
+again, and the Kitten was mewing his sympathy at the
+top of his voice.</p>
+
+<p>They journeyed on for nearly an hour longer, she on
+her prison-ship, and he on land; and then, before either
+of them knew just what had happened, the little tributary
+had emptied itself into the main stream of the Tahquamenon,
+and they suddenly realized that they were
+much farther apart than they had been at any time before.
+This new river was several times as broad as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+one on which the voyage had begun, and the wind was
+steadily carrying her away from the shore, while the current
+bore her resistlessly on in its long, slow voyage to
+Lake Superior. She was still calling to him, but her
+voice was growing fainter and fainter in the distance,
+and so, at last, she passed out of his sight and hearing
+forever.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs007.jpg" width="500" height="324" alt="&quot;He was a very presentable young lynx.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;He was a very presentable young lynx.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And then, for the first time, he missed his brother.
+The other kitten had always been a trifle the slower of
+the two, and in some way he had dropped behind. Our
+friend was alone in the world.</p>
+
+<p>But the same river that had carried his mother away
+brought him a little comfort in his desolation, for down
+by the water's edge, cast up on the sand by a circling
+eddy, he found a dead sucker. He ate it with relish, and
+felt better in spite of himself. It made a very large
+meal for a lynx of his size, and by the time he had finished
+it he began to be drowsy, so he picked out the
+driest spot he could find, under the thick branches of a
+large hemlock, and curled himself up on the brown
+needles and went to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The next day he had to hustle for a living, and the
+next it was the same, and the next, and the next. As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+the weeks and the months went by there was every indication
+that life would be little else than one long hustle&mdash;or
+perhaps a short one&mdash;and in spite of all he could do
+there were times when he was very near the end of the
+chapter. But his mother's lessons stood him in good
+stead, and he was exceedingly well armed for the chase.
+It would have been hard to find in all the woods any
+teeth better adapted than his to the work of pulling a
+fellow-creature to pieces. In front, on both the upper
+and lower jaws, were the chisel-shaped incisors. Flanking
+them were the canines, very long and slender, and
+very sharply pointed, thrusting themselves into the meat
+like the tines of a carving-fork, and tearing it away in
+great shreds. And back of the canines were other teeth
+that were still larger, but shorter and broader, and
+shaped more like notched knife-blades. Those of the
+lower jaw worked inside those of the upper, like shears,
+and they were very handy for cutting the large chunks
+into pieces small enough to go down his throat. By the
+time he got through with a partridge there was not much
+left of it but a puddle of brown feathers. His claws, too,
+were very long and white, and very wickedly curved; and
+before starting out on a hunt he would often get up on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+his hind legs and sharpen those of his forefeet on a tree-trunk,
+just as your house-cat sharpens hers on the leg of
+the kitchen-table. When he wasn't using them he kept
+them hidden between his toes, so that they would not be
+constantly catching and breaking on roots and things;
+but all he had to do when he wanted them was to pull
+certain muscles, and out they came, ready to scratch and
+tear to his heart's content. They were not by any means
+full grown as yet, but they bade fair to equal his father's
+some day. He was warmly and comfortably clothed, of
+course, and along his sides and flanks the hair hung especially
+thick and long, to protect his body when he was
+obliged to wade through light, fluffy snow. When there
+was a crust he didn't need it, for his paws were so big
+and broad and hairy that at such times they bore him up
+almost as well as if they had been two pairs of snow-shoes.</p>
+
+<p>But, well armed, well clad, and well shod though he
+was, it was fortunate for the Kitten that his first winter
+was a mild one&mdash;mild, that is, for the Glimmerglass
+country. Otherwise things might have gone very hard
+with him, and they were none too easy as it was. There
+were days when he was even hungrier than his mother<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+had been the night she serenaded the land-looker, and it
+was on one of these occasions that he found a porcupine
+in a tree and tried to make a meal of him. That was
+a memorable experience. The porky was sitting in a
+crotch, doing nothing in particular, and when the Kitten
+approached he simply put his nose down and his quills
+up. The Kitten spat at him contemptuously, but without
+any apparent effect. Then he put out a big forepaw
+and tapped him lightly on the forehead. The porcupine
+flipped his tail, and the Kitten jumped back, and
+spat and hissed harder than ever. He didn't quite know
+what to make of this singular-looking creature, but he
+was young and rash, besides being awfully, awfully hungry,
+and in another minute he pitched in.</p>
+
+<p>The next thing they knew, the porcupine had dropped
+to the ground, where he lit in a snow-bank, and presently
+picked himself up and waddled off to another tree, while
+the Kitten&mdash;well, the Kitten just sat in the crotch and
+cried as hard as ever he could cry. There were quills in
+his nose, and quills in his side, and quills in both his forepaws;
+and every motion was agony. He himself never
+knew exactly how he got rid of them all, so of course I
+can't tell you. A few of those that were caught only by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+their very tips may possibly have dropped out, but it is
+probable that most of them broke off and left their points
+to work deeper and deeper into the flesh until the skin
+finally closed over them and they disappeared. I have no
+doubt that pieces of those quills are still wandering about
+in various parts of his anatomy, like the quart of lead
+that "Little Bobs" carries around with him, according to
+Mr. Kipling. It was weeks before he ceased to feel the
+pain of them.</p>
+
+<p>For several days after this mishap it was impossible for
+him to hunt, and he would certainly have starved to
+death if it had not been for a cougar who providentially
+came to the Glimmerglass on a short visit. The Kitten
+found his tracks in the snow the very next day, and cautiously
+followed them up, limping as he went, to see what
+the big fellow had been doing. For a mile or more the
+large, round, shapeless footprints&mdash;very much like his
+own, but on a bigger scale&mdash;were spaced so regularly that
+it was evident the cougar had been simply walking along at
+a very leisurely gait, with nothing to disturb his frame of
+mind. But after a while the record showed a remarkable
+change. The footprints were only a few inches apart,
+and his cougarship had carried himself so low that his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+body had dragged in the snow and left a deep furrow
+behind. The Kitten knew what that meant. He had
+been there himself, though not after the same kind of
+prey. And then the trail stopped entirely, and for a
+space the snow lay fresh and virgin and untrodden.
+But twenty feet away was the spot where the cougar had
+come down on all-fours, only to leap forward again like a
+ricochetting cannon-ball; and twenty-five feet farther lay
+the greater part of the carcass of a deer.</p>
+
+<p>The Kitten stuffed himself as full as he could hold, and
+then climbed a tree and watched. About midnight the
+cougar appeared, and after he had eaten his fill and gone
+away again the Kitten slipped down and ate some more.
+He was making up for lost time. For four successive
+nights the cougar came and feasted on venison, but after
+that the Kitten never saw him or heard of him again.
+There was still a goodly quantity of meat left, and it
+seems somewhat curious that he did not return for it, but
+he was a stranger in those parts, and it is probable that
+he went back to his old haunts, up toward Whitefish
+Point, perhaps, or the Grand Sable. Anyhow, it was
+very nice for the Kitten, for that deer kept him in provisions
+until he was able to take up hunting once more.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He had one rather exciting experience during this
+period. One day, just as he was finishing a very enjoyable
+meal of venison tenderloin, he heard the tramp of
+snow-shoes on the crust, and in a moment more that same
+land-looker came pacing down a section line and halted
+squarely in front of him. Now there are trappers who
+say that a Canada lynx is a fool and a coward, that he
+will run from a small dog, and that he makes his living
+entirely by preying on animals that are weaker and more
+poorly armed than he. I admit, of course, that the majority
+of lynxes do not go ramming around the woods with
+chips on their shoulders, looking for hunters armed with
+bowie-knives and repeating rifles. You wouldn't, either&mdash;not
+as long as there were rabbits to be had for the stalking.
+But on this occasion the Kitten's conduct certainly
+savored of recklessness, if not of real bravery. Being entirely
+unacquainted with the land-looking profession, he
+naturally supposed that the man had come for his deer.
+And he didn't propose to let him have it. He considered
+that that venison belonged to him, and he took his stand
+on the carcass, laid his ears back, showed his white teeth,
+made his eyes blaze, and spit and growled and snarled
+defiantly. The land-looker didn't quite know what to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+do. His section line lay straight across the deer's body,
+and he did not want to leave it for fear of confusing his
+reckoning, but the Kitten, though only half grown, looked
+uncommonly business-like. He had no gun, nor even a
+revolver, for he was hunting for pine, not fresh meat.
+He had left his half-axe in camp, and when he felt in
+his pocket for his jack-knife it was not there. Then he
+looked about for a club. He had been told that lynxes
+always had very thin skulls, and that a light blow on the
+back of the head was enough to kill the biggest and fiercest
+of them, let alone a kitten. But he couldn't even
+find a stick that would answer his purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, when they had stared at each other a
+minute or two longer without coming to any understanding,
+"I suppose if you won't turn out for me, I'll have
+to turn out for you"; and he made a careful circuit at a
+respectful distance, picked up his line again, and went on
+his way.</p>
+
+<p>The winter dragged on very slowly, with many ups and
+downs, but it was gone at last. Summer was easier, if
+only because he was not obliged to use up any of his
+vitality in keeping warm. Sometimes, indeed, he was
+really too warm for comfort, so he presently changed his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+coat and put on a thinner one. People like to talk about
+the coolness of the deep woods, but the truth is that
+there isn't any place much hotter and stuffier than a dense
+growth of timber, where the wind never comes, and where
+the air is heavy and still. And then there are the windfalls
+and the old burnings, where the sun beats fiercely
+down among the fallen trees till the blackened soil is hot
+as a city pavement, and where dead trunks and half-burned
+logs lie thrown together in the wildest confusion&mdash;places
+which are almost impassable for men, and which
+even the land-lookers avoid whenever they can, but which
+a cat will thread as readily as the locomotive follows the
+rails. These were the localities which the Kitten was
+most fond of frequenting, and here his youth slipped
+rapidly away. He was fast becoming an adult lynx.</p>
+
+<p>The summer passed, and half the autumn; the first
+snow came and went, and again the Kitten put on his
+winter coat of gray, with the white underneath, and the
+dark trimmings up and down his legs and along his back.
+What with his mustachios, and his whiskers, and the
+tassels on his ears, he was a very presentable young lynx.
+It would be many years before he could hope to be as
+large and powerful as his father, but, nevertheless, he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+making remarkably good progress. And the time was at
+hand when he would need both his good looks and his
+muscle.</p>
+
+<p>Since his mother had left him he had seen only two or
+three lynxes, and those were all much older and larger
+than he, and not well suited to be his companions. But
+history repeats itself. One Indian-summer afternoon he
+was tramping along the northern bank of the Glimmerglass,
+just as his father had done two years before, and
+as he rounded a bend in the path he came face to face
+with someone who was enough like him to have been his
+twin sister. And they did as his parents had done, stood
+still for a minute or two and looked at each other as if
+they had just found out what they were made for. After
+all, life is something more than hustling for a living, even
+in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>But just then something else happened, and another
+ruling passion came into play&mdash;the old instinct of the
+chase, which neither of them could very long forget. A
+faint "Quack, quack, quack," came up from the lake, and
+they crept to the edge of the bank, side by side, and
+looked down. Above them the trees stood dreamily
+motionless in the mellow sunshine. Below was a steep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+slope of ten or fifteen feet; beyond it a tiny strip of
+sandy beach, and then the quiet water. A squadron of
+ducks, on their way from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf,
+had taken stop-over checks for the Glimmerglass; and
+now they came loitering along through the dead bulrushes,
+murmuring gently, in soft, mild voices, of delicious
+minnows and snails, and pausing a moment now
+and then to put their heads under and dabble in the mud
+for some particularly choice morsel. The lynxes crouched
+and waited, while their stubby tails twitched nervously,
+their long, narrow pupils grew still narrower, and their
+paws fumbled about among the dry pine-needles, feeling
+for the very best footing for the flying leap. The ducks
+came on, still prattling pleasantly over their own private
+affairs. Closer and closer they swam, without a thought
+of death waiting for them at the top of the bank, and
+suddenly four splendid sets of muscles jerked like bowstrings,
+four long hind-legs straightened with a mighty
+thrust and shove, and two big gray creatures shot out
+from the brink and came sailing down through the air
+with their heads up, their tails on end, their eyes blazing,
+and their forepaws stretched out to grab the nearest
+unhappy duck. The flock broke up with frightened cries<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+and a wonderful whirring of wings, and in a moment
+more they were far away and going like the very wind.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs008.jpg" width="500" height="320" alt="&quot;They both stood still and looked at each other.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;They both stood still and looked at each other.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But two of its members stayed behind, and presently
+the lynxes waded out on the beach and sat down to eat
+their supper together. They talked as much over that
+meal as the ducks had over theirs, but the lynx language
+is very different from that of the water-fowl. Instead of
+soft, gentle murmurings there were low growls and snarls
+as the long, white claws and teeth tore the warm red
+flesh from the bones. It could hardly have been a pleasant
+conversation to anyone but themselves, but I suppose
+they enjoyed it as much as the choicest repartee.
+In truth they had good reason to be satisfied and contented
+with themselves and each other, and with what
+they had just done, for not every flying leap is so successful,
+and not every duck is as plump and juicy as the two
+that they were discussing. So they talked on in angry,
+threatening tones, that sounded like quarrelling, but that
+really meant only a fierce, savage kind of pleasure; and
+when the meal was ended, and the very last shred of duck-flesh
+had disappeared, they washed their faces, and purred,
+and lay still a while to visit and get acquainted.</p>
+
+<p>There were many other meetings during the weeks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+that followed&mdash;some under as pleasant circumstances as
+the first, and some not. Perhaps the best were those of
+the clear, sharp days of early winter, when the sky was
+blue, and the sunshine was bright, and a thin carpet of
+fine, dry snow covered the floor of the forest. It was
+cold, of course; but they were young and strong and
+healthy, and their fur was thick and warm, like the garments
+of a Canadian girl. The keen air set the live
+blood leaping and dancing, and they frisked and frolicked,
+and romped and played, and rolled each other over and
+over in the snow, and were as wildly and deliciously happy
+as it is ever given to two animals to be.</p>
+
+<p>It was too good to last long without some kind of an
+interruption, and one glorious winter evening, when the
+full moon was flooding the woods with the white light
+that brings a touch of madness, a third young lynx came
+upon the scene. And then there was trouble. The
+Kitten's new friend sat back in the bushes and looked on,
+while he and his rival squatted face to face in the snow
+and sassed each other to the utmost limits of the lynx
+vocabulary, their voices rising and falling in a hideous
+duet, and their eyes gleaming and glowing with a pale,
+yellow-green fire. Presently there was a rush, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+fur began to fly. The snow flew, too; and the woods
+rang and rang again with yelling and caterwauling, and
+spitting and swearing, and all manner of abuse. The
+rabbits heard it, and trembled; and the partridges, down
+in the cedar swamp, glanced furtively over their shoulders
+and were glad it was no nearer. They bit and
+scratched and clawed like two little devils, and the onlooker
+in the bushes must have felt a thrill of pride over
+the strenuous way in which they strove for her favors.
+First one was on top, and then the other. Now our
+Kitten had his rival by the ears, and now by the tail.
+One minute heads, legs, and bodies were all mixed up in
+such a snarl that it seemed as if they could never be untangled,
+and the next they backed off just long enough
+to catch their breath, and then flew at each other's
+throats more savagely than ever. It was really more
+difficult than you would suppose for either of them to get
+a good hold of the other, partly because their fur was so
+thick, and partly because Nature had purposely made
+their skins very loose, with an eye to just such performances
+as this. But they managed to do a good deal of
+damage, nevertheless; and in the end the pretender was
+thoroughly whipped, and fled away in disgrace down the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+long, snowy aisles of the forest, howling as he went, while
+the Kitten turned slowly and painfully to the one who
+was at the bottom of all this unpleasantness. His ears
+were slit; one eye was shut, and the lid of the other
+hung very low; he limped badly with his right hind-leg,
+and many were the wounds and scratches along his breast
+and sides. But he didn't care. He had won his spurs.</p>
+
+<p>The story of the Kitten is told, for he was a kitten no
+longer.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>POINTERS FROM A PORCUPINE QUILL</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<div class='cap'>HE wasn't handsome&mdash;the original owner of this quill&mdash;and
+I can't say that he was very smart. He was only
+a slow-witted, homely old porky who once lived by the
+Glimmerglass. But in spite of his slow wits and his
+homeliness a great many things happened to him in the
+course of his life.</div>
+
+<p>He was born in a hollow hemlock log, on a wild April
+morning, when the north wind was whipping the lake
+with snow, and when winter seemed to have come back
+for a season. The Glimmerglass was neither glimmering
+nor glassy that morning, but he and his mother were
+snug and warm in their wooden nest, and they cared little
+for the storm that was raging outside.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said by some that porcupines lay eggs, the
+hard, smooth shells of which are furnished by a kind and
+thoughtful Providence for the protection of the mothers
+from their prickly offspring until the latter have fairly
+begun their independent existence. Other people say
+that two babies invariably arrive at once, and that one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+of them is always dead before it is born. But when my
+Porcupine discovered America he had neither a shell on
+his back nor a dead twin brother by his side. Neither
+was he prickly. He was covered all over with soft, furry,
+dark-brown hair. If you had searched carefully along
+the middle of his back you might possibly have found
+the points of the first quills, just peeping through the
+skin; but as yet the thick fur hid them from sight and
+touch unless you knew just where and how to look for
+them.</p>
+
+<p>He was a very large baby, larger even than a new-born
+bear cub, and no doubt his mother felt a justifiable pride
+in his size and his general peartness. She was certainly
+very careful of him and very anxious for his safety, for
+she kept him out of sight, and no one ever saw him
+during those first days and weeks of his babyhood. She
+did not propose to have any lynxes or wild-cats or other
+ill-disposed neighbors fondling him until his quills were
+grown. After that they might give him as many love-pats
+as they pleased.</p>
+
+<p>He grew rapidly, as all porcupine babies do. Long
+hairs, tipped with yellowish-white, came out through the
+dense fur, and by and by the quills began to show. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+teeth were lengthening, too, as his mother very well knew,
+and between the sharp things in his mouth and those on
+his back and sides he was fast becoming a very formidable
+nursling. Before he was two months old she was
+forced to wean him, but by that time he was quite able
+to travel down to the beach and feast on the tender lily-pads
+and arrow-head leaves that grew in the shallow
+water, within easy reach from fallen and half-submerged
+tree-trunks.</p>
+
+<p>One June day, as he and his mother were fishing for
+lily-pads, each of them out on the end of a big log, a boy
+came down the steep bank that rose almost from the
+water's edge. He wasn't a very attractive boy. His
+clothes were dirty and torn&mdash;and so was his face. His
+hat was gone, and his hair had not seen a comb for
+weeks. The mosquitoes and black-flies and no-see-'ems
+had bitten him until his skin was covered with blotches
+and his eyelids were so swollen that he could hardly see.
+And worst of all, he looked as if he were dying of starvation.
+There was almost nothing left of him but skin and
+bones, and his clothing hung upon him as it would on a
+framework of sticks. If the Porcupine could have philosophized
+about it he would probably have said that this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+was the wrong time of year for starving; and from his
+point of view he would have been right. June, in the
+woods, is the season of plenty for everybody but man.
+Man thinks he must have wheat-flour, and that doesn't
+grow on pines or maple-trees, nor yet in the tamarack
+swamp. But was there any wild, fierce glare in the boy's
+eyes, such a light of hunger as the story-books tell us
+is to be seen in the eyes of the wolf and the lynx when
+they have not eaten for days and days, and when the
+snow lies deep in the forest, and famine comes stalking
+through the trees? I don't think so. He was too weak
+and miserable to do any glaring, and his stomach was
+aching so hard from eating green gooseberries that he
+could scarcely think of anything else.</p>
+
+<p>But his face brightened a very little when he saw the
+old she-porcupine, and he picked up a heavy stick and
+waded out beside her log. She clacked her teeth together
+angrily as he approached; but he paid no attention,
+so she drew herself into a ball, with her head down
+and her nose covered by her forepaws. Reaching across
+her back and down on each side was a belt or girdle of
+quills, the largest and heaviest on her whole body, which
+could be erected at will, and now they stood as straight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+as young spruce-trees. Their tips were dark-brown, but
+the rest of their length was nearly white, and when you
+looked at her from behind she seemed to have a pointed
+white ruffle, edged with black, tied around the middle of
+her body. But the boy wasn't thinking about ruffles,
+and he didn't care what she did with her quills. He
+gave her such a thrust with his stick that she had to
+grab at the log with both hands to keep from being
+shoved into the water. That left her nose unprotected,
+and he brought the stick down across it once, twice, three
+times. Then he picked her up by one foot, very gingerly,
+and carried her off; and our Porky never saw his
+mother again.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps we had best follow her up and see what finally
+became of her. Half a mile from the scene of the murder
+the boy came upon a woman and a little girl. I
+sha'n't try to describe them, except to say that they were
+even worse off than he. Perhaps you read in the papers,
+some years ago, about the woman and the two children
+who were lost for several weeks in the woods of northern
+Michigan.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got a porky," said the boy.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 289px;">
+<img src="images/gs009.jpg" width="289" height="450" alt="&quot;High up in the top of a tall hemlock.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;High up in the top of a tall hemlock.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He dropped his burden on the ground, and they all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+stood around and looked at it. They were hungry&mdash;oh,
+so hungry!&mdash;but for some reason they did not seem very
+eager to begin. An old porcupine with her clothes on
+is not the most attractive of feasts, and they had no
+knife with which to skin her, no salt to season the meat,
+no fire to cook it, and no matches with which to start
+one. Rubbing two sticks together is a very good way of
+starting a fire when you are in a book, but it doesn't work
+very well in the Great Tahquamenon Swamp. And yet,
+somehow or other&mdash;I don't know how, and I don't want
+to&mdash;they ate that porcupine. And it did them good.
+When the searchers found them, a week or two later, the
+woman and the boy were dead, but the little girl was
+still alive, and for all I know she is living to this day.</p>
+
+<p>Let us return to the Glimmerglass. The young Porcupine
+ought to have mourned deeply for his mother, but
+I grieve to say that he did nothing of the kind. I doubt
+if he was even very lonesome. His brain was smaller,
+smoother, and less corrugated than yours is supposed to
+be; its wrinkles were few and not very deep; and it may
+be that the bump of filial affection was quite polished, or
+even that there wasn't any such bump at all. Anyhow,
+he got along very well without her, dispensing with her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+much more easily than the woman and the boy and girl
+could have. He watched stolidly while the boy killed
+her and carried her off, and a little later he was eating
+lily-pads again.</p>
+
+<p>As far as his future prospects were concerned, he had
+little reason for worrying. He knew pretty well how to
+take care of himself, for that is a kind of knowledge which
+comes early to young porcupines. Really, there wasn't
+much to learn. His quills would protect him from most
+of his enemies, if not from all of them; and, what was
+still better, he need never suffer from a scarcity of food.
+Of all the animals in the woods the porcupine is probably
+the safest from starvation, for he can eat anything
+from the soft green leaves of the water-plants to the bark
+and the small twigs of the tallest hemlock. Summer and
+winter, his storehouse is always full. The young lions
+may lack, and suffer hunger, and seek their meat from
+God; but the young porky has only to climb a tree and
+set his teeth at work. All the woods are his huckleberry.</p>
+
+<p>And, by the way, our Porcupine's teeth were a great
+institution, especially the front ones, and were well
+worthy of a somewhat detailed description. They were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+long and sharp and yellow, and there were two in the
+upper jaw and two in the lower, with a wide gap on each
+side between them and the molars. They kept right on
+growing as long as he lived, and there is no telling how
+far they would have gone if there had been nothing to
+stop them. Fortunately, he did a great deal of eating
+and chewing, and the constant friction kept them worn
+down, and at the same time served to sharpen them.
+Like a beaver's, they were formed of thin shells of hard
+enamel in front, backed up by softer pulp behind; and
+of course the soft parts wore away first, and left the
+enamel projecting in sharp, chisel-like edges that could
+gnaw crumbs from a hickory axe-handle.</p>
+
+<p>The next few months were pleasant ones, with plenty
+to eat, and nothing to do but keep his jaws going. By
+and by the leaves began to fall, and whenever the Porky
+walked abroad they rustled around him like silk skirts
+going down the aisle of a church. A little later the
+beechnuts came down from the sky, and he feasted more
+luxuriously than ever. His four yellow chisels tore the
+brown shells open, his molars ground the sweet kernels
+into meal, and he ate and ate till his short legs could
+hardly keep his fat little belly off the ground.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then came the first light snow, and his feet left tracks
+which bore a faint resemblance to a baby's&mdash;that is, if
+your imagination was sufficiently vigorous. The snow
+grew deeper and deeper, and after a while he had to fairly
+plough his way from the hollow log to the tree where
+he took his meals. It was hard work, for his clumsy legs
+were not made for wading, and at every step he had to
+lift and drag himself forward, and then let his body drop
+while he shifted his feet. A porcupine's feet will not go
+of themselves, the way other animals' do. They have to
+be picked up one at a time and lifted forward as far as
+they can reach&mdash;not very far at the best, for they are
+fastened to the ends of very short legs. It almost seems
+as if he could run faster if he could drop them off and
+leave them behind. One evening, when the snow was beginning
+to freeze again after a thawing day, he lay down
+to rest for a few minutes; and when he started on, some of
+his quills were fast in the hardening crust and had to be
+left behind. But no matter how difficult the walk might
+be, there was always a good square meal at the end of it,
+and he pushed valiantly on till he reached his dinner-table.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes he stayed in the same tree for several days<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+at a time, quenching his thirst with snow, and sleeping in
+a crotch.</p>
+
+<p>He was not by any means the only porcupine in the
+woods around the Glimmerglass, although weeks sometimes
+passed without his seeing any of his relations. At
+other times there were from one to half a dozen porkies
+in the trees close by, and when they happened to feel like
+it they would call back and forth to each other in queer,
+harsh, and often querulous voices.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, when he and another porcupine were
+occupying trees next each other, two land-lookers came
+along and camped for the night between them. Earlier
+in the day the men had crossed the trail of a pack of
+wolves, and they talked of it as they cut their firewood,
+and, with all the skill of the <i>voyageurs</i> of old, cooked
+their scanty supper, and made their bed of balsam boughs.
+The half-breed was much afraid that they would have
+visitors before morning, but the white man only laughed
+at the idea.</p>
+
+<p>The meal was hardly finished when they lay down
+between their blankets&mdash;the white man to sleep, and the
+half-breed to listen, listen, listen for the coming of the
+wolves. Beyond the camp-fire's little circle of ruddy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+light, vague shadows moved mysteriously, as if living
+things were prowling about among the trees and only
+waiting for him to fall asleep. Yet there was no wolf-howl
+to be heard, nor anything else to break the silence
+of the winter night, save possibly the dropping of a dead
+branch, or the splitting open of a tree-trunk, torn apart
+by the frost. And by and by, in spite of himself, the
+half-breed's eyelids began to droop.</p>
+
+<p>But somebody else was awake&mdash;awake, and tempted
+with a great temptation. The porcupine&mdash;not ours, but
+the other one&mdash;had caught the fragrance of coffee and
+bacon. Here were new odors&mdash;different from anything
+that had ever before tickled his nostrils&mdash;strange, but
+indescribably delicious. He waited till the land-lookers
+were snoring, and then he started down the tree. Half-way
+to the ground he encountered the cloud of smoke
+that rose from the camp-fire. Here was another new
+odor, but with nothing pleasant about it. It stung his
+nostrils and made his eyes smart, and he scrambled up
+again as fast as he could go, his claws and quills rattling
+on the bark. The half-breed woke with a start. He had
+heard something&mdash;he was sure he had&mdash;the wolves were
+coming, and he gave the white man a punch in the ribs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Wake up, wake up, m'shoor!" he whispered, excitedly.
+"The wolves are coming. I can hear them on
+the snow."</p>
+
+<p>The white man was up in a twinkling, but by that
+time the porcupine hod settled himself in a crotch, out
+of reach of the smoke, and the woods were silent again.
+The two listened with all their ears, but there was not a
+sound to be heard.</p>
+
+<p>"You must have been dreaming, Louis."</p>
+
+<p>The half-breed insisted that he had really heard the
+patter of the wolves' feet on the snow-crust, but the timber
+cruiser laughed at him, and lay down to sleep again.
+An hour later the performance was repeated, and this
+time the white man was angry.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you wake me up again, Louis. You're so
+rattled you don't know what you're doing."</p>
+
+<p>Louis was silenced, but not convinced, and he did not
+let himself go to sleep again. The fire was dying down,
+and little by little the smoke-cloud grew thinner and
+thinner until it disappeared entirely. Then the half-breed
+heard the same sound once more, but from the
+tree overhead, and not from across the snow. He waited
+and watched, and presently a dark-brown animal, two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+or three feet in length and about the shape of an egg,
+came scrambling cautiously down the trunk. The porky
+reached the ground in safety, and searched among the
+tin plates and the knives and forks until he found a piece
+of bacon rind; but he got just one taste of it, and then
+Louis hit him over the head with a club. Next morning
+the land-lookers had porcupine soup for breakfast, and
+they told me afterward that it was very good indeed.</p>
+
+<p>Our Porky had seen it all. He waited till the men
+had tramped away through the woods, with their packs
+on their backs and their snow-shoes on their feet, and
+then he, too, came down from his tree on a tour of investigation.
+His friend's skin lay on the snow not very far
+away&mdash;if you had pulled the quills and the longer hairs
+out of it, it would have made the pelt which the old
+fur-traders sometimes sold under the name of "spring
+beaver"&mdash;but he paid no attention to it. The bacon
+rind was what interested him most, and he chewed and
+gnawed at it with a relish that an epicure might have
+envied. It was the first time in all his gluttonous little
+life that he had ever tasted the flavor of salt or wood-smoke;
+and neither lily-pads, nor beechnuts, nor berries,
+nor anything else in all the woods could compare with it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+Life was worth living, if only for this one experience;
+and it may be that he stowed a dim memory of it away
+in some dark corner of his brain, and hoped that fortune
+would some day be good to him and send him another
+rind.</p>
+
+<p>The long, long winter dragged slowly on, the snow
+piled up higher and deeper, and the cold grew sharper
+and keener. Night after night the pitiless stars seemed
+sucking every last bit of warmth out of the old earth and
+leaving it dead and frozen forever. Those were the
+nights when the rabbits came out of their burrows and
+stamped up and down their runways for hours at a time,
+trying by exercise to keep from freezing to death, and
+when the deer dared not lie down to sleep. And hunger
+came with the cold and the deep snow. The buck and
+the doe had to live on hemlock twigs till they grew thin
+and poor. The partridges were buried in the drifting
+snow, and starved to death. The lynxes and the wild-cats
+hunted and hunted and hunted, and found no prey;
+and it was well for the bears and the woodchucks that
+they could sleep all winter and did not need food. Only
+the Porcupine had plenty and to spare. Starvation had
+no terrors for him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the hunger of another may mean danger for us, as
+the Porcupine discovered. In ordinary times most of the
+animals let him severely alone. They knew better than to
+tackle such a living pin-cushion as he; and if any of them
+ever did try it, one touch was generally enough. But
+when you are ready to perish with hunger, you will take
+risks which at other times you would not even think
+about; and so it happened that one February afternoon,
+as the Porky was trundling himself deliberately over the
+snow-crust, a fierce-looking animal with dark fur, bushy
+tail, and pointed nose sprang at him from behind a tree
+and tried to catch him by the throat, where the quills
+did not grow, and there was nothing but soft, warm fur.
+The Porcupine knew just what to do in such a case, and
+he promptly made himself into a prickly ball, very much
+as his mother had done seven or eight months before,
+with his face down, and his quills sticking out defiantly.
+But this time his scheme of defence did not
+work as well as usual, for the sharp little nose dug into
+the snow and wriggled its way closer and closer to where
+the jugular vein was waiting to be tapped. That fisher
+must have understood his business, for he had chosen the
+one and only way by which a porcupine may be successfully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+attacked. For once in his life our friend was really
+scared. Another inch, and the fisher would have won
+the game, but he was in such a hurry that he grew careless
+and reckless, and did not notice that he had wheeled
+half-way round, and that his hind-quarters were alongside
+the Porcupine's. Now, sluggish and slow though a
+porky may be, there is one of his members that is as quick
+as a steel trap, and that is his tail. Something hit the
+fisher a whack on his flank, and he gave a cry of pain
+and fury, and jumped back with half a dozen spears sticking
+in his flesh. He must have quite lost his head during
+the next few seconds, for before he knew it his face
+also had come within reach of that terrible tail and its
+quick, vicious jerks. That ended the battle, and he fled
+away across the snow, almost mad with the agony in his
+nose, his eyes, his forehead, and his left flank. As for
+the Porky, he made for the nearest tree as fast as he
+could go, hardly trusting in his great deliverance. And
+I don't believe there is any sight in all the Great Tahquamenon
+Swamp much funnier than a porky in a hurry&mdash;a
+porky who has really made up his mind that he is
+in danger and must hustle for dear life. He is the very
+personification of haste and a desire to go somewhere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+quick, and he picks his feet up and puts them down
+again as fast as ever he can; and yet, no matter how
+hard he works, his legs are so short and his body so fat
+that he can't begin to travel as fast as he wants to.</p>
+
+<p>Another day the lynx tried it, and fared even worse than
+the fisher&mdash;not the Canada lynx, with whom we are already
+somewhat acquainted, but the bay lynx. The fisher had
+had some sense, and would probably have succeeded if he
+had been a little more careful, but the lynx was a fool.
+He didn't know the very first thing about the proper
+way to hunt porcupines, and he ought never to have
+tried it at all, but he was literally starving, and the
+temptation was too much for him. Here was something
+alive, something that had warm red blood in its veins
+and a good thick layer of flesh over its bones, and that
+was too slow to get away from him; and he sailed right
+in, tooth and claw, regardless of the consequences. Immediately
+he forgot all about the Porcupine, and his own
+hunger, and everything else but the terrible pain in his
+face and his forepaws. He made the woods fairly ring
+with his howls, and he jumped up and down on the
+snow-crust, rubbing his head with his paws, and driving
+the little barbed spears deeper and deeper into the flesh.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+And then, all of a sudden, he ceased his leaping and
+bounding and howling, and dropped on the snow in a
+limp, lifeless heap, dead as last summer's lily-pads. One
+of the quills had driven straight through his left eye and
+into his brain. Was it any wonder if in time the Porcupine
+came to think himself invulnerable?</p>
+
+<p>Even a northern Michigan winter has its ending, and
+at last there came an evening when all the porcupines
+in the woods around the Glimmerglass were calling to
+each other from one tree to another. They couldn't
+help it. There was something in the air that stirred
+them to a vague restlessness and uneasiness, and our own
+particular Porky sat up in the top of a tall hemlock
+and sang. Not like Jenny Lind, nor like a thrush or a
+nightingale, but his harsh voice went squealing up and
+down the scale in a way that was all his own, without
+time or rhythm or melody, in the wildest, strangest music
+that ever woke the silent woods. I don't believe that he
+himself quite knew what he meant or why he did it.
+Certainly no one else could have told, unless some wandering
+Indian or trapper may have heard the queer voices
+and prophesied that a thaw was coming.</p>
+
+<p>The thaw arrived next day, and it proved to be the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+beginning of spring. The summer followed as fast as it
+could, and again the lily-pads were green and succulent
+in the shallow water along the edge of the Glimmerglass,
+and again the Porcupine wandered down to the beach to
+feed upon them, discarding for a time his winter diet of
+bark and twigs. Why should one live on rye-bread
+when one can have cake and ice-cream?</p>
+
+<p>And there among the bulrushes, one bright June
+morning, he had a fight with one of his own kind. Just
+as he was approaching his favorite log, two other porcupines
+appeared, coming from different directions, one a
+male, and the other a female. They all scrambled out
+upon the log, one after another, but it soon became evident
+that three was a crowd. Our Porky and the other
+bachelor could not agree at all. They both wanted the
+same place and the same lily-pads, and in a little while
+they were pushing and shoving and growling and snarling
+with all their might, each doing his best to drive the
+other off the log and into the water. They did not bite&mdash;perhaps
+they had agreed that teeth like theirs were too
+cruel to be used in civilized warfare&mdash;but they struggled
+and chattered and swore at each other, and made all sorts
+of queer noises while they fought their funny little battle&mdash;all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+the funnier because each of them had to look out
+for the other's quills. If either had happened to push the
+wrong way, they might both have been in serious trouble.
+It did not last long. Our Porky was the stronger, and
+his rival was driven backward little by little till he lost
+his hold completely and slipped into the lake. He came
+to the surface at once, and quickly swam to the shore,
+where he chattered angrily for a few minutes, and then,
+like the sensible bachelor that he was, wandered off up
+the beach in search of other worlds more easily conquered.
+There was peace on our Porky's log, and the lily-pads
+that grew beside it had never been as fresh and juicy as
+they were that morning.</p>
+
+<p>Two months later, on a hot August afternoon, I was
+paddling along the edge of the Glimmerglass in company
+with a friend of mine, each of us in a small dug-out
+canoe, when we found the Porky asleep in the sunshine.
+He was lying on the nearly horizontal trunk of a tree
+whose roots had been undermined by the waves till it
+leaned far out over the lake, hardly a foot from the
+water.</p>
+
+<p>My friend, by the way, is the foreman of a lumber-camp.
+He has served in the British army, has hunted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+whales off the coast of Greenland, married a wife in
+Grand Rapids, and run a street-car in Chicago; and now
+he is snaking logs out of the Michigan woods. He is
+quite a chunk of a man, tall and decidedly well set up,
+and it would take a pretty good prize-fighter to whip
+him, but he learned that day that a porcupine at close
+quarters is worse than a trained pugilist.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at that porky," he called to me. "I'm going
+to ram the canoe into the tree and knock him off into
+the water. Just you watch, and you'll see some fun."</p>
+
+<p>I was somewhat uncertain whether the joke would
+ultimately be on the Porcupine or the man, but it was
+pretty sure to be worth seeing, one way or the other, so
+I laid my paddle down and awaited developments. Bang!
+went the nose of the dug-out against the tree, and the
+Porcupine dropped, but not into the water. He landed
+in the bow of the canoe, and the horrified look on my
+friend's face was a delight to see. The Porky was wide
+awake by this time, for I could hear his teeth clacking as
+he advanced to the attack.</p>
+
+<p>"Great Scott! He's coming straight at me!"</p>
+
+<p>The Porcupine was certainly game. I saw the paddle
+rise in the air and come down with a tremendous whack,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+but it seemed to have little effect. The Porky's coat of
+quills and hair was so thick that a blow on the back did
+not trouble him much. If my friend could have hit him
+across the nose it would have ended the matter then and
+there, but the canoe was too narrow and its sides too high
+for a crosswise stroke. He tried thrusting, but that was
+no better. When a good-sized porcupine has really made
+up his mind to go somewhere he may be slow, but it takes
+more than a punch with the end of a stick to stop him;
+and this Porky had fully determined to go aft and get
+acquainted with the foreman.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs010.jpg" width="500" height="319" alt="&quot;He quickly made his way to the beach.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;He quickly made his way to the beach.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>My friend couldn't even kick, for he was kneeling
+on the bottom of the dug-out, with his feet behind
+him, and if he tried to stand up he would probably
+capsize.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Hulbert, what am I going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>I didn't give him any advice, for my sympathies were
+largely with the Porcupine. Besides, I hadn't any advice
+to give. Just then the canoe drifted around so that
+I could look into it, and I beheld the Porcupine bearing
+down on my helpless friend like Birnam Wood on its way
+to Dunsinane, his ruffle of quills erect, fire in his little
+black eyes, and a thirst for vengeance in his whole aspect.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+My friend made one or two final and ineffectual jabs at
+him, and then gave it up.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no use!" he called; "I'll have to tip over!"
+and the next second the canoe was upside down and both
+belligerents were in the water. The Porcupine floated
+high&mdash;I suppose his hollow quills helped to keep him up&mdash;and
+he proved a much better swimmer than I had expected,
+for he quickly made his way to the beach and
+disappeared in the woods, still chattering disrespectfully.
+My friend waded ashore, righted his canoe, and we resumed
+our journey. I don't think I'll tell you what he said.
+He got over it after a while, and in the end he probably
+enjoyed his joke more than if it had turned out as he
+had intended.</p>
+
+<p>The summer followed the winter into the past, and the
+Moon of Falling Leaves came round again. The Porcupine
+was not alone. Another porky was with him, and
+the two seemed very good friends. In fact, his companion
+was the very same lady porcupine who had stood
+by while he fought the battle of the log and the lily-pads,
+though I do not suppose that they had been keeping
+company all those months, and I am by no means certain
+that they remembered that eventful morning at all. Let<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+us hope they did, for the sake of the story. Who knows
+how much or how little of love was stirring the slow
+currents of their sluggish natures&mdash;of such love as binds
+the dove or the eagle to his mate, or of such steadfast
+affection as the Beaver and his wife seem to have felt for
+each other? Not much, perhaps; yet they climbed the
+same tree, ate from the same branch, and drank at the
+same spring; and the next April there was another
+arrival in the old hollow log&mdash;twins, this time, and both
+of them alive.</p>
+
+<p>But the Porcupine never saw his children, for a
+wandering fit seized him, and he left the Glimmerglass
+before they were born. Two or three miles away was a
+little clearing where a mossback lived. A railway crossed
+one edge of it, between the hill and the swamp, and five
+miles away was a junction, where locomotives were constantly
+moving about, backing, hauling, and making up
+their trains. As the mossback lay awake in the long,
+quiet, windless winter nights, he often heard them puffing
+and snorting, now with slow, heavy coughs, and now
+quick and sharp and rapid. One night when he was half
+asleep he heard something that said, "chew-chew-chew-chew-chew-chew,"
+like an engine that has its train moving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+and is just beginning to get up speed. At first he
+paid no attention to it. But the noise suddenly stopped
+short, and after a pause of a few seconds it began again
+at exactly the same speed; stopped again, and began a
+third time. And so it went on, chewing and pausing,
+chewing and pausing, with always just so many chews to
+the second, and just so many seconds to each rest. No
+locomotive ever puffed like that. The mossback was
+wide awake now, and he muttered something about "another
+of those pesky porkies." He had killed the last
+one that came around the house, and had wanted his
+wife to cook it for dinner and see how it tasted, but she
+wouldn't. She said that the very sight of it was enough
+for her, and more than enough; and that it was all she
+could do to eat pork and potatoes after looking at it.</p>
+
+<p>He turned over and tried to go to sleep again, but
+without success. That steady "chew-chew-chew" was
+enough to keep a woodchuck awake, and at last he got
+up and went to the door. The moonlight on the snow
+was almost as bright as day, and there was the Porcupine,
+leaning against the side of the barn, and busily rasping
+the wood from around the head of a rusty nail. The
+mossback threw a stick of stove-wood at him, and he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+lumbered clumsily away across the snow. But twenty
+minutes later he was back again, and this time he marched
+straight into the open shed at the back of the house, and
+began operations on a wash-tub, whose mingled flavor of
+soap and humanity struck him as being very delicious.
+Again the mossback appeared in the doorway, shivering a
+little in his night-shirt.</p>
+
+<p>The Porcupine was at the foot of the steps. He had
+stopped chewing when the door opened, and now he lifted
+his forepaws and sat half-erect, his yellow teeth showing
+between his parted lips, and his little eyes staring at the
+lamp which the mossback carried. The quills slanted
+back from all around his diminutive face, and even from
+between his eyes&mdash;short at first, but growing longer toward
+his shoulders and back. Long whitish bristles were
+mingled with them, and the mossback could not help
+thinking of a little old, old man, with hair that was
+grizzly-gray, and a face that was half-stupid and half-sad
+and wistful. He was not yet two years of age, but I
+believe that a porcupine is born old. Some of the Indians
+say that he is ashamed of his homely looks, and that
+that is the reason why, by day, he walks so slowly, with
+hanging head and downcast eyes; but at night, they say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+when the friendly darkness hides his ugliness, he lifts his
+head and runs like a dog. In spite of the hour and the
+cheering influence of the wash-tub, our Porky seemed even
+more low-spirited than usual. Perhaps the lamplight
+had suddenly reminded him of his personal appearance.
+At any rate he looked so lonesome and forlorn that the
+mossback felt a little thrill of pity for him, and decided
+not to kill him after all, but to drive him away again.
+He started down the steps with his lamp in one hand and
+a stick of wood in the other, and then&mdash;he never knew
+how it happened, but in some way he stumbled and fell.
+Never in all his life, not even when his wildest nightmare
+came and sat on him in the wee, sma' hours, had he come
+so near screaming out in terror as he did at that moment.
+He thought he was going to sit down on the Porcupine.
+Fortunately for both of them, but especially for the man,
+he missed him by barely half an inch, and the Porky
+scuttled away as fast as his legs could carry him.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of this unfriendly reception, the Porcupine
+hung around the edges of the clearing for several months,
+and enjoyed many a meal such as seldom falls to the lot
+of the woods-people. One night he found an empty
+pork-barrel out behind the barn, its staves fairly saturated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+with salt, and hour after hour he scraped away upon it,
+perfectly content. Another time, to his great satisfaction,
+he discovered a large piece of bacon rind among
+some scraps that the mossback's wife had thrown away.
+Later he invaded the sugar-bush by night, gnawing deep
+notches in the edges of the sap buckets and barrels, and
+helping himself to the sirup in the big boiling-pan.</p>
+
+<p>Life was not all feasting, however. There was a dog
+who attacked him two or three times, but who finally
+learned to keep away and mind his own business. Once,
+when he had ventured a little too close to the house, and
+was making an unusual racket with his teeth, the mossback
+came to the door and fired a shotgun at him, cutting
+off several of his quills. And still another night, late in the
+spring, when he was prowling around the barn, a bull calf
+came and smelled him. Next morning the mossback and
+his boys threw that calf down on the ground and tied his
+feet to a stump, and three of them sat on him while a
+fourth pulled the quills from his nose with a pair of
+pincers. You should have heard him grunt.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the greatest adventure of all. Down beside
+the railway was a small platform on which supplies for
+the lumber-camps were sometimes unloaded from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+trains. Brine and molasses and various other delectable
+things had leaked out of the barrels and kegs and boxes,
+and the Porcupine discovered that the planks were very
+nicely seasoned and flavored. He visited them once too
+often, for one summer evening, as he was gnawing away
+at the site of an ancient puddle of molasses, the accommodation
+train rolled in and came to a halt. He tried to
+hide behind a stump, but the trainmen caught sight of him,
+and before he knew it they had shoved him into an empty
+box and hoisted him into the baggage-car. They turned
+him loose among the passengers on the station platform
+at Sault Ste. Marie, and his arrival created a sensation.</p>
+
+<p>When the first excitement had subsided, all the girls
+in the crowd declared that they must have some quills for
+souvenirs, and all the young men set to work to procure
+them, hoping to distinguish themselves by proving their
+superiority in strength and courage over this poor little
+twenty-pound beast just out of the woods. Most of them
+succeeded in getting some quills, and also in acquiring
+some painful experience&mdash;especially the one who attempted
+to lift the Porcupine by the tail, and who learned that
+that interesting member is the very hottest and liveliest
+portion of the animal's anatomy. They finally discovered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+that the best way to get quills from a live porcupine is
+to hit him with a piece of board. The sharp points penetrate
+the wood and stick there, the other ends come loose
+from his skin, and there you have them. Our friend lost
+most of his armor that day, and it was a good thing for
+him that departed quills, like clipped hair, will renew
+themselves in the course of time.</p>
+
+<p>One of the brakemen carried him home, and he spent
+the next few months in the enjoyment of city life.
+Whether he found much pleasure in it is, perhaps, a
+question, but I am rather inclined to think that he did.
+He had plenty to eat, and he learned that apples are very
+good indeed, and that the best way to partake of them is
+to sit up on your haunches and hold them between your
+forepaws. He also learned that men are not always to
+be regarded as enemies, for his owner and his owner's children
+were good to him and soon won his confidence. But,
+after all, the city was not home, and the woods were; so
+he employed some of his spare time in gnawing a hole
+through the wall in a dark corner of the shed where he
+was confined, and one night he scrambled out and hid
+himself in an empty barn. A day or two later he was in
+the forest again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The remaining years of his life were spent on the
+banks of St. Mary's River, and for the most part they
+were years of quietness and contentment. He was far
+from his early home, but the bark of a birch or a maple
+or a hemlock is much the same on St. Mary's as by the
+Glimmerglass. He grew bigger and fatter as time went
+on, and some weeks before he died he must have weighed
+thirty or forty pounds.</p>
+
+<p>Once in a while there was a little dash of excitement
+to keep life from becoming too monotonous&mdash;if too much
+monotony is possible in a porcupine's existence. One
+night he scrambled up the steps of a little summer cottage
+close to the edge of the river, and, finding the door
+unlatched, he pushed it open and walked in. It proved
+to be a cottage full of girls, and they stood around on
+chairs and the tops of wash-stands, bombarded him with
+curling-irons, poked feebly with bed-slats, and shrieked
+with laughter till the farmers over on the Canadian shore
+turned in their beds and wondered what could be happening
+on Uncle Sam's side of the river. The worst of
+it was that in his travels around the room he had come
+up behind the door and pushed it shut, and it was some
+time before even the red-haired girl could muster up sufficient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+courage to climb down from her perch and open it
+again.</p>
+
+<p>At another time an Indian robbed him of the longest
+and best of his quills&mdash;nearly five inches in length some
+of them&mdash;and carried them off to be used in ornamenting
+birch-bark baskets. And on still another occasion he
+narrowly escaped death at the hands of an irate canoe-man,
+in the side of whose Rob Roy he had gnawed a
+great hole.</p>
+
+<p>The end came at last, and it was the saddest, hardest,
+strangest fate that can ever come to a wild creature of
+the woods. He&mdash;who had never known hunger in all his
+life, who was almost the only animal in the forest who
+had never looked famine in the eye, whose table was
+spread with good things from January to December, and
+whose storehouse was full from Lake Huron to the Pictured
+Rocks&mdash;he of all others, was condemned to die of
+starvation in the midst of plenty. The Ancient Mariner,
+with water all around him and not a drop to drink, was
+no worse off than our Porcupine; and the Mariner finally
+escaped, but the Porky didn't.</p>
+
+<p>One of the summer tourists who wandered up into the
+north woods that year had carried with him a little rifle,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+more of a toy than a weapon, a thing that a sportsman
+would hardly have condescended to laugh at. And one
+afternoon, by ill luck, he caught sight of the Porcupine
+high up in the top of a tall tree. It was his first chance
+at a genuine wild beast, and he fired away all his cartridges
+as fast as he could load them into his gun. He
+thought that every shot missed, and he was very much
+ashamed of his marksmanship. But he was mistaken.
+The very last bullet broke one of the Porcupine's lower
+front teeth, and hurt him terribly. It jarred him to the
+very end of his tail, and his head felt as if it was being
+smashed to bits. For a minute or two the strength all
+went out of him, and if he had not been lying in a safe,
+comfortable crotch he would have fallen to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>The pain and the shock passed away after a while, but
+when supper-time came&mdash;and it was almost always supper-time
+with the Porcupine&mdash;his left lower incisor was
+missing. The right one was uninjured, however, and for
+a while he got on pretty well, merely having to spend a
+little more time than usual over his meals. But that was
+only the beginning of trouble. The stump of the broken
+tooth was still there and still growing, and it was soon as
+long as ever, but in the meantime its fellow in the upper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+jaw had grown out beyond its normal length, and the
+two did not meet properly. Instead of coming together
+edge to edge, as they should have done, each wearing the
+other down and keeping it from reaching out too far,
+each one now pushed the other aside, and still they kept
+on growing, growing, growing. Worst of all, in a short
+time they had begun to crowd his jaws apart so that he
+could hardly use his right-hand teeth, and they too were
+soon out of shape. The evil days had come, and the
+sound of the grinding was low. Little by little his
+mouth was forced open wider and wider, and the food
+that passed his lips grew less and less. His teeth, that
+had all his life been his best tools and his most faithful
+servants, had turned against him in his old age, and were
+killing him by inches. Let us not linger over those days.</p>
+
+<p>He was spared the very last and worst pangs&mdash;for that,
+at least, we may be thankful. On the last day of his life
+he sat under a beech-tree, weak and weary and faint.
+He could not remember when he had eaten. His coat of
+hair and quills was as thick and bushy as ever, and outwardly
+he had hardly changed at all, but under his skin
+there was little left but bones. And as he sat there and
+wished that he was dead&mdash;if such a wish can ever come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+to a wild animal&mdash;the Angel of Mercy came, in the shape
+of a man with a revolver in his pistol pocket&mdash;a man
+who liked to kill things.</p>
+
+<p>"A porky!" he said. "Guess I'll shoot him, just for
+fun."</p>
+
+<p>The Porcupine saw him coming and knew the danger;
+and for a moment the old love of life came back as strong
+as ever, and he gathered his feeble strength for one last
+effort, and started up the tree. He was perhaps six feet
+from the ground when the first report came.</p>
+
+<p>"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" Four shots, as fast
+as the self-cocking revolver could pour the lead into his
+body. The Porky stopped climbing. For an instant he
+hung motionless on the side of the tree, and then his
+forepaws let go, and he swayed backward and fell to the
+ground. And that was the end of the Porcupine.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE ADVENTURES OF A LOON</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class='cap'>HIS name was Mahng, and the story which I am about
+to relate is the story of his matrimonial career&mdash;or at least
+of a portion of it.</div>
+
+<p>One snowy autumn night, three years ago, he was swimming
+on the Glimmerglass in company with his first wife&mdash;one
+of the first, that is. There may possibly have
+been others before her, but if so I wasn't acquainted
+with them. It was a fine evening&mdash;especially for loons.
+There was no wind, and the big, soft flakes came floating
+lazily down to lose themselves in the quiet lake. The
+sky, the woods, and the shores were all blotted out;
+and the loons reigned alone, king and queen of a dim
+little world of leaden water and falling snow. And right
+royally they swam their kingdom, with an air as if they
+thought God had made the Glimmerglass for their especial
+benefit. Perhaps He had.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 296px;">
+<img src="images/gs011.jpg" width="296" height="450" alt="&quot;He went under as simply as you would step out of bed.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;He went under as simply as you would step out of bed.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was very, very lonely, but they liked it all the better
+for that. At times they even lost sight of each other
+for a little while, as one dived in search of a herring or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+a young salmon trout. I wish we could have followed
+Mahng down under the water and watched him at his
+hunting. He didn't dive as you do, with a jump and a
+plunge and a splash. He merely drew his head back a
+little and then thrust it forward and downward, and
+went under as simply and easily as you would step out of
+bed, and with a good deal more dignity. It was his feet
+that did it, of course. They were not good for much for
+walking, but they were the real thing when it came to
+swimming or diving. They were large and broad and
+strongly webbed, and the short stout legs which carried
+them were flattened and compressed that they might slip
+edgewise through the water, like a feathered oar-blade.
+The muscles which worked them were very powerful, and
+they kicked backward with so much vigor that two little
+jets of spray were often tossed up in his wake as he went
+under, like the splash from a steamer's paddles. And he
+had a rudder, too, for in the after part of his body there
+were two muscles just like tiller-ropes, fastened to his tail
+in such a way that they could twist it to either side, and
+steer him to port or starboard as occasion demanded.
+With his long neck stretched far out in front, his wings
+pressed tightly against his sides, and his legs and feet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+working as if they went by steam, he shot through the
+water like a submarine torpedo-boat. "The Herdsman
+of the Deep," the Scottish Highlanders used to say, when
+in winter a loon came to visit their lochs and fiords.
+Swift and strong and terrible, he ranged the depths of
+the Glimmerglass, seeking what he might devour; and
+perhaps you can imagine how hastily the poor little fishes
+took their departure whenever they saw him coming their
+way. Sometimes they were not quite quick enough, and
+then his long bill closed upon them, and he swallowed
+them whole without even waiting to rise to the surface.</p>
+
+<p>The chase thus brought to a successful conclusion, or
+perhaps the supply of air in his lungs giving out, he returned
+to the upper world, and again his voice rang out
+through the darkness and the falling snow. Then his
+wife would answer him from somewhere away off across
+the lake, and they would call back and forth to each
+other with many a laugh and shout, or, drawing closer
+and closer together, they would cruise the Glimmerglass
+side by side, with the big flakes dropping gently on their
+backs and folded wings, and the ripples spreading out on
+either hand like the swell from the bow of a ship.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Once Mahng stayed down a little longer than usual,
+and when he came up he heard his wife calling him in an
+excited tone, as if something had happened to her. He
+hurried toward her, and presently he saw a light shining
+dimly through the throng of moving snow-flakes,
+and growing brighter and brighter as he approached
+until it was fairly dazzling. As he drew nearer still he
+caught sight of his wife sitting on the water squarely in
+front of that light, and watching it with all her eyes.
+She was not calling now. She had forgotten Mahng,
+she had forgotten to paddle, she had forgotten everything,
+in her wonder at this strange, beautiful thing, the like of
+which had never before been seen upon the Glimmerglass.
+She herself was a rarely beautiful sight&mdash;if she had only
+known it&mdash;with the dark water rippling gently against
+her bosom, her big black head thrust forward, and the
+feathers of her throat and breast glistening in the glare
+of the headlight, white as the snow that was falling
+around her.</p>
+
+<p>All this Mahng saw. What he did not see, because
+his eyes were dazzled, was a boat in the shadow behind
+the light, and a rifle-barrel pointing straight at his wife's
+breast. There was a blinding flash, a sharp, crashing report,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+and a cloud of smoke; and Mahng dived as quick
+as a wink. But his wife would never dive again. The
+bullet had gone tearing through her body, and she lay
+stretched out on the water, perfectly motionless, and apparently
+dead. And then, just as Mahng came to the
+surface a hundred yards away, and just as my partner
+put out his hand to pick her up, she lifted her head and
+gave a last wild cry. Mahng heard it and answered, but
+he was too far away to see what happened. He dared
+not return till the light had disappeared, and by that
+time she was gone. She had straggled violently for a
+moment, and had struck savagely at the hunter's hand,
+and then she had as suddenly collapsed, the water turned
+red, and her eyes closed forever. Did you know that
+among all God's creatures the birds are the only ones
+whose eyes close naturally in death? Even among men
+it is not so, for when our friends die we lay our hands
+reverently upon their faces, and weight their stiff lids
+with gold. But for the bird, Nature herself performs the
+last kindly office, and as the light fades out from the
+empty windows of the soul, the curtain falls of its own
+accord.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 292px;">
+<img src="images/gs012.jpg" width="292" height="450" alt="&quot;She herself was a rarely beautiful sight.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;She herself was a rarely beautiful sight.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>During the next two or three days Mahng's voice was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+frequently to be heard, apparently calling his wife.
+Sometimes it was a mournful, long-drawn cry&mdash;"Hoo-WOOOO-ooo"&mdash;that
+might have been heard a mile away&mdash;a
+cry that seemed the very essence of loneliness, and
+that went right down where you lived and made you feel
+like a murderer. And sometimes he broke into a wild
+peal of laughter, as if he hoped that that might better
+serve to call her back to him.</p>
+
+<p>His children had gone south some time before. They
+had seemed anxious to see the world. Perhaps, too, they
+had dreaded the approach of colder weather more than the
+older birds, who had become somewhat seasoned by previous
+autumns. Anyhow, they had taken the long trail
+toward the Gulf of Mexico, and now that his wife was
+gone Mahng was entirely alone. At last he seemed to
+make up his mind that he might as well follow them, and
+one afternoon, as he was swimming aimlessly about, I saw
+him suddenly dash forward, working his wings with all
+their might, beating the water at every stroke, and
+throwing spray like a side-wheeler. Slowly&mdash;for his
+body was heavy, and his wings were rather small for his
+size&mdash;slowly he lifted himself from the water, all the time
+rushing forward faster and faster. He couldn't have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+made it if he hadn't had plenty of sea-room, but by
+swinging round and round in long, wide circles he managed
+to rise little by little till at last he was clear of the
+tree-tops. He passed right over my head as he stood
+away to the south&mdash;his long neck stretched far out in
+front, his feet pointing straight back beyond the end of
+his short tail, and his wings beating the air with tremendous
+energy. How they did whizz! He made almost
+as much noise as a train of cars. He laughed as he went
+by, and you would have said that he was in high spirits;
+but before he disappeared that lonely, long-drawn cry
+came back once more&mdash;"Hoo-WOOOO-ooo."</p>
+
+<p>In the course of his winter wanderings through the
+South he happened to alight one day on a certain wild
+pond down in Mississippi, and there he found another
+loon&mdash;a widow whose former husband had lost his life
+the previous summer under rather peculiar circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>Beside a small lake in Minnesota there lives an old
+Dutchman who catches fish with empty bottles. On any
+calm, still day you may see a lot of them floating upright
+in the water, all tightly corked, and each with the end of
+a fishing-line tied around its neck. They seem very
+decorous and well-behaved, but let a fish take one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+the hooks and begin to pull, and immediately that particular
+bottle turns wrong end up, and acts as if it had
+taken a drop too much of its own original contents.
+Then the Dutchman paddles out in his little scow, and
+perhaps by the time he has hauled in his fish and re-baited
+the hook another bottle is excitedly standing on
+its head. But never before nor since have any of them
+behaved as wildly as the one that a loon got hold of.</p>
+
+<p>The loon&mdash;not Mahng, you understand, but the first
+husband of his new acquaintance&mdash;had dived in search of
+his dinner, and the first thing he saw that looked as if it
+might be good to eat was the bait on one of the Dutchman's
+hooks. He swallowed it, of course, and for the
+next five minutes he went charging up and down that
+pond at a great rate, followed by a green glass monster
+with the name of a millionnaire brewer blown in its side.
+Sometimes he was on the surface, and sometimes he was
+under it; but wherever he went that horrible thing was
+close behind him, pulling so hard that the sharp cord cut
+the corners of his mouth till it bled. Once or twice he
+tried to fly, but the line caught his wing and brought
+him down again. When he dived, it tangled itself around
+his legs and clogged the machinery; and when he tried to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+shout, the hook in his throat would not let him do anything
+more than cough. The Dutchman got him at last,
+and eventually Mahng got his widow, as you shall see.</p>
+
+<p>She had her children to take care of, and for a time
+she was very busy, but after a few weeks they flew away
+to the south, as Mahng's had done, and she was free to
+go where she liked and do what she pleased. For a while
+she stayed where she was, like a sensible person. Minnesota
+suited her very well, and she was in no hurry to
+leave. But, of course, she could not stay on indefinitely,
+for some frosty night the lake would freeze over, and then
+she could neither dive for fish nor rise upon the wing. A
+loon on ice is about as helpless as an oyster. And so at
+last she, too, went south. She travelled by easy stages,
+and had a pleasant journey, with many a stop, and many
+a feast in the lakes and rivers along the route. I should
+like to know, just out of curiosity, how many fish found
+their way down her capacious gullet during that pilgrimage
+through Illinois and Kentucky and Tennessee.</p>
+
+<p>Well, no matter about that. The Mississippi pond
+was in sight, and she was just slanting down toward the
+water, when a hunter fired at her from behind a clump of
+trees. His aim was all too true, and she fell headlong to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+the ground, with a broken wing dangling helplessly at
+her side.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as you probably know, a loon isn't built for running.
+There is an old story, one which certainly has the
+appearance of truth, to the effect that when Nature manufactured
+the first of these birds she forgot to give him
+any legs at all, and that he had started off on the wing
+before she noticed her mistake. Then she picked up the
+first pair that came to hand and threw them after him.
+Unfortunately they were a misfit, and, what was, perhaps,
+still worse, they struck his body in the wrong place.
+They were so very short and so very far aft that, although
+he could stand nearly as straight as a man, it was almost
+impossible for him to move about on them. When he
+had to travel on land, which he always avoided as far as
+he could, he generally shoved himself along on his breast,
+and often used his wings and his bill to help himself forward.
+All his descendants are just like him, so you can
+see that the widow's chances were pretty small, with the
+hunter bursting out of the bushes, and a broad strip of
+beach between her and the friendly pond.</p>
+
+<p>But she was a person of resource and energy, and in
+this great emergency she literally rose to the occasion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+and did something that she had never done before in all
+her life, and probably will never do again. The astonished
+hunter saw her lift herself until she stood nearly
+upright, and then actually <i>run</i> across the beach toward
+the water. She was leaning forward a trifle, her long
+neck was stretched out, her two short legs were trotting
+as fast as they could go, and her one good wing was wildly
+waving in a frantic endeavor to get on. It was a sight
+that very few people have ever seen, and it would have
+been comical if it hadn't been a matter of life and death.
+The hunter was hard after her, and his legs were a yard
+long, while hers were only a few inches, so it was not surprising
+that he caught her just as she reached the margin.
+She wriggled out of his grasp and dashed on through the
+shallow water, and he followed close behind. In a moment
+he stooped and made another grab at her, and this
+time he got his arms around her body and pinned her
+wings down against her sides. But he had waded out a
+little too far, and had reached the place where the bottom
+suddenly shelves off from fifteen inches to seventy-two.
+His foot slipped, and in another moment he
+was splashing wildly about in the water, and the loon
+was free.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A broken wing is not necessarily as serious a matter as
+you might suppose. The cold water kept the inflammation
+down, and it seemed as if all the vital forces of her
+strong, healthy body set to work at once to repair the
+damage. If any comparative anatomist ever gets hold of
+the widow and dissects her, he will find a curious swelling
+in the principal bone of her left wing, like a plumber's
+join in a lead pipe, and he will know what it means. It
+is the place where Nature soldered the broken pieces together.
+And it was while Nature was engaged in this
+soldering operation that Mahng arrived and began to
+cultivate the widow's acquaintance.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"<i>In the spring a fuller crimson</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>comes upon the robin's breast</i>,"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>and in the spring the loon puts on his wedding-garment,
+and his fancy, like the young man's, "lightly turns to
+thoughts of love."</div>
+
+<p>But speaking of Mahng's wedding-garment reminds me
+that I haven't told you about his winter dress. His back
+and wings were very dark-brown, and his breast and under-parts
+were white. His head and the upper portion of his
+neck were black; his bill was black, or blackish, and so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+were his feet. His coat was very thick and warm, and
+his legs were feathered right down to the heel-joint.
+More than five feet his wings stretched from tip to tip,
+and he weighed at least twelve pounds, and would be
+still larger before he died.</p>
+
+<p>As to his nuptial finery, its groundwork was much
+the same, but its trimmings were different and were very
+elegant. White spots appeared all over his back and the
+upper surfaces of his wings, some of them round, and
+some square. They were not thrown on carelessly, but
+were arranged in gracefully curving lines, and they quite
+changed his appearance, especially if one were as near
+him as one is supposed to be during a courting. His
+spring neckwear, too, was in exceedingly good taste, for
+he put on a sort of collar of very narrow vertical stripes,
+contrasting beautifully with the black around and between
+them. Higher up on his neck and head the deep
+black feathers gleamed and shone in the sunlight with
+brilliant irridescent tints of green and violet. He was a
+very handsome bird.</p>
+
+<p>And now everything was going north. The sun was
+going north, the wind was going north, the birds were
+going, and summer herself was sweeping up from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+tropics as fast as ever she could travel. Mahng was getting
+very restless. A dozen times a day he would spread
+his wings and beat the air furiously, dashing the spray in
+every direction, and almost lifting his heavy body out of
+the water. But the time was not yet come, and presently
+he would fold his pinions and go back to his courting.</p>
+
+<p>Do you think he was very inconstant? Do you blame
+him for not being more faithful to the memory of the
+bird who was shot at his side only a few months before?
+Don't be too hard on him. What can a loon do when
+the springtime calls and the wind blows fresh and strong,
+when the new strong wine of life is coursing madly
+through his veins, and when his dreams are all of the
+vernal flight to the lonely northland, where the water is
+cold and the fish are good, and where there are such delightful
+nesting-places around the marshy ponds?</p>
+
+<p>But how did his new friend feel about it? Would she
+go with him? Ah! Wouldn't she? Had not she, too,
+put on a wedding-garment just like his? And what was
+she there for, anyhow, if not to be wooed, and to find a
+mate, and to fly away with him a thousand miles to the
+north, and there, beside some lonely little lake, brood
+over her eggs and her young? Her wing was gaining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+strength all the time, and at last she was ready. You
+should have heard them laugh when the great day came
+and they pulled out for Michigan&mdash;Mahng a little in the
+lead, as became the larger and stronger, and his new wife
+close behind. There had been nearly a week of cooler
+weather just before the start, which had delayed them
+a little, but now the south wind was blowing again, and
+over and over it seemed to say,</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"<i>And we go, go, go away from here!</i><br />
+<span style="margin-left: .5em;"><i>On the other side the world we're overdue!</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><i>'Send the road lies clear before you</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;"><i>When the old Spring-fret comes o'er you,</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: .5em;"><i>And the Red Gods call for you.</i>"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>And the road was clear, and they went. Up, and up,
+and up; higher and higher, till straight ahead, stretching
+away to the very edge of the world, lay league after
+league of sunshine and air, only waiting the stroke of
+their wings. Now steady, steady! Beat, beat, beat!
+And the old earth sliding southward fifty miles an hour!
+No soaring&mdash;their wings were too short for that sort of
+work&mdash;and no quick wheeling to right or left, but hurtling
+on with whizzing pinions and eager eyes, straight
+toward the goal. Was it any wonder that they were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+happy, and that joyful shouts and wild peals of laughter
+came ringing down from the sky to tell us poor earthbound
+men and women that somewhere up in the blue,
+beyond the reach of our short-sighted eyes, the loons
+were hurrying home?</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs013.jpg" width="500" height="331" alt="&quot;The old earth sliding southward fifty miles an hour.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;The old earth sliding southward fifty miles an hour.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Over the fresh fields, green with the young wheat;
+over the winding rivers and the smiling lakes; over the&mdash;shut
+your eyes, and dream a little while, and see if you
+can imagine what it was like. Does it make you wish
+you were a loon yourself? Never mind; some day, perhaps,
+we too shall take our wedding-journeys in the air;
+not on feathered pinions, but with throbbing engines and
+whizzing wheels, and with all the power of steam or
+electricity to lift us and bear us onward. We shall skim
+the prairies and leap the mountains, and roam over the
+ocean like the wandering albatross. To-day we shall
+breathe the warm, spicy breath of the tropic islands, and
+to-morrow we shall sight the white gleam of the polar
+ice-pack. When the storm gathers we shall mount above
+it, and looking down we shall see the lightning leap from
+cloud to cloud, and the rattling thunder will come upward,
+not downward, to our ears. When the world below
+is steeped in the shadows of coming night, we shall still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+watch the sunset trailing its glories over the western
+woods and mountains; and when morning breaks we
+shall be the first to welcome the sunrise as it comes rushing
+up from the east a thousand miles an hour. The
+wind of the upper heavens will be pure and keen and
+strong, and not even a sleigh-ride on a winter's night can
+set the live blood dancing as it will dance and tingle up
+there above the clouds. And riding on the air, alone
+with the roaring engines that have become for the time
+a part of ourselves, we shall know at last what our earth
+is really like, for we shall see it as the loons see it&mdash;yes,
+as God and His angels see it&mdash;this old earth, on which
+we have lived for so many thousand years, and yet have
+never seen.</p>
+
+<p>But, after all, the upper heavens will not be home;
+and some day, as we shoot northward, or southward, or
+eastward, or westward, we shall see beneath us the spot
+that is to be for us the best and dearest place in all the
+world, and dropping down out of the blue we shall find
+something that is even better than riding on the wings of
+the wind. That was what happened to Mahng and his
+wife, for one spring evening, as they came rushing over
+the pine-tops and the maples and birches, they saw the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+Glimmerglass just ahead. The water lay like polished
+steel in the fading light, and the brown ranks of the still
+leafless trees stood dark and silent around the shores. It
+was very quiet, and very, very lonely; and the lake and
+the woods seemed waiting and watching for something.
+And into that stillness and silence the loons came with
+shouting and laughter, sweeping down on a long slant,
+and hitting the water with a splash. The echoes awoke
+and the Glimmerglass was alive, and summer had come
+to the northland.</p>
+
+<p>They chose a place where the shore was low and
+marshy, and there, only two or three yards from the
+water's edge, they built a rude nest of grass and weeds
+and lily-pads. Two large greenish eggs, blotched with
+dark-brown, lay in its hollow; and the wife sat upon
+them week after week, and covered them with the warm
+feathers of her broad, white breast. Once in a while she
+left them long enough to stretch her wings in a short
+flight, or to dive in search of a fish, but she was never
+gone very long. It was a weary vigil that she kept, but
+she sat there in daylight and darkness, through sunshine
+and storm, till at last the day came when there were four
+loons instead of two at the Glimmerglass.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The chicks were very smart and active, and they took
+to the water almost as soon as they were out of the shell,
+swimming and diving as if they had been accustomed to
+it for weeks instead of hours. In some ways, however,
+they required a good deal of care. For one thing, their
+little stomachs were not quite equal to the task of assimilating
+raw fish, and the parents had to swallow all their
+food for them, keep it down till it was partly digested,
+and then pass it up again to the hungry children. It
+made a good deal of delay, and it must have been very
+unpleasant, but it seemed to be the only practicable way
+of dealing with the situation. I am glad to say that it
+did not last very long, for by the time they were two
+weeks old the young loons were able to take their fish
+and reptiles and insects at first hand.</p>
+
+<p>When they first arrived the chicks were covered all
+over with stiff down, of a dark, sooty gray on their
+backs, and white underneath. But this did not last long,
+either. The first feathers soon appeared, and multiplied
+rapidly. I can't say that the young birds were particularly
+handsome, for even when their plumage was complete
+it was much quieter and duller of hue than their parents'.
+But they were fat and plump, and I think they thoroughly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+enjoyed life, especially before they discovered that
+there were enemies as well as friends in the world. That
+was a kind of knowledge that could not be avoided very
+long, however. They soon learned that men, and certain
+other animals such as hawks and skunks, were to be carefully
+shunned; and you should have seen them run on
+the water whenever a suspicious-looking character hove in
+sight. Their wings were not yet large enough for flying,
+but they flapped them with all their might, and scampered
+across the Glimmerglass so fast that their little legs fairly
+twinkled, and they actually left a furrow in the water
+behind them. But the bottom of the lake was really the
+safest refuge, and if a boat or a canoe pressed them too
+closely they would usually dive below the surface, while
+the older birds tried to lure the enemy off in some other
+direction by calling and shouting and making all sorts of
+demonstrations.</p>
+
+<p>Generally these tactics were successful, but not always.
+Once some boys cornered the whole family in a small,
+shallow bay, where the water was not deep enough for
+diving; and before they could escape one of the youngsters
+was driven up onto the beach. He tried to hide
+behind a log, but he was captured and earned off, and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+wish I had time to tell you of all the things that happened
+to him before he was finally killed and eaten by a
+dog. It was pretty tough on the old birds, as well as on
+him, but they still had one chick left, and you can't expect
+to raise <i>all</i> your children as long as bigger people
+are so fond of kidnapping and killing them.</p>
+
+<p>Not all the people who came to see them were bent on
+mischief, however. There was a party of girls and boys,
+for instance, who camped beside the Glimmerglass for a
+few weeks, and who liked to follow them around the lake
+in a row-boat and imitate their voices, just for the fun of
+making them talk back. One girl in particular became
+so accomplished in the loon language that Mahng would
+often get very much excited as he conversed with her, and
+would sometimes let the boat creep nearer and nearer
+until they were only a few rods apart. And then, all of
+a sudden, he would duck his head and go under, perhaps
+in the very middle of a laugh. The siren was getting
+a little too close. Her intentions might possibly be all
+right, but it was just as well to be on the safe side.</p>
+
+<p>The summer was nearly gone, and now Mahng did
+something which I fear you will strongly disapprove. I
+didn't want to tell you about it, but I suppose I must.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+Two or three male loons passed over the Glimmerglass
+one afternoon, calling and shouting as they went, and he
+flew up and joined them, and came back no more that
+summer. It looked like a clear case of desertion, but we
+must remember that he had stood by his wife all through
+the trying period of the spring and early summer, and
+that the time was at hand when the one chick that was
+left would go out into the world to paddle his own canoe,
+and when she would no longer need his help in caring for
+a family of young children. But you think he might
+have stayed with her, anyhow? Well, so do I; I'm sorry
+he didn't. They say that his cousins, the Red-throated
+Loons, marry for life, and live together from the wedding-day
+till death, and I don't see why he couldn't have done
+as well as they. But it doesn't seem to be the custom
+among the Great Northern Divers. Mahng was only
+following the usual practice of his kind, and if his first
+wife had not been shot it is likely that they would have
+separated before they had gone very far south. And yet
+it does not follow that the marriage was not a love-match.
+If you had seen them at their housekeeping I
+think you would have pronounced him a very good husband
+and father. Perhaps the conjugal happiness of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+spring and early summer was all the better for a taste of
+solitude during the rest of the year.</p>
+
+<p>As I said, the time was near when the chick would
+strike out for himself. He soon left his mother, and a
+little later she too started for the Gulf of Mexico.
+Summer was over, and the Glimmerglass was lonelier
+than ever.</p>
+
+<p>Mahng came back next spring, and of course he
+brought a wife with him. But was she the same wife
+who had helped him make the Glimmerglass ring with his
+shouting twelve months before? Well, I&mdash;I don't quite
+know. She looked very much like her, and I certainly
+hope she was the same bird. I should like to believe
+that they had been reunited somewhere down in Texas
+or Mississippi or Louisiana, and that they had come back
+together for another season of parental cares and joys.
+But when I consider the difficulties in the way I cannot
+help feeling doubtful about it. The two birds had gone
+south at different times and perhaps by different routes.
+Before they reached the lower Mississippi Valley they
+may have been hundreds of miles apart. Was it to be
+reasonably expected that Mahng, when he was ready to
+return, would search every pond and stream from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+Cumberland to the Gulf? And is it likely that, even
+if he had tried for weeks and weeks, he could ever have
+found his wife of the previous summer? His flight was
+swift and his sight keen, and his clarion voice rang far
+and wide over the marshes; but it is no joke to find
+one particular bird in a region covering half a dozen
+States. If they had arranged to come north separately,
+and meet at the Glimmerglass, there would not have been
+so many difficulties in the way, but they didn't do that.
+Anyhow, Mahng brought a wife home. That much, at
+least, is established. They set to work at once to build
+a nest and make ready for some new babies; but, alas!
+there was little parental happiness or responsibility in
+store for them that year.</p>
+
+<p>If you had been there you might have seen them swimming
+out from shore one bright, beautiful spring morning,
+when the sun had just risen, and the woods and waters
+lay calm and peaceful in the golden light, fairer than
+words can tell. They were after their breakfast, and
+presently they dived to see what was to be had. The
+light is dim down there in the depths of the Glimmerglass,
+the weeds are long and slimy, and the mud of the
+bottom is black and loathsome. But what does that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+matter? One can go back whenever one pleases. A few
+quick, powerful strokes will take you up into the open
+air, and you can see the woods and the sky. Aha!
+There is a herring, his scales shining like silver in the
+faint green light that comes down through the water.
+And there is a small salmon trout, with his gray-brown
+back and his golden sides. A fish for each of us.</p>
+
+<p>The loons darted forward at full speed; but the two
+fish made no effort to escape, and did not even wriggle
+when the long, sharp bills closed upon them. They were
+dead, choked to death by the fine threads of a gill-net.
+And now those same threads laid hold of the loons themselves,
+and a fearful struggle began.</p>
+
+<p>Mahng and his wife did not always keep their wings
+folded when they were under water. Sometimes they
+used them almost as they did in flying, and just now they
+had need of every muscle in their bodies. How their
+pinions lashed the water, and how their legs kicked and
+their long necks writhed, and how the soft mud rose in
+clouds and shut out the dim light! But the harder they
+fought the more tightly did the net grapple them, winding
+itself round and round their bodies, and soon lashing
+their wings down against their sides. Expert divers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+though they were, the loons were drowning. There was
+a ringing in their ears and a roaring in their heads, and
+the very last atoms of oxygen in their lungs were almost
+gone. Death was drawing very near, and the bright,
+sunshiny world where they had been so happy a moment
+before, the world to which they had thought they could
+return so quickly and easily, seemed a thousand miles
+away. One last effort, one final struggle, and if that
+failed there would be nothing more to do but go to sleep
+forever.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately for Mahng, his part of the net had been
+mildewed, and much of the strength had gone out of the
+linen threads. He was writhing and twisting with all his
+might, and suddenly he felt something give. One of the
+rotten meshes had torn apart. He worked with redoubled
+energy, and in a moment another thread gave way, and
+then another, and another. A second more and he was
+free. Quick, now, before the last spark goes out! With
+beating wings and churning paddles he fairly flew up
+through the green water toward the light, and on a sudden
+he shot out into the air, panting and gasping, and staring
+wildly around at the blue sky, and the quiet woods,
+and the smiling Glimmerglass. And how royally beautiful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+was the sunshine, and how sweet was the breath
+of life!</p>
+
+<p>But his mate was not with him, and a few hours later
+the fisherman found in his net the lifeless body of a
+drowned loon.</p>
+
+<p>Mahng went north. He had thought that his spring
+flight was over and that he would go no farther, but now
+the Glimmerglass was no longer home, and he spread his
+wings once more and took his way toward the Arctic
+Circle. Over the hills, crowded with maple and beech
+and birch; over the Great Tahquamenon Swamp, with
+its cranberry marshes, its tangles of spruce and cedar, and
+its thin, scattered ranks of tamarack; over the sandy
+ridges where the pine-trees stand tall and stately, and out
+on Lake Superior. The water was blue, and the sunshine
+was bright; the wind was fresh and cool, and the billows
+rolled and tumbled as if they were alive and were having
+a good time together. Together&mdash;that's the word.
+They were together, but Mahng was alone; and he wasn't
+having a good time at all. He wanted a home, and a
+nest, and some young ones, but he didn't find them that
+year, though he went clear to Hudson Bay, and looked
+everywhere for a mate. There were loons, plenty of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+them, but they had already paired and set up housekeeping,
+and he found no one who was in a position to halve
+his sorrows and double his joys.</p>
+
+<p>Something attracted his attention one afternoon when
+he was swimming on a little lake far up in the Canadian
+wilderness&mdash;a small red object that kept appearing and
+disappearing in a very mysterious fashion among the
+bushes that lined the beach. Mahng's bump of curiosity
+was large and well developed, and he gave one of his best
+laughs and paddled slowly in toward the shore. I think
+he had a faint and utterly unreasonable hope that it might
+prove to be what he was looking and longing for, though
+he knew very well that no female loon of his species ever
+had red feathers&mdash;nor a male, either, for that matter. It
+was a most absurd idea, and his dreams, if he really had
+them, were cut short by the report of a shotgun. A little
+cloud of smoke floated up through the bushes, and a
+charge of heavy shot peppered the water all around him.
+But if Mahng was curious he was also quick to take a
+hint. He had heard the click of the gun-lock, and before
+the leaden hail could reach him he was under water.
+His tail feathers suffered a little, but otherwise he was
+uninjured, and he did not come to the surface again<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+till he was far away from that deceitful red handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>The summer was an entire failure, and after a while
+Mahng gave it up in despair, and started south much
+earlier than usual. At the Straits of Mackinac he had
+another narrow escape, for he came very near killing himself
+by dashing head first against the lantern of a lighthouse,
+whose brilliant beams, a thousand times brighter
+than the light which had lured his first wife to her death,
+had first attracted and then dazzled and dazed him.
+Fortunately he swerved a trifle at the last moment, and
+though he brushed against an iron railing, lost his balance,
+and fell into the water, there were no bones broken
+and no serious damage done.</p>
+
+<p>The southland, as everybody knows, is the only proper
+place for a loon courtship. There, I am pleased to say,
+Mahng found a new wife, and in due time he brought her
+up to the Glimmerglass. That was only last spring,
+and there is but one more incident for me to relate.
+This summer has been a happy and prosperous one, but
+there was a time when it seemed likely to end in disaster
+before it had fairly begun.</p>
+
+<p>Just northeast of the Glimmerglass there lies a long,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+narrow, shallow pond. I believe I mentioned it when I
+was telling you about the Beaver. One afternoon Mahng
+had flown across to this pond, and as he was swimming
+along close to the shore he put his foot into a beaver-trap,
+and sprung it. Of course he did his best to get
+away, but the only result of his struggling was to work
+the trap out into deeper and deeper water until he was
+almost submerged. He made things almost boil with the
+fierce beating of his wings, but it was no use; he might
+better have saved his strength. He quieted down at last
+and lay very still, with only his head and neck out of
+water, and there he waited two mortal hours for something
+to happen.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile his wife sat quietly on her eggs&mdash;there were
+three of them this year&mdash;and drowsed away the warm
+spring afternoon. By and by she heard a tramping as of
+heavy feet approaching, and glancing between the tall
+grasses she saw, not a bear nor a deer, but something far
+worse&mdash;a man. She waited till he was within a few
+yards, and then she jumped up, scuttled down to the
+water as fast as she could go, and dived as if she was
+made of lead. The trapper glanced after her with a
+chuckle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Seems pretty badly scared," he said to himself, but
+his voice was not unkindly. His smile faded as he stood
+a moment beside the nest, looking at the eggs, and thinking
+of what would some day come forth from them. He
+was a solitary old fellow, with never a wife nor a child,
+nor a relation of any kind. His life in the woods was
+just what he had chosen for himself, and he would not
+have exchanged it for anything else in the world; but
+sometimes the loneliness of it came over him, and he
+wished that he had somebody to talk to. And now,
+looking at those eggs, and thinking of the fledglings that
+were coming to the loons, he wondered how it would seem
+if he had some children of his own. Pretty soon he
+glanced out on the lake again, and saw Mahng's wife
+sitting quietly on the water, just out of range.</p>
+
+<p>"Hope she won't stay away till they get cold," he
+thought, and went on his way across the swamp. The
+loon watched him till he passed out of sight, and then
+she swam in to the beach and pushed herself up her
+narrow runway to her old place. The eggs were still
+warm.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later the trapper stepped out of the
+bushes beside the pond, and caught sight of Mahng's head<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+sticking out of the water. He was considerably astonished,
+but he promptly laid hold of the chain and drew
+bird, trap, and all up onto the bank, and then he sat
+down on a log and laughed till the echoes went flying
+back and forth across the pond. Plastered with mud,
+dripping wet, and with his left leg fast in the big steel
+killing-machine, Mahng was certainly a comical sight.
+All the fight was soaked out of him, and he lay prone
+upon the ground and waited for the trapper to do what he
+pleased. But the trapper did nothing&mdash;only sat on his
+log, and presently forgot to laugh. He was thinking of
+the sitting loon whom he had disturbed a little while before.
+This was probably her mate, and again there came
+over him a vague feeling that life had been very good to
+these birds, and had given them something which he, the
+man, had missed. He was growing old. A few more
+seasons and there would be one trapper less in the Great
+Tahquamenon Swamp; and he would die without&mdash;well,
+what was the use of talking or thinking about it? But
+the loons would hatch their young, and care for them and
+protect them until they were ready to go out into the
+world, and then they would send them away to the south.
+A few weeks later they would follow, and next spring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+they would come back and do it all over again. That is&mdash;they
+would if he didn't kill them.</p>
+
+<p>He rose from his log, smiling again at the abject look
+with which Mahng watched him, and putting one foot on
+each of the two heavy steel springs, he threw his weight
+upon them and crushed them down. Mahng felt the
+jaws relax, and suddenly he knew that he was free. The
+strength came back with a rush to his weary limbs, and
+he sprang up, scrambled down the bank and into the
+water, and was gone. A few minutes later he reappeared
+far down the pond, and rising on the wing he flew away
+with a laugh toward the Glimmerglass.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE MAKING OF A GLIMMERGLASS BUCK</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class='cap'>I &nbsp;DON'T know that he was a record-breaker, but he
+was certainly much larger and more powerful than the
+average buck, and he was decidedly good-looking, even for
+a deer. There were one or two slight blemishes&mdash;to be
+described later&mdash;in his physical make-up; but they were
+not very serious, and except for them he was very handsome
+and well-formed. I can't give you the whole story
+of his life, for that would take several books, but I shall
+try to tell you how he became the biggest buck and the
+best fighter of his day and generation in the woods around
+the Glimmerglass. He was unusually favored by Providence,
+for besides being so large and strong he was given
+a weapon such as very few full-grown Michigan bucks
+have ever possessed.</div>
+
+<p>He had a good start in life, and it is really no wonder
+that he distanced all his relations. In the first place, he
+arrived in the woods a little earlier in the year than deer
+babies usually do. This was important, for it lengthened
+his first summer, and gave more opportunity for growth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+before the return of cold weather. If the winter had
+lingered, or if there had been late frosts or snow-storms,
+his early advent might have been anything but a blessing;
+but the spring proved a mild one, and there was plenty of
+good growing weather for fawns. Then, too, his mother
+as in the very prime of life, and for the time being he
+was her only child. If there had been twins, as there
+were the year before, he would, of course, have had to
+share her milk with a brother or sister; but as it was
+he enjoyed all the benefits of a natural monopoly, and he
+grew and prospered accordingly, and was a baby to be
+proud of.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs014.jpg" width="500" height="403" alt="&quot;He was a baby to be proud of.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;He was a baby to be proud of.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And his mother took good care of him, and never tried
+to show him off before the other people of the woods.
+She knew that it was far safer and wiser to keep him concealed
+as long as possible, and not let anyone know that
+she had him. So instead of letting him wander with her
+through the woods when she went in search of food, she
+generally left him hidden in a thicket or behind a bush or
+a fallen tree. There he spent many a long, lonely hour,
+idly watching the waving branches and the moving shadows,
+and perhaps thinking dim, formless, wordless baby
+thoughts, or looking at nothing and thinking of nothing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+but just sleeping the quiet sleep of infancy, and living,
+and growing, and getting ready for hard times.</p>
+
+<p>At first the Fawn knew no difference between friends
+and enemies, but the instinct of the hunted soon awoke
+and told him when to be afraid. If a hostile animal came
+by while the doe was gone, he would crouch low, with his
+nose to the ground and his big ears laid back on his neck;
+or if pressed too closely he would jump up and hurry away
+to some better cover, with leaps and bounds so light and
+airy that they seemed the very music of motion. But
+that did not happen very often. His hiding-places were
+well chosen, and he usually lay still till his mother came
+back.</p>
+
+<p>When she thought he was large enough, and strong
+and swift enough, she let him travel with her; and then
+he became acquainted with several new kinds of forest&mdash;with
+the dark hemlock groves, and the dense cedar swamps;
+with the open tamarack, where the trees stand wide apart,
+and between them the great purple-and-white lady's-slippers
+bloom; with the cranberry marshes, where pitcher-plants
+live, and white-plumed grasses nod in the breeze;
+with sandy ridges where the pine-trees purr with pleasure
+when the wind strokes them; with the broad, beautiful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+Glimmerglass, laughing and shimmering in the sunshine,
+and with all the sights and the sounds of that wonderful
+world where he was to spend the years of his deerhood.</p>
+
+<p>They were a very silent pair. When his breakfast was
+ready she would sometimes call him with a low murmuring,
+and he would answer her with a little bleat; but
+those were almost the only sounds that were ever heard
+from them, except the rustling of the dry leaves around
+their feet. Yet they understood each other perfectly,
+and they were very happy together. There was little
+need of speech, for all they had to do the livelong day
+was to wander about while the doe picked up her food,
+and then, when she had eaten her fill, to lie down in some
+sheltered place, and there rest and chew the cud till it
+was time to move again.</p>
+
+<p>Life wasn't all sunshine, of course. There were plenty
+of hard things for the baby Buck to put up with, and
+perhaps the worst were the mosquitoes and the black-flies
+and "no-see-'ems" that swarmed in the woods and
+swamps through the month of June. They got into his
+mouth and into his nose; they gathered in circles around
+his eyes; and they snuggled cosily down between the
+short hairs of his pretty, spotted coat, and sucked the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+blood out of him till it seemed as if he would soon go
+dry. For a while they were almost unbearable, but I
+suppose the woods-people get somewhat hardened to
+them. Otherwise I should think our friends would have
+been driven mad, for there was never any respite from
+their attacks, except possibly a very stormy day, or a
+bath in the lake, or a saunter on the shore.</p>
+
+<p>At the eastern end of the Glimmerglass there is a
+broad strip of sand beach, where, if there happens to be
+a breeze from the water, one can walk and be quite free
+from the flies; though in calm weather, or with an offshore
+wind, it is not much better than the woods.
+There, during fly-time, the doe and her baby were often
+to be found; and to see him promenading up and down
+the hard sand, with his mother looking on, was one of
+the prettiest sights in all the wilderness. The ground-color
+of his coat was a bright bay red, somewhat like that
+of his mother's summer clothing; but deeper and richer
+and handsomer, and with pure white spots arranged in
+irregular rows all along his neck and back and sides. He
+was so sleek and polished that he fairly glistened in the
+sunshine, like a well-groomed horse; his great dark eyes
+were brighter than a girl's at her first ball; and his ears<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+were almost as big as a mule's, and a million times as
+pretty. But best and most beautiful of all was the marvellous
+life and grace and spirit of his every pose and
+motion. When he walked, his head and neck were
+thrust forward and drawn back again at every step with
+the daintiest gesture imaginable; and his tiny pointed
+hoofs touched the ground so lightly, and were away again
+so quickly, that you hardly knew what they had done.
+If anything startled him, he stamped with his forefoot on
+the hard sand, and tossed his head in the air with an expression
+that was not fear, but alertness, and even defiance.
+And when he leaped and ran&mdash;but there's no use
+in trying to describe that.</p>
+
+<p>By the middle of July most of the flies were gone, and
+the deer could travel where they pleased without being
+eaten alive. And then, almost before they knew what
+had happened, the summer was gone, too, and the autumn
+had come. The Fawn's white spots disappeared, and both
+he and his mother put off their thin red summer clothing
+and donned the blue coat of fall, which would by and by
+fade into the gray of winter&mdash;a garment made of longer,
+coarser hairs, which were so thick that they had to stand
+on end because there wasn't room for them to lie down,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+and which made such a warm covering that one who
+wore it could sleep all night in the snow, and rise in the
+morning dry and comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>The Fawn had thriven wonderfully. Already the
+budding antlers were pushing through the skin on the
+top of his head, which alone is pretty good proof that he
+was a remarkable baby. But, of course, the infancy of a
+wild animal is always much shorter than that of a human
+child. It is well that this is so, for if the period of weakness
+and helplessness was not shortened for them, there
+would probably be very few who would ever survive its
+dangers and reach maturity. The Fawn was weaned
+early in the autumn; though he still ran with his mother,
+and she showed him what herbs and leaves were pleasantest
+to the taste and best for building up bone and muscle,
+and where the beechnuts were most plentiful. The
+mast was good that fall, which isn't always the case, and
+that was another lucky star in young Buck's horoscope.
+So much depends on having plenty to eat the first year.</p>
+
+<p>And now the doe was thriving as well as her son.
+Through the summer she had been thin and poor, for the
+Fawn had fed on her life and strength, and the best of
+all that came to her she had given to him; but the strain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+was over at last, and there were granted her a few weeks
+in which to prepare for the season of cold and storm and
+scanty food. She made the best of them, and in an
+amazingly short time she was rolling fat.</p>
+
+<p>Everything was lovely and the goose hung high, when
+all of a sudden the peace and quiet of their every-day
+lives were rudely broken. The hunting season had come,
+and half-a-dozen farmers from lower Michigan had
+camped beside the Glimmerglass. They were not really
+very formidable. If one wants to kill deer, one should
+learn to shoot straight and to get around in the woods
+without making quite as much noise as a locomotive.
+But their racket was intolerable, and after a day or two
+the doe and the Fawn left home and spent the next three
+or four weeks near a secluded little pond several miles
+away to the southeast.</p>
+
+<p>By the first of December these troublous times were
+over, and they had returned to their old haunts in the
+beech and maple woods, where they picked up a rather
+scanty living by scraping the light snow away with
+their forefeet in search of the savory nuts. But before
+Christmas there came a storm which covered the ground
+so deeply that they could no longer dig out enough food<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+to keep them from going hungry; and they were forced
+to leave the high lands and make their way to the evergreen
+swamps around the head-waters of the Tahquamenon.
+There they lived on twigs of balsam and hemlock
+and spruce, with now and then a mouthful of moss
+or a nutritious lichen. Little by little the fat on their
+ribs disappeared, they grew lank and lean again, and the
+bones showed more and more plainly through their heavy
+winter coats. If one of those November hunters had
+succeeded in setting his teeth in their flesh he would have
+found that it had a very pleasant, nutty flavor, but in
+February it would have tasted decidedly of hemlock.
+Yet they were strong and healthy, in spite of their boniness,
+and of course you can't expect to be very fat in
+winter.</p>
+
+<p>There were worse things than hunger. One afternoon
+they were following a big buck down a runway&mdash;all
+three of them minding their own business and behaving
+in a very orderly and peaceable manner&mdash;when a shanty-boy
+stepped out from behind a big birch just ahead of
+them, and said, "Aah!" very derisively and insultingly.
+The wind was blowing from them to him, and they hadn't
+had the least idea that he was there until they were within<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+three rods of his tree. The buck was so startled that
+for an instant he simply stood still and stared, which
+was exactly what the shanty-boy had expected him to
+do. He had stopped so suddenly that his forefeet were
+thrust forward into the snow, and he was leaning backward
+a trifle. His head was up, his eyes were almost
+popping out of their sockets, and there was such a look
+of astonishment on his face that the man laughed as he
+raised his gun and took aim. In a second the deer had
+wheeled and was in the air, but a bullet broke his back
+just as he left the ground, and he came tumbling down
+again in a shapeless heap. His spinal cord was cut, and
+half his body was dead; but he would not give up even
+then, and he half rose on his forefeet and tried to drag
+himself away. The shanty-boy stepped to his side with
+a knife in his hand, the deer gave one loud bleat of fear
+and pain, and then it was all over.</p>
+
+<p>But by that time the doe and the Fawn were far down
+the runway&mdash;out of sight, and out of danger. Next
+day they passed that way again, and saw a Canada lynx
+standing where the buck had fallen, licking his chops as
+if he had just finished a good meal. It is hard work
+carrying a deer through the woods, and the shanty-boy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+had lightened his load as much as possible. Lynxes are
+not nice. The mother and son pulled their freight as
+fast as they could travel.</p>
+
+<p>When the world turned green again they went back to
+the Glimmerglass, but they had not been there long before
+the young Buck had his nose put out of joint by the
+arrival of two new babies. Thenceforth his mother had
+all she could do to take care of them, without paying any
+further attention to him. The days of his fawnhood
+were over, and it was time for him to strike out into the
+world and make his own living.</p>
+
+<p>However, I don't think he was very lonesome. There
+were plenty of other deer in the woods, and though he
+did not associate with any of them as he had with his
+mother, yet he may have enjoyed meeting them occasionally
+in his travels. And there was ever so much to do
+and to think about. Eating took up a good deal of
+time, for he was very active and was still growing, and
+his strong young body was constantly calling for more
+food. And it wasn't enough merely to find the food and
+swallow it, for no sooner was his stomach full than he
+had to lie down and chew the cud for an hour or so.
+And, of course, the black-flies and mosquitoes and "no-see-'ems"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+helped to make things interesting, just as they
+had the year before. Strictly speaking, it is impossible
+to be lonely in the woods during fly-time. He changed
+his clothes, too, and put on a much handsomer dress,
+though I doubt if he took as much interest in that operation
+as most of us would. The change contributed
+greatly to his comfort, for his light summer garment was
+much better adapted to warm weather than his winter
+coat, but it did not require any conscious effort on his
+part. On hot days he sometimes waded out into the
+lake in search of lily-pads, and the touch of the cool
+water was very grateful. Occasionally he would take a
+long swim, and once or twice he paddled clear across the
+Glimmerglass, from one shore to the other.</p>
+
+<p>And it was during this summer that he raised his first
+real antlers. Those of the previous autumn had been
+nothing but two little buds of bone, but these were
+pointed spikes, several inches in length, standing straight
+up from the top of his head without a fork or a branch or
+a curve. They did not add very much to his good looks,
+and, of course, they dropped off early in the following
+winter, but they were the forerunners of the beautiful
+branching antlers of his later years, and if he thought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+about them at all they were probably as welcome as a
+boy's first mustache.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the following autumn an event occurred which
+left its mark on him for the rest of his life. One night
+he wandered into a part of the woods where some lumbermen
+had been working during the day. On the ground
+where they had eaten their lunch he found some baked
+beans and a piece of dried apple-pie, and he ate them
+greedily and was glad that he had come. But he found
+something else, too. One of the road-monkeys had carelessly
+left his axe in the snow with the edge turned up.
+The Buck stepped on it, and it slipped in between the
+two halves of his cloven hoof, and cut deep into his foot.
+The wound healed in the course of time, but from that
+night the toes&mdash;they were those of his left hind foot&mdash;were
+spread far apart, instead of lying close together as
+they should have done. Sticks and roots sometimes
+caught between them in a way that was very annoying,
+and his track was different from that of any other deer in
+the woods, which was not a thing to be desired. He was
+not crippled, however, for he could still leap almost, if not
+quite, as far as ever, and run almost as fast.</p>
+
+<p>He continued to grow and prosper, and the next<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+summer he raised a pair of forked antlers with two
+tines each.</p>
+
+<p>And now he is well started down the runway of life,
+and we must leave him to travel by himself for two or
+three years. He ranged the woods far and near, and
+came to know them as a man knows his own house; but
+no matter what places he visited, the old haunts that his
+mother had shown him were the best of all, as the deer
+have learned by the experience of generation after generation.
+He always came back again to the Glimmerglass,
+and as the seasons went by I often saw his broad, spreading
+hoof-print on the sandy beach where they two had so
+often walked in that first summer. He evidently had
+plenty of company, and was probably enjoying life, for
+all around were other foot-prints that were narrow and
+delicately pointed, as a deer's should be. Some of them,
+of course, were his own, left by his three perfect feet; but
+others were those of his friends and acquaintances, and it
+is quite possible that some of the tiniest and daintiest
+were made by his children.</p>
+
+<p>That beach is a delightful place for a promenade on a
+summer night, and besides the deer-tracks one can sometimes
+find there the trails of the waddling porcupines, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+broad, heavy print left by a black bear as he goes shambling
+by, and the handwriting of many another of the
+woods-people. Strange and interesting scenes must often
+be enacted on the smooth, hard sand that lies between the
+woods and the water, and it is a pity that the show always
+comes to a sudden close if any would-be spectators
+appear, and that we never see anything but the foot-prints
+of the performers.</p>
+
+<p>With each recurring hunting season the Buck and the
+other deer that made their homes around the Glimmerglass
+were driven away for a time. A few stayed, or at
+least remained as near as they dared; but compared with
+summer the neighborhood was almost depopulated. And
+in his fourth year, in spite of all his efforts to keep out
+of harm's way, the Buck came very near losing his life at
+the hands of a man who had really learned how to hunt&mdash;not
+one of the farmers who went ramming about the
+woods, shooting at everything in sight, and making noise
+enough to startle even the porcupines.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, late in the autumn, the judge left his
+court-room in Detroit and started for his house. He
+bought an evening paper as he boarded the street-car;
+and, as Fate would have it, the first thing that met his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+eye as he unfolded it was the forecast for upper Michigan:
+"Colder; slight snow-fall; light northerly winds."
+The judge folded the paper again and put it in his
+pocket, and all the rest of the way home he was dreaming
+of things that he had seen before&mdash;of the white and
+silent woods, of deer-tracks in the inch-deep snow, of the
+long still-hunt under dripping branches and gray November
+skies, of a huge buck feeding unconcernedly beneath
+the beech-trees, of nutty venison steaks broiling on the
+coals, and, finally, of another pair of antlers for his dining-room.
+Court had adjourned for three days, and that
+night he took the train for the north. And while he
+travelled, the snow came down softly and silently, melting
+at first as fast as it fell, and then, as the cold grew
+sharper, clothing the woods in a thin, white robe, the first
+gift of the coming winter.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the Buck was lying behind a fallen tree,
+chewing his cud, when the breeze brought him a whiff of
+an unpleasant human odor. He jumped up and hurried
+away, and the judge heard him crash through the bushes,
+and searched until he had found his trail. An hour
+later, as the Buck was nosing for beechnuts in the snow,
+a rifle cracked and a bullet went zipping by and carried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+off the very tip of his left antler. He dropped his white
+flag and was off like a shot.</p>
+
+<p>Chase a wounded deer, and he will run for miles; leave
+him alone, and if he is badly hurt he will soon lie down.
+The chances are that he will never get up again. The
+judge knew that the Buck was hit, for he had seen his
+tail come down. But was he hit hard? There was no
+blood on the trail, and the judge decided to follow.</p>
+
+<p>The Buck hurried on, but before long his leaps began
+to grow shorter. After a mile or so he stopped, looked
+back, and listened. The woods were very, very still, and
+for all that he could see or hear there was not the least
+sign of danger. Yet he was afraid, and in a few minutes
+he pushed on again, though not as rapidly as
+before. As the short afternoon wore away he travelled
+still more slowly, and his stops were longer and more
+frequent. And at last, just before sunset, as he stood
+and watched for the enemy who might or might not be
+on his trail, he heard a twig snap, and saw a dark form
+slip behind a tree. This time he ran as he had never
+run before in all his life.</p>
+
+<p>The judge spent the night at the nearest lumber-camp,
+and the next morning he was out again as soon as he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+could see, following his own trail back to where he had
+left that of the Buck. On the way he crossed the tracks
+of two other deer, but they had no temptations for him.
+He wanted to solve the mystery of that spreading hoof-print,
+and to make sure that his shot had not been a clean
+miss. And now began a day which was without precedent
+in the Buck's whole history. Those woods are not the
+best in the world for a deer who has to play hide-and-seek
+with a man, for there are few bare ridges or half-wooded
+slopes from which he can look back to see if anyone is
+following him. Even the glades and the open cranberry
+swamps are small and infrequent. An almost unbroken
+forest sweeps away in every direction, and everywhere
+there is cover for the still-hunter. And when the ground
+is carpeted with snow an inch and a half deep, as it was
+then, and at every step a deer must leave behind him a
+trail as plain as a turnpike road, then it is not strange if
+he feels that he has run up against a decidedly tough
+proposition. Eyes, ears, and nose are all on the alert, and
+all doing their level best, but what eye can penetrate the
+cedar swamp beyond a few yards; or what ear can always
+catch the tread of a moccasin on the moss and the snow
+before it comes within rifle range; or what nose, no matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+how delicate, can detect anything but what happens
+to lie in its owner's path, or what the wind chooses to
+bring it? Many a foe had crossed the Buck's trail in the
+course of his life; but none had ever followed him like
+this&mdash;silently and relentlessly&mdash;slowly, but without a moment's
+pause. A few leaps were always enough to put
+the judge out of sight, and half an hour's run left him
+far behind; but in a little while he was there again,
+creeping cautiously through the undergrowth, and peering
+this way and that for a glimpse of a plump, round,
+blue-gray body. Once he fired before the deer knew that
+he was at hand, and if a hanging twig had not turned
+the bullet a trifle from its course, the still-hunt would
+have ended then and there.</p>
+
+<p>But late in the afternoon the Buck thought that he
+had really shaken his pursuer off, and the judge was beginning
+to think so, too. They had not seen each other
+for two or three hours, the day was nearly over, and
+there were signs of a change in the weather. If the Buck
+could hold out till nightfall, and then the snow should
+melt before morning, he would be comparatively safe.</p>
+
+<p>In his fear of the enemy lurking in the rear, he had
+forgotten all other dangers; and without quite realizing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+what he was doing he had come back to the Glimmerglass,
+and was tramping once more up and down the old
+familiar runways. Presently he came upon a huge maple,
+lying prostrate on the ground. He walked around its
+great bushy head and down toward its foot; and there
+he found a broad, saucer-shaped hollow, left when the
+tree was torn up by the roots in some wild gale. On one
+side rose a mass of earth, straight as a stone wall and
+four or five feet in height; and against its foot lay one
+of the most tempting beds of dead leaves that he had ever
+seen, free from snow, dry as a whistle, soft and downy.
+The sight of it was too much for him. He was very
+weary, his limbs fairly ached with fatigue, and for the
+last hour his spread hoof had given him a good deal of
+pain. His enemy was nowhere in sight, and in spite of
+his misgivings he sank down on the couch with a sigh of
+comfort, and began to chew his cud.</p>
+
+<p>The judge was about ready to give up for the night
+when he, too, came upon that fallen maple. He saw the
+wall of earth and twisted roots, with the deer-tracks leading
+toward it; and slowly, softly, silently, he crept down
+toward the Buck's shelter.</p>
+
+<p>There was no wind that evening, and the woods seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+perfectly still; but now, unnoticed by the judge, a faint,
+faint puff came wandering among the trees, as if on purpose
+to warn the deer of his danger. Suddenly he started,
+sniffed the air, and was up and away like a race-horse&mdash;not
+leaping nor bounding now, but running low, with his
+head down, and his antlers laid back on his neck. If he
+had been in the cedar swamp he would have escaped unhurt,
+but up in the hardwood the trees do not stand so
+close, and one can see a little farther. The judge fired
+before he could get out of sight, and he dropped with
+three ribs broken and a bullet lodged behind his right
+shoulder. He was up again in an instant, but there
+were blood-stains on the snow where he had lain, and
+this time the judge did not follow. Instead of giving
+chase he went straight back to the lumber-camp, feeling
+almost as sure of that new pair of antlers as if he had
+carried them with him.</p>
+
+<p>The Buck ran a little way, with his flag lowered and
+the blood spurting, and then he lay down to rest, just as
+the judge knew he would. The bleeding soon stopped,
+but it left him very weak and tired, and that night was
+the most miserable he had ever known. The darkness
+settled down thick and black over the woods, the wind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+began to blow, and by and by the rain commenced to
+fall&mdash;first a drizzle, and then a steady pour. Cold and
+wet, wounded and tired and hungry, the Buck was about
+as wretched as it is possible for a mortal to be. And
+yet that rain was the one and only thing that could
+save him. Under its melting touch the snow began to
+disappear, and before morning the ground was bare again.
+Even the blood-stains were washed away. It would take
+a better nose than the judge's to track him now.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the danger was not over, by any means. The
+judge knew very nearly where to look for him, and could
+probably find him if he did not get up and move on.
+And to move on, or even to rise to his feet, seemed utterly
+impossible. The least motion sent the most exquisite
+pain shooting through his whole body, and I believe
+he would have died where he lay, either at the hands of
+the judge or from exhaustion, if another man hadn't
+come along. The judge would have advanced slowly and
+quietly, and the deer might never have known he was
+coming till a rifle bullet hit him; but this man's errand
+must have been a different one, for he came striding noisily
+through the trees and bushes and over the dead leaves,
+whistling "I Want Yer, Ma Honey," at the top of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+whistle. If you are obliged to be out in the woods during
+the hunting season, and don't care to kill anything,
+it is always best to make as much noise as you can.
+There is less danger that some other fool will take you
+for a deer and shoot you dead. The Buck heard him, of
+course, and tried to rise, only to sink back with a groan.
+He couldn't do it, or at least he thought he couldn't.
+But when the man came around a little balsam only two
+rods away, then his panic got the better of his pain, and
+he jumped up and made off at a clumsy, limping run.
+Every joint seemed on fire, and he ached from the top of
+his head to the toes of that poor left hind-foot. But
+after the first plunge it was not quite so bad. The motion
+took some of the stiffness out of his limbs, and by
+the time the judge arrived he was a mile away and was
+thinking about breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>We must do the sportsman the justice of saying that
+his remorse was very keen when he stepped aboard the
+train that night, bound for Detroit. He had wounded a
+deer and had let it get away from him, to suffer, and
+probably to die a painful, lingering death. The whole
+day&mdash;the last of the hunting season and of his court recess&mdash;had
+been spent in an unavailing search; not merely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+because he wanted some venison and a pair of antlers to
+carry home with him, but because he wanted to put the
+Buck out of his misery. He had failed everywhere, and
+he felt sorry and ashamed, and wished he had stayed at
+home. But, as it happened, the Buck did not want to
+be put out of his misery. Just as the judge took the
+train he was lying down for the night. He would be
+stiff when he rose again, but not as stiff as he had been
+that morning. He would be weak and tired, but he
+would still be able to travel and find food. He would
+lose his plumpness and roundness, no doubt, and lose
+them very rapidly. The winter would probably be a hard
+one, with such a misfortune as this at its very beginning.
+But no matter, it would pass. He wasn't the first Buck
+who had had his ribs smashed by an injection of lead and
+had lived to tell the tale.</p>
+
+<p>The next year it was his antlers that got him into
+trouble&mdash;his antlers and his quarrelsomeness. Two
+round, black, velvet-covered knobs had appeared in spring
+on the top of his head, and had pushed up higher and
+higher till they formed cylindrical columns, each one
+leaning outward and a little backward. They were hot
+as fever with the blood that was rushing through them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+building up the living masonry; and at the upper ends,
+where the work was newest, they were soft and spongy,
+and very sensitive, so that the least touch was enough to
+give pain. Longer and longer they grew, and harder
+and harder; by and by curving forward and inward; and
+one after another the tines appeared. And at last, in
+the early autumn, the tall towers of bone were complete,
+the blood ceased to course through them, and the Buck
+rubbed them against the tree-trunks until the velvety
+skin was all worn off, and they were left smooth and
+brown and polished. They were a handsome pair, spreading
+and branching very gracefully over his forehead, and
+bearing four tines to each beam. It is a mistake to suppose,
+as so many people do, that the number of tines on
+each antler invariably corresponds to the number of years
+that its owner has lived; but it very often does, especially
+before he has passed the prime of life.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner were the antlers finished than the Buck
+began to grow fat. He had been eating heartily for
+months, but he hadn't been able to put much flesh on his
+ribs as long as he had that big, bony growth to feed.
+Bucks and does are alike in this, that for both of them
+the summer is a season of plenty, but not of growing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+plump and round and strong. The difference between
+them is that the does give their strength and vitality to
+the children they are nursing, while the bucks pile theirs
+up on their own foreheads.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 293px;">
+<img src="images/gs015.jpg" width="293" height="450" alt="&quot;The buck was nearing the prime of life.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;The buck was nearing the prime of life.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And there was another change which came with the
+autumn. Through the summer he had been quiet and
+gentle, and had attended very strictly to his own affairs;
+but now the life and vigor and vitality which for weeks
+and months had been pouring into that tall, beautiful
+structure on his forehead were all surging like a tide
+through his whole body; and he became very passionate
+and excitable, and spent much time in rushing about the
+woods in search of other deer, fighting those of his own
+sex, and making love to the does. The year was at its
+high-water mark, and the Buck was nearing his prime.
+Food was plenty; everywhere the beechnuts were dropping
+on the dry leaves; the autumn sunshine was warm
+and mellow; the woods were gay with scarlet and gold
+and brown, and the very taste of the air was enough to
+make one happy. Was it any wonder if he sometimes
+felt as if he would like to fight every other buck in
+Michigan, and all of them at once?</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon in October he fought a battle with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+another buck who was very nearly his match in size and
+strength&mdash;a battle that came near being the end of both
+of them. There was a doe just vanishing among the
+bushes when the fuss began, and the question at issue was
+which should follow her and which shouldn't. It would
+be easy enough to find her, for, metaphorically speaking,
+"her feet had touched the meadows, and left the daisies
+rosy." Wherever she went, a faint, faint fragrance clung
+to the dead leaves, far too delicate for a human nose to
+detect, yet quite strong enough for a buck to follow. But
+the trail wasn't broad enough for two, and the first thing
+to be done was to have a scrap and see which was the
+better and more deserving deer. And, as it turned
+out, the scent grew cold again, and the doe never heard
+that eager patter of hoofs hurrying down the runway
+behind her.</p>
+
+<p>The bucks came together like two battering-rams, with
+a great clatter and clash of antlers, but after the first
+shock the fight seemed little more than a pushing-match.
+Each one was constantly trying to catch the other off his
+guard and thrust a point into his flesh, but they never
+succeeded. A pair of widely branching antlers is as useful
+in warding off blows as in delivering them. Such a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
+perfect shield does it make, when properly handled, that
+at the end of half an hour neither of the bucks was suffering
+from anything but fatigue, and the issue was as far as
+ever from being settled. There was foam on their lips,
+and sweat on their sides; their mouths were open, and
+their breath came in gasps; every muscle was working its
+hardest, pushing and shoving and guarding; and they
+drove each other backward and forward through the
+bushes, and ploughed up the ground, and scattered the dry
+leaves in their struggles; and yet there was not a scratch
+on either shapely body.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, they backed off and rushed together again with
+such violence that our Buck's antlers were forced apart
+just a trifle, and his enemy's slipped in between them.
+There was a little snap as they sprang back into position,
+and the mischief was done. The two foes were locked
+together in an embrace which death itself could not
+loosen.</p>
+
+<p>The next few weeks were worse than a nightmare. If
+one went forward, the other had to go backward; and
+neither could go anywhere or do anything without getting
+the consent of the other or else carrying him along
+by main force. Many things could not be done at all&mdash;not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+even when both were willing and anxious to do them.
+They could not run or leap. They could not see, except
+out of the corners of their eyes. They would never again
+toss those beautiful antlers in the air, for they had come
+together with their heads held low, and in that position
+they must remain. They could not even lie down without
+twisting their necks till they ached as if they were breaking.
+With their noses to the ground, and with anger
+and misery in their hearts, they pushed and hauled each
+other this way and that through the woods. And wherever
+they went, they were always struggling and fighting
+and striving for every mouthful of food that came within
+reach. It was little enough that they found at the best,
+and it would have been better for both of them if they
+could have agreed to divide it evenly, but of course that
+would have been asking too much of deer nature. Each
+took all he could get, and at first they were so evenly
+matched that each secured somewhere near his fair share.
+They spied a beechnut on the ground, or a bit of lichen,
+or a tender twig; and together they made a dive for it.
+Two noses were thrust forward&mdash;no, not forward, sidewise&mdash;and
+two mouths were open to grasp the precious
+morsel which would enable its possessor to keep up the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+fight a little longer. Sometimes one got it, and sometimes
+the other; but from the very beginning our Buck
+was a shade the stronger, and his superiority grew with
+every mouthful that he managed to wrest from his fellow-prisoner.
+Both of them were losing flesh rapidly, but he
+kept his longer than the other. And at last they reached
+the point where, by reason of his greater strength, he got
+everything and the other nothing, and then the end was
+near. It would have come long before if both had not
+been in prime condition on the day of the battle.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs016.jpg" width="500" height="322" alt="&quot;Wherever they went they were always struggling and fighting.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;Wherever they went they were always struggling and fighting.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>One dark, stormy night the two deer were stumbling
+and floundering over roots and bushes, trying to find
+their way down to the beach for a drink. Both of them
+were pretty well used up; and one was so weak that he
+could hardly stand, and could only walk by leaning
+heavily on the head and antlers of the other, who supported
+him because he was obliged to, and not out of
+friendliness. They were within a few rods of the beach
+when he whose strength was least stepped into a hole and
+fell, and his leg-bone snapped like a dry twig. He struggled
+and tried to rise; but his story was told, and before
+morning he was dead. For once our Buck's instinct of
+self-preservation had carried him too far. He had taken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+all the food for himself, and had starved his enemy; and
+now he was bound face to face to a corpse.</p>
+
+<p>Well, we won't talk about that. He stayed there
+twenty-four hours, and there would soon have been two
+dead bucks instead of one if something had not happened
+which he did not in the least expect&mdash;something which
+seemed like a blessed miracle, yet which was really the simplest
+and most natural thing in the world. A buck has no
+fixed time for the casting of his antlers. It usually occurs
+during the first half of the winter, but it has been known
+to take place as early as November and as late as April.
+The second night passed, and as it began to grow light
+again our friend lifted himself on his knees and his hind-legs,
+and wrestled mightily with his horrible bed-fellow;
+and suddenly his left antler came loose from his head.
+The right one was still fast, but it was easily disengaged
+from the tangle of branching horns, and in a moment he
+stood erect. The blood was running down his face from
+the pedicel where the antler had stood, and he was so
+weak and dizzy that his legs could hardly carry him, and
+so thin and wasted that he seemed the mere shadow of
+his former self. But he was free, and that long, horrible
+dream was over at last.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He tried to walk toward the lake, but fell before he
+had taken half-a-dozen steps; and for an hour he lay
+still and rested. It was like a taste of heaven, just to be
+able to hold his neck straight. The sun had risen by the
+time he was ready to try it again, and through the trees
+he saw the shimmer and sparkle of the Glimmerglass. He
+heard the wind talking to itself in the branches overhead,
+and the splashing of the ripples on the beach;
+and he staggered down to the margin and drank long
+and deep.</p>
+
+<p>That December was a mild one. The first light snow
+had already come and gone, and the next two weeks were
+bright and sunshiny. The Buck ate as he had never
+eaten before, and it was astonishing to see how rapidly
+he picked up, and how much he gained before Christmas.
+His good luck seemed to follow him month after month,
+for the winter was comparatively open, the snow was not
+as deep as usual, and the spring came early. By that
+time the ill effects of his terrible experience had almost
+entirely disappeared, and he was in nearly as good condition
+as is usual with the deer at that season of the year&mdash;which,
+of course, isn't really saying very much.</p>
+
+<p>Again, Nature's table was spread with good things, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+again he set to work to build a pair of antlers&mdash;a pair
+that should be larger and handsomer than any that had
+gone before. But as the summer lengthened it became
+evident that there was something wrong with those antlers,
+or at least with one of them. One seemed to be quite
+perfect. It was considerably longer than those of last
+year, its curve was just right, and it had five tines, which
+was the correct number and all that he could have asked.
+But the other, the left, was nothing but a straight, pointed
+spike, perhaps eight inches in length, shaped almost exactly
+like those of his first pair. The Buck never knew
+the reason for this deformity, and I'm not at all certain
+about it myself, though I have a theory. One
+stormy day in the early summer, a falling branch, torn
+from a tree-top by the wind, had struck squarely on that
+growing antler, then only a few inches long. It hurt him
+so that for a moment he was fairly blind and dizzy, and
+it is quite possible that the soft, half-formed bone was so
+injured that it could never reach its full development.
+Anyhow, it made him a rather queer-looking buck, with
+one perfect antler and one spike. But in everything else&mdash;except
+his spread hoof&mdash;he was without spot or blemish.
+He had well fulfilled the promise of his youth, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+he was big and strong and beautiful. Something he had
+lost, no doubt, of the grace and daintiness of his baby
+days; but he had also gained much&mdash;gained in stateliness
+and dignity, as well as in size and weight and strength.
+And even that spike antler was not without its advantages,
+as he learned a little later.</p>
+
+<p>As the autumn came round he was just as excitable and
+passionate, just as ready for fighting or love-making, as
+ever, and not one whit subdued by the disaster of the
+year before. And so one day he had another battle with
+another buck, while another doe&mdash;or perhaps the same
+one&mdash;made off through the trees and left a fragrant trail
+behind her. He and his adversary went at each other in
+the usual way, and for some time it seemed unlikely that
+either of them could ever do anything more than tire the
+other out by hard pushing. There was little danger that
+their antlers would get locked this time, with one pair so
+badly mismated; and it bade fair to be a very ordinary,
+every-day sort of a fight. But by and by our Buck saw
+his opportunity. The enemy exposed his left side, in an
+unguarded moment, and before he could recover himself
+that deformed antler had dealt him a terrible thrust. If
+the force of the blow had been divided among five tines<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+it would probably have had but little effect, but the single
+straight spike was as good as a sword or a bayonet, and
+it won the day. The deer with the perfect antlers was
+not only vanquished, but killed; and the victor was off on
+the trail of the doe.</p>
+
+<p>And so our friend became the champion of the Glimmerglass,
+and in all the woods there was not a buck that
+could stand against him.</p>
+
+<p>But his brother deer were not his only enemies. With
+the opening of the hunting season those farmers from
+lower Michigan came again, and day after day they beat
+the woods in search of game. This time, however, the
+Buck did not leave, or at least he did not go very far.
+For the last month he had been fighting everyone who
+would fight back, and perhaps his many easy victories
+had made him reckless. At any rate he was bolder than
+usual, and all through the season he stayed within a few
+miles of the Glimmerglass.</p>
+
+<p>The farmers had decidedly poor luck, and after hunting
+for two or three weeks without a single taste of venison
+they began to feel desperate. Finally, they secured the
+help of a trapper who owned a big English foxhound.
+Hunting with dogs was against the law, and at home they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+claimed to be very law-abiding citizens, but they had to
+have a deer, no matter what happened.</p>
+
+<p>The morning after the hound's arrival he got onto the
+trail of a doe and followed it for hours, until, as a last
+resort, she made for the Glimmerglass, jumped into the
+water, and started to swim across to the farther shore.
+The dog's work was done, and he stood on the bank and
+watched her go. For a few minutes she thought that she
+was out of danger, and that the friendly Glimmerglass had
+saved her; but presently she heard a sound of oars, and
+turning half-way round she lifted her head and shoulders
+out of the water, and saw a row-boat and three men bearing
+down upon her. A look of horror came into her face
+as she sank back, and her heart almost broke with despair;
+but she was game, and she struck out with all her
+might. Her legs tore the water frantically, the straining
+muscles stood out like ropes on her sides and flanks and
+shoulders, and she almost threw herself from the water.
+But it was no use, the row-boat was gaining.</p>
+
+<p>The farmers fired at her again and again, but they were
+too wildly excited to hit anything until finally the trapper
+pulled up alongside her and threw a noose over her head.
+And then, while she lay on her side in the water, with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+rope around her neck, kicking and struggling in a blind
+agony of despair, one of the farmers shot her dead at a
+range of something less than ten feet. When he went
+home he bragged that he was the only one of the party
+who had killed a deer, but he never told just how the
+thing was done.</p>
+
+<p>That is the kind of fate that you are very likely to
+meet if you are a deer. But vengeance came on the morrow,
+for that day it was the Buck's turn to be chased by
+that horrible fog-horn on four legs. Hour after hour he
+heard the hound's dreadful baying behind him as he raced
+through the woods, and at last he, too, started for the
+water, just as the doe had done. But he never reached it,
+or at least not on that trip. He was within a few rods of
+the beach when his spread hoof caught on a root and threw
+him, and the hound was so close behind that they both
+went down in a heap. They sprang to their feet at the
+same instant, and stood for a second glaring at each other.
+The dog had not meant to fight, only to drive the other
+into the water, where the hunters would take care of him;
+but he was game, and he made a spring at the deer's
+throat. The Buck drew back his forefoot, with its sharp,
+pointed hoof, and met the enemy with a thrust like that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+of a Roman soldier's short-sword; and the hound went
+down with his shoulder broken and a great gash in his
+side. And then, with a sudden twist and turn of his
+head, the Buck caught him on the point of that terrible
+spike antler, ripped his body open, and tossed him in
+the air.</p>
+
+<p>The worst enemy was disposed of. But that wasn't all.
+The man who killed the doe was waiting on the beach and
+had heard the scuffle, and now he came creeping quietly
+through the bushes to see what was going on. The
+Buck was still trampling the body of the dog, and
+noticed nothing till a rifle bullet grazed his right flank,
+inflicting just enough of a wound to make him still more
+furious. He faced around and stood for a moment staring
+at this new enemy; and then he did something which
+very few wild deer have ever done. Probably he would
+not have done it himself if he had not been half crazy
+with rage and excitement, and much emboldened by his
+easy victory over the hound. He put his head down and
+his antlers forward, and charged on a man!</p>
+
+<p>The farmer was jerking frantically at the lever of his
+repeating rifle, but a cartridge had stuck in the magazine,
+and he couldn't make it work. The hound's fate had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+shown him what that spike antler could do; and when he
+saw it bearing down on him at full tilt he dropped his
+gun and ran for his life to his dug-out canoe. He reached
+it just in time. I almost wish he hadn't.</p>
+
+<p>One more adventure the Buck had that fall. Providence,
+or Fate, or someone took a hand in affairs, and rid
+the Glimmerglass of all hunters, not for that season alone,
+but for many years to come. One night, down beside a
+spring in the cedar swamp, the Buck found a half-decayed
+log on which a bag of salt had been emptied. He stayed
+there for an hour or two, alternately licking the salt and
+drinking the cold water, and it was as good as an ice-cream
+soda. The next night he returned for another debauch;
+but in the meantime two other visitors had been
+there, and both had seen his tracks and knew that he
+would come again. As he neared the spring, treading
+noiselessly on the soft moss, he heard two little clicks, and
+stopped short to see what they meant. Both were quick
+and sharp, and both had come at exactly the same instant;
+yet they were not quite alike, for one had come from the
+shutter of a camera, and one from the lock of a rifle.
+Across the salt-lick a photographer and a hunter were
+facing each other in the darkness, and each saw the gleam<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+of the other's eyes and took him for a deer. So close
+together were the two clicks that neither man heard the
+sound of the other's weapon, and both were ready to fire&mdash;each
+in his own way.</p>
+
+<p>The Buck stood and watched, and suddenly there came
+two bursts of flame&mdash;one of them so big and bright that
+it lit the woods like sheet-lightning. Two triggers had
+been touched at the same instant, and each did its
+work well. The flash-light printed on the sensitive
+plate a picture of a hunter in the act of firing, and the
+rifle sent a bullet straight through the photographer's
+forehead. The Buck saw it all as in a dream&mdash;the white
+flame of the magnesium powder; the rifle, belching out
+its fire and smoke; the camera, silent and harmless, but
+working just as surely; the two men, each straining his
+eyes for a sight of his game; the water gleaming in the
+fierce light, and the dark ranks of the cedars all around.
+And then, in the tenth of a second, it was all over, and
+the Buck was bumping against trees, and stumbling and
+floundering over roots, in his dazed haste to get away
+from this terrifying mystery. He heard one horrified
+shout from the hunter, but nothing from the photographer&mdash;and
+the woods were silent again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That was the end of the hunting season at the Glimmerglass.
+With the hunter's trial for manslaughter, we
+and the Buck are not concerned; and there is nothing
+more to tell except that the next year the owners of the
+lands around the lake gave warning that all trespassers
+would be prosecuted. They wanted no more such tragedies
+on their property.</p>
+
+<p>And so the Buck and his sweethearts and his rivals
+lived in peace, except that the rivals still quarrelled
+among themselves, as Nature meant them to. The Buck
+had reached his prime, but you are not to suppose that
+he began to age immediately afterward. It was long before
+his eye was dimmed or his natural force abated;
+and as the years went by, with their summers of lily-pads
+and tender young browse, and their autumns of beechnuts
+and fighting and love-making, the broad cloven
+track of his split foot was often to be found in the hard,
+smooth sand of the beach. Perhaps it is there now. I
+wish I could go and see.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 201px;">
+<img src="images/logo01.jpg" width="201" height="200" alt="Emblem" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='center'>THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS<br />
+GARDEN CITY, N.Y.</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOREST NEIGHBORS***</p>
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@@ -0,0 +1,5119 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Forest Neighbors, by William Davenport
+Hulbert, Illustrated by A. R. Dugmore, Walter M. Hardy, Gleeson, and
+Arthur Hemming
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Forest Neighbors
+       Life Stories of Wild Animals
+
+
+Author: William Davenport Hulbert
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 29, 2009  [eBook #27933]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOREST NEIGHBORS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 27933-h.htm or 27933-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/7/9/3/27933/27933-h/27933-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/7/9/3/27933/27933-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+FOREST NEIGHBORS
+
+          _"And the Northern Lights come down,
+             To dance with the houseless snow;
+           And God, Who clears the grounding berg,
+             And steers the grinding floe,
+           He hears the cry of the little kit-fox,
+             And the lemming, on the snow."_
+
+          RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+[Illustration: _The Beaver Lumbering._]
+
+
+FOREST NEIGHBORS
+
+Life Stories of Wild Animals
+
+by
+
+WILLIAM DAVENPORT HULBERT
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Doubleday, Page & Co.
+Garden City
+New York
+1914
+
+Copyright, 1900, 1901, and 1902, by
+the S. S. Mcclure Co.
+
+Copyright, 1902, by
+Doubleday, Page & Co.
+
+
+
+
+          _To my Sister_
+          KATHARINE GRACE HULBERT
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                            PAGE
+
+   INTRODUCTION                               xi
+
+   THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BEAVER                   1
+
+   THE KING OF THE TROUT STREAM               41
+
+   THE STRENUOUS LIFE OF A CANADA LYNX        83
+
+   POINTERS FROM A PORCUPINE QUILL           125
+
+   THE ADVENTURES OF A LOON                  163
+
+   THE MAKING OF A GLIMMERGLASS BUCK         199
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+   The Beaver Lumbering      _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                     PAGE
+
+   "On the grass in the warm, quiet sunshine of
+       an autumn afternoon"                             6
+
+   Building the Dam                                    22
+
+   Nesting Grounds                                     62
+
+   "He tried jumping out of the water"                 72
+
+   "The hole was suddenly darkened, and a round,
+       hairy face looked in"                          100
+
+   "He was a very presentable young lynx"             110
+
+   "They both stood still and looked at each other"   120
+
+   "High up in the top of a tall hemlock"             132
+
+   "He quickly made his way to the beach"             148
+
+   "He went under as simply as you would step out
+       of bed"                                        166
+
+   "She herself was a rarely beautiful sight"         170
+
+   "The old earth sliding southward fifty miles
+       an hour"                                       180
+
+   "He was a baby to be proud of"                     202
+
+   "The buck was nearing the prime of life"           226
+
+   "Wherever they went they were always struggling
+       and fighting"                                  230
+
+
+
+
+_INTRODUCTION_
+
+
+_Some thirty years ago, while out on one of his landlooking trips in
+the woods of Northern Michigan, my father came upon a little lake which
+seemed to him the loveliest that he had ever seen, though he had visited
+many in the course of his explorations. The wild ponds are very apt to
+be shallow and muddy, with low, marshy shores; but this one was deep and
+clear, and its high banks were clothed with a splendid growth of beech,
+maple and birch. Tall elms stood guard along the water's edge, and here
+and there the hardwood forest was broken by dark hemlock groves, and
+groups of lordly pine-trees, lifting their great green heads high above
+their deciduous neighbors. Only in one place, around the extreme eastern
+end, the ground was flat and wet; and there the tamarack swamp showed
+golden yellow in October, and light, delicate green in late spring. Wild
+morning-glories grew on the grassy point that put out from the northern
+shore, and in the bays the white water-lilies were blossoming. Nearly
+two miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide, it lay basking and
+shimmering in the sunshine, a big, broad, beautiful sheet of water set
+down in the very heart of the woods._
+
+_There were no settlers anywhere near, nor even any Indians, yet there
+was no lack of inhabitants. Bears and wolves and a host of smaller
+animals were to be found, and along the shores were runways that had
+been worn deep in the soil by the tread of generation after generation
+of dainty little cloven hoofs. I suppose that some of those paths have
+been used by the deer for hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of years._
+
+_The lands around the entire lake were offered for sale by the United
+States Government at the ridiculously low price which Uncle Sam has
+asked for most of his possessions; and with the help of some friends my
+father bought the whole shore. During the years which followed he was
+occupied in various ways, and some of the best recollections of my
+boyhood are of the days and the nights which I spent with him on his
+fishing-tug, steaming about the Straits of Mackinac and the northern
+part of Lake Huron. But he could not forget the Glimmerglass, that
+little wild lake up in the woods. He had fallen in love with it at first
+sight, and at last he took his family and went there to live._
+
+_Human neighbors were scarce around the lake, and perhaps that was one
+reason why we took such a lively interest in the other residents--those
+who were there ahead of us. "Him and me's chums," my small sister said
+of the red-squirrel that hung around the log-barn. And some of the
+animals seemed to take a very lively interest in us. The chipmunks came
+into the house occasionally, on foraging expeditions; and so, I regret
+to say, did the skunks. There was a woodchuck who used to come to the
+back door, looking for scraps, and who learned to sit bolt upright and
+hold a pancake in his fore paws while he nibbled at it, without being in
+the least disturbed by the presence and the comments of half a dozen
+spectators. The porcupines became a never-ending nuisance, for they made
+almost nightly visits to the woodshed. To kill them was of little use,
+for the next night--or perhaps before morning--there were others to take
+their places. Once in a while one of them would climb up onto the roof
+of the house; and between his teeth and his feet and the rattling of his
+quills on the shingles, the racket that he made was out of all
+proportion to his size._
+
+          It is sweet to lie at evening in your little trundle-bed,
+          And to listen to a porky gnawing shingles overhead;
+            Porky, porky, porky, porky;
+            Gnawing shingles overhead.
+
+_The wolves had been pretty nearly exterminated since my father's first
+visit to the lake, and we saw little or nothing of 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 their peculiar fashion--and I wish there
+were none worse than they in the city's slums._
+
+_I have said good-by to the Glimmerglass, and it may be that I shall
+never again make my home by its shores. But the life of the woods goes
+on, and will still go on as long as man will let it. I suppose that,
+even as I write, the bears are "holeing up" for the winter, and the deer
+are growing anxious because the snow is covering the best of their food,
+and they of the cat tribe are getting down to business, and hunting in
+deadly earnest. The loons and the ducks have pulled out for the Gulf of
+Mexico, and the squirrels are glad that they have such a goodly store of
+nuts laid up for the next four months. The beavers have retired to their
+lodges--that is, if Charley Roop and his fellows have left any of them
+alive. The partridges--well, the partridges will just have to get along
+the best way they can. I guess they'll pull through somehow. The
+porcupines are all right, as you will presently see if you read this
+book. They don't have to worry. Down in the bed of the trout stream the
+trout eggs are getting ready--getting ready. And out on the lake itself
+the frost is at work, and the ice-sheet is forming, and under that cold,
+white lid the Glimmerglass will wait till another year brings round
+another spring-time--the spring-time that will surely come to all of us
+if only we hold on long enough._
+
+_Chicago, December, 1901._
+
+
+
+
+THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BEAVER
+
+
+A BROAD, flat tail came down on the water with a whack that sent the
+echoes flying back and forth across the pond, and its owner ducked his
+head, arched his back, and dived to the bottom. It was a very curious
+tail, for besides being so oddly paddle-shaped it was covered with what
+looked like scales, but were really sections and indentations of hard,
+horny, blackish-gray skin. Except its owner's relations, there was no
+one else in all the animal kingdom who had one like it. But the
+strangest thing about it was the many different ways in which he used
+it. Just now it was his rudder--and a very good rudder, too.
+
+In a moment his little brown head reappeared, and he and his brothers
+and sisters went chasing each other round and round the pond, ducking
+and diving and splashing, raising such a commotion that they sent the
+ripples washing all along the grassy shores, and having the jolliest
+kind of a time. It isn't the usual thing for young beavers to be out in
+broad daylight, but all this happened in the good old days before the
+railways came, when northern Michigan was less infested with men than
+it is now.
+
+When the youngsters wanted a change they climbed up onto a log, and
+nudged and hunched each other, poking their noses into one another's fat
+little sides, and each trying to shove his brother or sister back into
+the water. By and by they scrambled out on the bank, and then, when
+their fur had dripped a little, they set to work to comb it. Up they sat
+on their hind legs and tails--the tail was a stool now, you see--and
+scratched their heads and shoulders with the long brown claws of their
+small, black, hairy hands. Then the hind feet came up one at a time, and
+combed and stroked their sides till the moisture was gone and the fur
+was soft and smooth and glossy as velvet. After that they had to have
+another romp. They were not half as graceful on land as they had been in
+the water. In fact they were not graceful at all, and the way they stood
+around on their hind legs, and shuffled, and pranced, and wheeled like
+baby hippopotami, and slapped the ground with their tails, was one of
+the funniest sights in the heart of the woods. And the funniest and
+liveliest of them all was the one who owned that tail--the tail which,
+when I last saw it, was lying on the ground in front of Charlie Roop's
+shack. He was the one whom I shall call the Beaver--with a big B.
+
+But even young beavers will sometimes grow tired of play, and at last
+they all lay down on the grass in the warm, quiet sunshine of the autumn
+afternoon. The wind had gone to sleep, the pond glittered like steel in
+its bed of grassy beaver-meadow, the friendly woods stood guard all
+around, the enemy was far away, and it was a very good time for five
+furry little babies to take a nap.
+
+The city in which the tail first made its appearance was a very ancient
+one, and may have been the oldest town on the North American continent.
+Nobody knows when the first stick was laid in the dam that changed a
+small natural pond into a large artificial one, and thus opened the way
+for further municipal improvements; but it was probably centuries ago,
+and for all we can tell it may have been thousands of years back in the
+past. Generation after generation of beavers had worked on that dam,
+building it a little higher and a little higher, a little longer and a
+little longer, year after year; and raising their lodges as the pond
+rose around them. Theirs was a maritime city, for most of its streets
+were of water, like those of Venice; rich cargoes of food-stuffs came
+floating to its very doors, and they themselves were navigators from
+their earliest youth, and took to the water as naturally as ducks or
+Englishmen. They were lumbermen, too, and when the timber was all cut
+from along the shores of the pond they dug canals across the low, level,
+marshy ground, back to the higher land where the birch and the poplar
+still grew, and floated the branches and the smaller logs down the
+artificial water-ways. And there were land roads, as well as canals, for
+here and there narrow trails crossed the swamp, showing where
+generations of busy workers had passed back and forth between the felled
+tree and the water's edge. Streets, canals, public works, dwellings,
+commerce, lumbering, rich stores laid up for the winter--what more do
+you want to constitute a city, even if the houses are few in number, and
+the population somewhat smaller than that of London or New York?
+
+[Illustration: "_On the grass in the warm, quiet sunshine of an autumn
+afternoon._"]
+
+There was a time, not very long before the Beaver was born, when for a
+few years the city was deserted. The trappers had swept through the
+country, and the citizens' skulls had been hung up on the bushes, while
+their skins went to the great London fur market. Few were left alive,
+and those few were driven from their homes and scattered through the
+woods. The trappers decided that the ground was worked out, and most of
+them pushed on to the north and west in search of regions not yet
+depopulated. Then, one by one, the beavers came back to their old
+haunts. The broken dam was repaired; new lodges were built, and new
+beavers born in them; and again the ancient town was alive with the play
+of the babies and the labors of the civil engineers. Not as populous,
+perhaps, as it had once been, but alive, and busy, and happy. And so it
+was when our Beaver came into the world.
+
+The first year of his life was an easy one, especially the winter, when
+there was little for anyone to do except to eat, to sleep, and now and
+then to fish for the roots of the yellow water-lily in the soft mud at
+the bottom of the pond. During that season he probably accomplished more
+than his parents did, for if he could not toil he could at least grow.
+Of course they may have been growing, too, but it was less noticeable in
+them than in him. Not only was he increasing in size and weight, but he
+was storing up strength and strenuousness for the work that lay before
+him. It would take much muscle to force those long yellow teeth of his
+through the hard, tough flesh of the maple or the birch or the poplar.
+It would take vigor and push and enterprise to roll the heavy billets
+of wood over the grass-tufts to the edge of the water. And, most of all,
+it would take strength and nerve and determination to tear himself away
+from a steel trap and leave a foot behind. So it was well for the
+youngster that for a time he had nothing to do but grow.
+
+Spring came at last, and many of the male beavers prepared to leave home
+for a while. The ladies seemed to prefer not to be bothered by the
+presence of men-folk during the earliest infancy of the children; so the
+men, probably nothing loath, took advantage of the opportunity to see
+something of the world, wandering by night up and down the streams, and
+hiding by day in burrows under the banks. For a time they enjoyed it,
+but as the summer dragged by they came straggling home one after
+another. The new babies who had arrived in their absence had passed the
+most troublesome age, and it was time to begin work again. The dam and
+the lodges needed repairs, and there was much food to be gathered and
+laid up for the coming winter.
+
+Now, on a dark autumn night, behold the young Beaver toiling with might
+and main. His parents have felled a tree, and it is his business to help
+them cut up the best portions and carry them home. He gnaws off a small
+branch, seizes the butt end between his teeth, swings it over his
+shoulder, and makes for the water, keeping his head twisted around to
+the right or left so that the end of the branch may trail on the ground
+behind him. Sometimes he even rises on his hind legs, and walks almost
+upright, with his broad, strong tail for a prop to keep him from tipping
+over backward if his load happens to catch on something. Arrived at the
+canal or at the edge of the pond, he jumps in and swims for town, still
+carrying the branch over his shoulder, and finally leaves it on the
+growing pile in front of his father's lodge. Or perhaps the stick is too
+large and too heavy to be carried in such a way. In that case it must be
+cut into short billets and rolled, as a cant-hook man rolls a log down a
+skidway. Only the Beaver has no cant-hook to help him, and no skidway,
+either. All he can do is to push with all his might, and there are so
+many, many grass-tufts and little hillocks in the way! And sometimes the
+billet rolls down into a hollow, and then it is very hard to get it out
+again. He works like a beaver, and pushes and shoves and toils with
+tremendous energy, but I am afraid that more than one choice stick never
+reaches the water.
+
+These were his first tasks. Later on he learned to fell trees himself.
+Standing up on his hind legs and tail, with his hands braced against the
+trunk, he would hold his head sidewise, open his mouth wide, set his
+teeth against the bark, and bring his jaws together with a savage nip
+that left a deep gash in the side of the tree. A second nip deepened the
+gash, and gave it more of a downward slant, and two or three more
+carried it still farther into the tough wood. Then he would choose a new
+spot a little farther down, and start a second gash, which was made to
+slant up toward the first. And when he thought that they were both deep
+enough he would set his teeth firmly in the wood between them, and pull
+and jerk and twist at it until he had wrenched out a chip--a chip
+perhaps two inches long, and from an eighth to a quarter of an inch
+thick. He would make bigger ones when he grew to be bigger himself, but
+you mustn't expect too much at first. Chip after chip was torn out in
+this way, and gradually he would work around the tree until he had
+completely encircled it. Then the groove was made deeper, and after a
+while it would have to be broadened so that he could get his head
+farther into it. He seemed to think it was of immense importance to get
+the job done as quickly as possible, for he worked away with tremendous
+energy and eagerness, as if felling that tree was the only thing in the
+world that was worth doing. Once in a while he would pause for a moment
+to feel of it with his hands, and to glance up at the top to see whether
+it was getting ready to fall, and several times he stopped long enough
+to take a refreshing dip in the pond; but he always hurried back, and
+pitched in again harder than ever. In fact, he sometimes went at it so
+impetuously that he slipped and rolled over on his back. Little by
+little he dug away the tree's flesh until there was nothing left but its
+heart, and at last it began to crack and rend. The Beaver jumped aside
+to get out of the way, and hundreds and hundreds of small, tender
+branches, and delicious little twigs and buds came crashing down where
+he could cut them off and eat them or carry them away at his leisure.
+
+And so the citizens labored, and their labor brought its rich reward,
+and everybody was busy and contented, and life was decidedly worth
+living.
+
+But one black November night our hero's father, the wisest old beaver in
+all the town, went out to his work and never came home again. A trapper
+had found the rebuilt city--a scientific trapper who had studied his
+profession for years, and who knew just how to go to work. He kept away
+from the lodges as long as he could, so as not to frighten anyone; and
+before he set a single trap he looked the ground over very carefully,
+located the different trails that ran back from the water's edge toward
+the timber, visited the stumps of the felled trees, and paid particular
+attention to the tooth-marks on the chips. No two beavers leave marks
+that are exactly alike. The teeth of one are flatter or rounder than
+those of another, while a third has large or small nicks in the edges of
+his yellow chisels; and each tooth leaves its own peculiar signature
+behind it. By noting all these things the trapper concluded that a
+particular runway in the wet, grassy margin of the pond was the one by
+which a certain old beaver always left the water in going to his night's
+labor. That beaver, he decided, would best be the first one taken, for
+he was probably the head of a family, and an elderly person of much
+wisdom and experience; and if one of his children should be caught first
+he might become alarmed, and take the lead in a general exodus.
+
+So the trapper set a heavy double-spring trap in the edge of the water
+at the foot of the runway, and covered it with a thin sheet of moss.
+And that night, as the old beaver came swimming up to the shore, he put
+his foot down where he shouldn't, and two steel jaws flew up and clasped
+him around the thigh. He had felt that grip before. Was not half of his
+right hand gone, and three toes from his left hind foot? But this was a
+far more serious matter than either of those adventures. It was not a
+hand that was caught this time, nor yet a toe, or toes. It was his right
+hind leg, well up toward his body, and the strongest beaver that ever
+lived could not have pulled himself free. Now when a beaver is
+frightened, he of course makes for deep water. There, he thinks, no
+enemy can follow him; and, what is more, it is the highway to his lodge,
+and to the burrow that he has hollowed in the bank for a refuge in case
+his house should be attacked. So this beaver turned and jumped back into
+the water the way he had come; but, alas! he took his enemy with him.
+The heavy trap dragged him to the bottom like a stone, and the short
+chain fastened to a stake kept him from going very far toward home. For
+a few minutes he struggled with all his might, and the soft black mud
+rose about him in inky clouds. Then he quieted down and lay very, very
+still; and the next day the trapper came along and pulled him out by
+the chain.
+
+Something else happened the same night. Another wise old beaver, the
+head man of another lodge, was killed by a falling tree. He ought to
+have known better than to let such a thing happen. I really don't see
+how he could have been so careless. But the best of us will make
+mistakes at times, and any pitcher may go once too often to the well. I
+suppose that he had felled hundreds of trees and bushes, big and little,
+in the course of his life, and he had never yet met with an accident;
+but this time he thought he would take one more bite after the tree had
+really begun to fall. So he thrust his head again into the narrowing
+notch, and the wooden jaws closed upon him with a nip that was worse
+than his own. He tried to draw back, but it was too late, his skull
+crashed in, and his life went out like a candle.
+
+And so, in a few hours, the city lost two of its best citizens--the very
+two whom it could least afford to lose. If they had been spared they
+might, perhaps, have known enough to scent the coming danger, and to
+lead their families and neighbors away from the doomed town, deeper into
+the heart of the wilderness. As it was, the trapper had things all his
+own way, and by working carefully and cautiously he added skin after
+skin to his store of beaver-pelts. I haven't time to tell you of all the
+different ways in which he set his traps, nor can we stop to talk of the
+various baits that he used, from castoreum to fresh sticks of birch or
+willow, or of those other traps, still more artfully arranged, which had
+no bait at all, but were cunningly hidden where the poor beavers would
+be almost certain to step into them before they saw them. After all, it
+was his awful success that mattered, rather than the way in which he
+achieved it. Our friend's mother was one of the next to go, and the way
+his brothers and sisters disappeared one after another was a thing to
+break one's heart.
+
+One night the Beaver himself came swimming down the pond, homeward
+bound, and as he dived and approached the submarine entrance of the
+lodge he noticed some stakes driven into the mud--stakes that had never
+been there before. They seemed to form two rows, one on each side of his
+course, but as there was room enough for him to pass between them he
+swam straight ahead without stopping. His hands had no webs between the
+fingers, and were of little use in swimming, so he had folded them back
+against his body; but his big feet were working like the wheels of a
+twin-screw steamer, and he was forging along at a great rate. Suddenly,
+half-way down the lines of stakes, his breast touched the pan of a steel
+trap, and the jaws flew up quick as a wink and strong as a vise.
+Fortunately there was nothing that they could take hold of. They struck
+him so hard that they lifted him bodily upward, but they caught only a
+few hairs.
+
+Even a scientific trapper may sometimes make mistakes, and when this one
+came around to visit his trap, and found it sprung but empty, he thought
+that the beavers must have learned its secret and sprung it on purpose.
+There was no use, he decided, in trying to catch such intelligent
+animals in their own doorway, and he took the trap up and set it in a
+more out-of-the-way place. And so one source of danger was removed, just
+because the Beaver was lucky enough to touch the pan with his breast
+instead of with a foot.
+
+A week later he was really caught by his right hand, and met with one of
+the most thrilling adventures of his life. Oh, but that was a glorious
+night! Dark as a pocket, no wind, thick black clouds overhead, and the
+rain coming down in a steady, steady drizzles--just the kind of a night
+that the beavers love, when the friendly darkness shuts their little
+city in from all the rest of the world, and when they feel safe and
+secure. Then, how the long yellow teeth gouge and tear at the tough
+wood, how the trees come tumbling down, and how the branches and the
+little logs come hurrying in to augment the winter food-piles! Often of
+late the Beaver had noticed an unpleasant odor along the shores, an odor
+that frightened him and made him very uneasy, but to-night the rain had
+washed it all away, and the woods smelled as sweet and clean as if God
+had just made them over new. And on this night, of all others, the
+Beaver put his hand squarely into a steel trap.
+
+He was in a shallow portion of the pond, and the chain was too short for
+him to reach water deep enough to drown him; but now a new danger
+appeared, for there on the low, mossy bank was an otter, glaring at him
+through the darkness. Beaver-meat makes a very acceptable meal for an
+otter, and the Beaver knew it. And he knew, also, how utterly helpless
+he was, either to fly or to resist, with that heavy trap on his arm, and
+its chain binding him to the stake. His heart sank like lead, and he
+trembled from his nose to the end of his tail, and whimpered and cried
+like a baby. But, strange to say, it was the trapper who saved him,
+though, of course, it was done quite unintentionally. As the otter
+advanced to the attack there came a sudden sharp click, and in another
+second he too was struggling for dear life. Two traps had been set in
+the shallow water. The Beaver had found one, and the otter the other.
+
+The full story of that night, with all its details of fear and suffering
+and pain, will never be written; and probably it is as well that it
+should not be. But I can give you a few of the facts, if you care to
+hear them. The Beaver soon found that he was out of the otter's reach,
+and with his fears relieved on that point he set to work to free himself
+from the trap. Round and round he twisted, till there came a little
+snap, and the bone of his arm broke short off in the steel jaws. Then
+for a long, long time he pulled and pulled with all his might, and at
+last the tough skin was rent apart, and the muscles and sinews were torn
+out by the roots. His right hand was gone, and he was so weak and faint
+that it seemed as if all the strength and life of his whole body had
+gone with it. No matter. He was free, and he swam away to the nearest
+burrow and lay down to rest. The otter tried to do the same, but he was
+caught by the thick of his thigh, and his case was a hopeless one. Next
+day the trapper found him alive, but very meek and quiet, worn out with
+fear and useless struggles. In the other trap were a beaver's hand and
+some long shreds of flesh and sinew that must once have reached well up
+into the shoulder.
+
+We shall have to hurry over the events of the next winter--the last
+winter in the city's history. By the time the Beaver's wound was
+healed--Nature was good to him, and the skin soon grew over the torn
+stump--the pond was covered with ice. The beavers, only half as numerous
+as they had been a few weeks before, kept close in their lodges and
+burrows, and for a time they lived in peace and quiet, and their numbers
+suffered no further diminution. Then the trapper took to setting his
+traps through the ice, and before long matters were worse than ever. By
+spring the few beavers that remained were so thoroughly frightened that
+the ancient town was again abandoned--this time forever. The lodges fell
+to ruins, the burrows caved in, the dam gave way, the pond and canals
+were drained, and that was the end of the city.
+
+Yet not quite the end, after all. The beavers have vanished from their
+old habitation, but their work remains in the broad meadows cleared of
+timber by their teeth, and covered with rich black soil by the
+inundations from their dam. There is an Indian legend which says that
+after the Creator separated the land from the water He employed gigantic
+beavers to smooth it down and prepare it for the abode of men. However
+that may be, the farmers of generations to come will have reason to rise
+up and bless those busy little citizens--but I don't suppose they will
+ever do it.
+
+One city was gone, but there were two that could claim the honor of
+being our Beaver's home at different periods of his life. The first, as
+we have already seen, was ancient and historic. The second was
+brand-new. Let us see how it had its beginning. The Beaver got married
+about the time he left his old home; and this, by the way, is a very
+good thing to do when you want to start a new town. Except for his
+missing hand, his wife was so like him that it would have puzzled you to
+tell which was which. I think it is very likely that she was his twin
+sister, but of course that's none of our business. Do you want to know
+what they looked like? They measured about three feet six inches from
+tip of nose to tip of tail, and they weighed perhaps thirty pounds
+apiece. Their bodies were heavy and clumsy, and were covered with thick,
+soft, grayish under-fur, which in turn was overlaid with longer hairs of
+a glistening chestnut-brown, making a coat that was thoroughly
+water-proof as well as very beautiful. Their heads were somewhat like
+those of gigantic rats, with small, light-brown eyes, little round ears
+covered with hair, and long orange-colored incisors looking out from
+between parted lips. One portrait will answer for both of them.
+
+They wandered about for some time, looking for a suitable location, and
+examining several spots along the beds of various little rivers, none of
+which seemed to be just right. But at last they found, in the very heart
+of the wilderness, a place where a shallow stream ran over a hard stony
+bottom, and here they set to work. It was a very desirable situation in
+every respect. At one side stood a large tree, so close that it could
+probably be used as a buttress for the dam when the latter was
+sufficiently lengthened to reach it; while above the shallow the ground
+was low and flat on both sides for some distance back from the banks, so
+that the pond would have plenty of room to spread out. If they could
+have spoken they would probably have said that the place was a dam site
+better than any other they had seen.
+
+[Illustration: _Building the Dam._]
+
+Alder bushes laid lengthwise of the current were the first materials
+used, and for a time the water filtered through them with hardly a
+pause. Then the beavers began laying mud and stones and moss on this
+brush foundation, scooping them up with their hands, and holding them
+under their chins as they waddled or swam to the dam. The Beaver himself
+was not very good at this sort of work, for his right hand was gone, as
+we know, and it was not easy for him to carry things; but he did the
+best he could, and together they accomplished a great deal. The mud and
+the grass and such-like materials were deposited mainly on the upper
+face of the dam, where the pressure of the water only sufficed to drive
+them tighter in among the brush; and thus, little by little, a smooth
+bank of earth was presented to the current, backed up on the lower side
+by a tangle of sticks and poles. Its top was very level and straight,
+and along its whole length the water trickled over in a succession of
+tiny rills. This was important, for if all the overflow had been in one
+place the stream might have been so strong and rapid as to eat into
+the dam, and perhaps carry away the whole structure.
+
+The first year the beavers did not try to raise the stream more than a
+foot above its original level. There was much other work to be done--a
+house to be built, and food to be laid in for the winter--and if they
+spent too much time on the dam they might freeze or starve before
+spring. A few rods up-stream was a grassy point which the rising waters
+had transformed into an island, and here they built their lodge, a
+hollow mound of sticks and mud, with a small, cave-like chamber in the
+centre, from which two tunnels led out under the pond--"angles," the
+trappers call them. The walls were masses of earth and wood and stones,
+so thick and solid that even a man with an axe would have found it
+difficult to penetrate them. Only at the very apex of the mound there
+was no mud, nothing but tangled sticks through which a breath of fresh
+air found its way now and then. In spite of this feeble attempt at
+ventilation I am obliged to admit that the atmosphere of the lodge was
+often a good deal like that of the Black Hole of Calcutta, but beavers
+are so constituted that they do not need much oxygen, and they did not
+seem to mind it. In all other respects the house was neat and clean.
+The floor was only two or three inches above the level of the water in
+the angles, and would naturally have been a bed of mud; but they mixed
+little twigs with it, and stamped and pounded it down till it was hard
+and smooth. I think likely the Beaver's tail had something to do with
+this part of the work, as well as with finishing off the dam, for he was
+fond of slapping things with it, and it was just the right shape for
+such use. In fact, I fear that if it had not been for the tail, and for
+other tails like it, neither of the cities would ever have been as
+complete as they were. With the ends of projecting sticks cut off to
+leave the walls even and regular, and with long grass carried in to make
+the beds, the lodge was finished and ready.
+
+And now you might have seen the beavers coming home to rest after a
+night's labor at felling timber--swimming across the pond toward the
+island, with only the tops of their two little heads showing above the
+water. In front of the lodge each tail-rudder gives a slap and a twist,
+and they dive for the submarine door of one of the angles. In another
+second they are swimming along the dark, narrow tunnel, making the water
+surge around them. Suddenly the roof of the passage rises, and their
+heads pop up into the air. A yard or two farther, and they enter the
+chamber of the lodge, with its level floor and its low, arched roof. And
+there in the darkness they lie down on their grass beds and go to sleep.
+It is good to have a home of your own where you may take your ease when
+the night's work is done.
+
+Near the upper end of the pond, where the bank was higher, they dug a
+long burrow, running back ten or fifteen feet into the ground. This was
+to be the last resort if, by any possibility, the lodge should ever be
+invaded. It was a weary task, digging that burrow, for its mouth was
+deep under the water, and every few minutes they had to stop work and
+come to the surface for breath. Night after night they scooped and
+shovelled, rushing the job as fast as they knew how, but making pretty
+slow progress in spite of all their efforts. It was done at last,
+however, and they felt easier in their minds when they knew that it was
+ready for use in case of necessity. From its mouth in the depths of the
+pond it sloped gradually upward to a dry chamber under the roots of a
+large birch; and here, where a few tiny holes were not likely to be
+noticed from the outside, two or three small openings, almost hidden by
+the moss and dead leaves, let in the air and an occasional ray of
+light. The big tree made a solid roof overhead, and the chamber was
+large enough, with a little crowding, to accommodate a whole family of
+beavers.
+
+There was only one other heavy task, and that was the gathering of the
+wood, which, with its bark, was to serve as food through the winter.
+This too was finally finished, and the very last things that the beavers
+did that fall were to put another coat of mud on the outside of the
+lodge, and to see that the dam was in the best possible condition. No
+repairing could be done after the ice made; and if the dam should give
+way at any time during the winter, the pond would be drained, and the
+entrances of the lodge and the burrow would be thrown open to any
+prowling marauders that might happen to pass that way. So it was
+imperative to have things in good order before cold weather came on.
+
+There came a quiet, windless day, when the sky was gray, and when the
+big snow-flakes came floating lazily down, some to lose themselves in
+the black water, and some to robe the woods and the shores in white. At
+nightfall the clouds broke up, the stars shone forth, and the air grew
+odder and keener till long crystal spears shot out across the pond, and
+before morning a sheet of glass had spread from shore to shore. I do not
+think it was unwelcome. The beavers were shut in for the winter, or
+could only go abroad with considerable difficulty, but they had each
+other, and there was a little world of their own down under the ice and
+snow. The chamber of the lodge was home, and just outside was their food
+storehouse--the big pile of wood which it had cost so much labor to
+gather. One of the entrances was shorter and straighter than the other,
+and through this they used to bring in sticks from the heap, and lay
+them on the floor between the beds, where they could devour the bark at
+their leisure. If they grew restless, and wanted to go farther afield,
+there was the bottom of the pond to be explored, and the big luscious
+lily-roots to be dug up for a change of diet. It was a peaceful time, a
+time of rest from the labors of the past year, and of growing fat and
+strong for those of the year to come. We have much goods laid up for
+many months; let us eat, drink, and be merry, and hope that the trappers
+will not come to-morrow.
+
+The babies came in May, and I suppose that the young father and mother
+were almost as proud and happy as some of you who are in similar
+circumstances. The Beaver did not wander very far from home that spring
+and summer, nor was he away very long at a time.
+
+There were five of the children, and they were very pretty--about as
+large as rats, and covered with thick, soft, silky, reddish-brown fur,
+but without any of the longer, coarser, chestnut-colored hairs that
+formed their parents' outer coats. They were very playful, too, as the
+father and mother had been in their own youthful days. For a while they
+had to be nursed, like other babies; but by and by the old beavers began
+to bring in little twigs for them, about the size of lead-pencils; and
+if you had been there, and your eyes had been sharp enough to pierce the
+gloom, you might have seen the youngsters exercising their brand new
+teeth, and learning to sit up and hold sticks in their baby hands while
+they ate the bark. And wouldn't you have liked to be present on the
+night when they first went swimming down the long, dark tunnel; and,
+rising to the surface, looked around on their world of woods and
+water--on the quiet pond, with its glassy smoothness broken only by
+their own ripples; on the tall trees, lifting their fingers toward the
+sky; and on the stars, marching silently across the heavens, and looking
+down with still, unwinking eyes on another family of babies that had
+come to live and love and be happy for a little while on God's earth?
+
+One of the children was killed by an otter before the summer was over,
+but I am glad to say that the other four grew up and were a credit to
+their parents.
+
+The babies were not the only addition to the new city during that year,
+for about mid-summer another pair of beavers came and built a lodge near
+the upper end of the pond. It was a busy season for everybody--for our
+old friends as well as for the new-comers. The food-sticks which had
+been peeled off their bark during the winter furnished a good supply of
+construction material, and the dam was built up several inches higher,
+and was lengthened to the buttress-tree on one side, and for a distance
+of two or three rods on the other, so as to keep the water from flowing
+around the ends. As the water-level rose it became necessary to build up
+the floor of the lodge in order to keep it from being flooded; and that,
+in turn, necessitated raising the roof by the simple process of
+hollowing it out from within and adding more material on the outside. In
+the same way the lodge was made both longer and broader, to accommodate
+the growing family and the still further increase that was to be
+expected the following spring. More burrows were dug in the shore of
+the pond--you can't have too many of them--and a much larger stock of
+food wood was gathered, for there were six mouths, instead of two, to be
+fed through the coming winter. The father and mother worked very hard,
+and even the babies helped with the lighter tasks, such as carrying home
+small branches, and mending little leaks in the dam. The second pair of
+beavers was also busy with lodge and burrow and storehouse, and so the
+days slipped by very rapidly.
+
+Only once that year did a man come to town, and then he did not do
+anything very dreadful. He was not a trapper, he was only an amateur
+naturalist who wanted to see the beavers at their work, and who thought
+he was smart enough to catch them at it. His plan was simple enough; he
+made a breach in the dam one night, and then climbed a tree and waited
+for them to come and mend it. It was bright moonlight, and he thought he
+would see the whole thing and learn some wonderful secrets.
+
+The Beaver was at work in the woods not very far away, and presently he
+came down to the edge of the pond, rolling a heavy birch cutting before
+him. He noticed at once that the water was falling, and he started
+straight for the dam to see what was the matter. The amateur naturalist
+saw him coming, a dark speck moving swiftly down the pond, with a long
+V-shaped ripple spreading out behind him like the flanks of a flock of
+wild geese. But the beaver was doing some thinking while he swam. He had
+never before known the water to fall so suddenly and rapidly; there must
+be a very bad break in the dam. How could it have happened? It looked
+suspicious. It looked very suspicious indeed; and just before he reached
+the dam he stopped to reconnoitre, and at once caught sight of the
+naturalist up in the tree. His tail rose in the air and came down with
+the loudest whack that had 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 well say, as he
+looked around on the community which he and his wife had founded, that
+he was a citizen of no mean city.
+
+But this could not last. A great calamity was coming--a calamity beside
+which the slow destruction of the former town would seem tame and
+uninteresting.
+
+One bright February day the Beaver and his wife left their lodge to look
+for lily-roots. They had found a big fat one and were just about to
+begin their feast, when they heard foot-steps on the ice over their
+heads, and the voices of several men talking eagerly. They made for the
+nearest burrow as fast as they could go, and stayed there the rest of
+the day, and when they returned to their lodge they found--but I'm going
+too fast.
+
+The men were Indians and half-breeds, and they were in high feather over
+their discovery. Around this pond there must be enough beaver-skins to
+keep them in groceries and tobacco and whiskey for a long time to come.
+But to find a city is one thing, and to get hold of its inhabitants is
+another and a very different one. One of the Indians was an elderly man
+who in the old days had trapped beaver in Canada for the Hudson Bay
+Company, and he assumed the direction of the work. First of all they
+chopped holes in the ice and drove a line of stakes across the stream
+just above the pond, so that no one might escape in that direction.
+Then, by pounding on the ice, and cutting more holes in it here and
+there, they found the entrances to all the lodges and most of the
+burrows, and closed them also with stakes driven into the bottom.
+Fortunately they did not find the burrow where our Beaver and his wife
+had taken refuge. They were about to break open the roofs of the lodges
+when the old man proposed that they should play a trick on one of the
+beaver families--a trick which his father had taught him when he was a
+boy, and when the beavers were many in the woods around Lake Superior.
+He described it with enthusiasm, and his companions agreed that it would
+be great fun. For a time there was much chopping of ice and driving of
+stakes, and then all was quiet again.
+
+By and by one of our Beaver's children began to feel hungry, and as his
+father and mother had not come home he decided to go out to the
+wood-pile and get something to eat. So he took a header from his bed
+into the water, and swam down the angle. The door had been unbarred
+again, and he passed out without difficulty, but when he reached the
+pile he found it surrounded by a fence made of stakes set so close
+together that he could not pass between them. He swam clear around it,
+and at last found one gap just wide enough to admit his body. He passed
+in, and as he did so his back grazed a small twig which had been thrust
+down through a hole in the ice, and the watching Indians saw it move,
+and knew that a beaver had entered the trap. He picked out a nice stick
+of convenient size, and started to return to the lodge. But where was
+that gap in the fence? This was the place, he was sure. Here were two
+stakes between which he had certainly passed as he came in, but now
+another stood squarely between them, and the gate was barred. He swam
+all round the wood-pile, looking for a way out, and poking his little
+brown nose between the stakes, but there was no escape, and when he came
+back to the entrance and found it still closed his last hope died, and
+he gave up in despair. His heart and lungs and all his circulatory
+apparatus had been so designed by the Great Architect that he might live
+for many minutes under water, but they could not keep him alive
+indefinitely. Overhead was the ice, and all around was that cruel fence.
+Only a rod away was home, where his brothers and sisters were waiting
+for him, and where there was air to breathe and life to live--but he
+could not reach it. You have all read or heard how a drowning man feels,
+and I suppose it is much the same with a drowning beaver. They say it is
+an easy death.
+
+By and by a hooked stick came down through a hole in the ice and drew
+him out, the gate was unbarred, the twig was replaced, and the Indians
+waited for another hungry little beaver to come for his dinner. That's
+enough. You know now what the parents found when they came home--or
+rather what they didn't find.
+
+It would have taken too long to dispose of the whole city in this way,
+so the Indians finally broke the dam and let the water out of the pond,
+and then they tore open the lodges and all the burrows they could find,
+and the inhabitants were put to the--not the sword, but the axe and the
+club. Of all those who had been so happy and prosperous, the old Beaver
+and his wife were the only ones who escaped; and their lives were spared
+only because the Indians failed to find their hiding-place.
+
+That was the end of the second city, but it was not quite the end of the
+beavers. A few miles up-stream they dug a short burrow in the bank and
+tried to make a new home. In May another baby came, but only one, and it
+was dead before it was born. Next day the mother died too, and the
+Beaver left the burrow and went out into the world alone. I really think
+his heart was broken, though it continued to beat for several months
+longer.
+
+Just northeast of the Glimmerglass there lies a long, narrow pond, whose
+shores are very low and swampy, and whose waters drain into the larger
+lake through a short stream only a few rods in length. Hundreds,
+perhaps thousands, of years ago the narrow strip of land that separates
+them may possibly have been a beaver-dam, but to-day it is hard to tell
+it from one of Nature's own formations. In the course of his lonely
+wanderings the Beaver reached this pond, and here he established himself
+to spend his last few weeks. He was aging rapidly. Such a little while
+ago he had seemed in the very prime of life, and had been one of the
+handsomest beavers in the woods, with fur of the thickest and softest
+and silkiest, and a weight of probably sixty pounds. Now he was thin and
+lean, his hair was falling out, his teeth were losing their sharp edges
+and becoming blunt and almost useless, and even his flat tail was
+growing thicker and more rounded, and its whack was not as startling as
+of old when he brought it down with all his might on the surface of the
+water.
+
+Yet even now the old instinct flamed up and burned feebly for a little
+while. Or shall we say the old love of work, and of using the powers and
+faculties that God had given him? Why should the thing that is called
+genius in a man be set down as instinct when we see it on a somewhat
+smaller scale in an animal? Whatever it was, the ruling passion was
+still strong. All his life he had been a civil engineer; and now, one
+dark, rainy autumn night, he left his shallow burrow, swam down the pond
+to its outlet, and began to build a dam. The next day, pushing up the
+shallow stream in my dug-out canoe, I saw the alder-cuttings lying in
+its bed, with the marks of his dull teeth on their butts. God knows why
+he did it, or what he was thinking about as he cut those bushes and
+dragged them into the water. I don't; but sometimes I wonder if a wild
+dream of a new lodge, a new mate, a new home, and a new city was
+flitting through his poor, befogged old brain.
+
+It was only a few nights later that he put his foot into Charlie Roop's
+beaver-trap, jumped for deep water, and was drowned like his father
+before him. Charlie afterward showed me the pelt, which he had stretched
+on a hoop made of a little birch sapling. It was not a very good pelt,
+for, as I said, the Beaver had been losing his hair, but Charlie thought
+he might get a dollar or two for it. Whether he needed the dollar more
+than the Beaver needed his skin was a question which it seemed quite
+useless to discuss.
+
+As we left the shack I noticed the tail lying on the ground just outside
+the door.
+
+"Why don't you eat it?" I asked. "Don't you know that a beaver's tail is
+supposed to be one of the finest delicacies in the woods?"
+
+"Huh!" said Charlie. "I'd rather have salt pork."
+
+
+
+
+THE KING OF THE TROUT STREAM
+
+
+IT was winter, and the trout stream ran low in its banks, hidden from
+the sky by a thick shell of ice and snow, and not seeing the sun for a
+season. But the trout stream was used to that, and it slipped along in
+the darkness, undismayed and not one whit disheartened; talking to
+itself in low, murmuring tones, and dreaming of the time when spring
+would come back and all the rivers would be full.
+
+Mingled with its waters, and borne onward and downward by the ceaseless
+flow of its current, went multitudes of the tiniest air-bubbles, most of
+them too small ever to be seen by a human eye, yet large enough to be
+the very breath of life to thousands and thousands of creatures. Some of
+them found their way to the gills of the brook trout, and some to the
+minnows, and the herrings, and the suckers, and the star-gazers; some
+fed the little crustacea, and the insect larvae, and the other tiny water
+animals that make up the lower classes of society; and some passed
+undetained down the river and out into Lake Superior. But there were
+others that worked down into the gravel of the riverbed; and there, in
+the nooks and crannies between the pebbles, they found a vast number of
+little balls of yellow-brown jelly, about as large as small peas, which
+seemed to be in need of their kindly ministrations. And the air-bubbles
+touched the trout eggs gently and lovingly, and in some mysterious and
+wonderful way their oxygen passed in through the pores of the shells,
+and the embryos within were quickened and stirred to a new vigor and a
+more rapid growth.
+
+Not all of the eggs were alive. Some had been crushed between the
+stones; some were buried in sediment, which had choked the pores and
+kept away the friendly oxygen until they smothered; and some had never
+really lived at all. But one danger they had been spared, for there were
+no saw-mills on the stream to send a flood of fungus-breeding sawdust
+down with the current. And in spite of all the misfortunes and disasters
+to which trout eggs are liable, a goodly number of them were doing quite
+as well as could be expected. I suppose one could hardly say that they
+were being incubated, for, according to the dictionaries, to incubate is
+to sit upon, and certainly there was no one sitting on them. Their
+mothers had not come near them since the day they were laid. But the
+gravel hid them from the eyes of egg-eating fishes and musk-rats; the
+water kept them cold, but not too cold; the fresh oxygen came and
+encouraged them if ever they grew tired and dull, and so the good work
+went on.
+
+Through each thin, leathery, semi-transparent shell you could have seen,
+if you had examined it closely, a pair of bright, beady eyes, and a dark
+little thread of a backbone that was always curled up like a horseshoe
+because there wasn't room for it to lie straight. But along the outside
+of the curve of each spinal column a set of the tiniest and daintiest
+muscles was getting ready for a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull
+all together. And one day, late in the winter, when the woods were just
+beginning to think about spring, the muscles in one particular egg
+tugged with all their little might, the backbone straightened with a
+great effort, the shell was ripped open, and the tail of a brand-new
+brook trout thrust itself out into the water and wiggled pathetically.
+
+But his head and shoulders were still inside, and for a while it looked
+as if he would never get them free. His tail was shaped somewhat like a
+paddle set on edge, for a long, narrow fin ran from the middle of his
+back clear around the end of it and forward again on the under side of
+his body, and with this for an oar he struggled and writhed and
+squirmed, and went bumping blindly about among the pebbles like a kitten
+with its head in the cream pitcher. And at last, with the most vigorous
+squirm and wriggle of all, he backed clear of the shell in which he had
+lain for so many weeks and months, and, weak and weary from his
+exertions, lay down on a stone to rest.
+
+He had to lie on his side, for attached to his breast was a large,
+round, transparent sac which looked very much like the egg out of which
+he had just come. In fact it really was the egg, or at least a portion
+of it, for it held a large part of what had been the yolk. If you could
+have examined him with a microscope you would have seen a most strange
+and beautiful thing. His little body was so delicate and transparent
+that one could see the arteries pulsing and throbbing in time with the
+beating of his heart, and some of those arteries found their way into
+the food-sac, where they kept branching and dividing, and growing
+smaller and more numerous. And in the very smallest of the tiny tubes a
+wonderful process was going on--as wonderful as the way in which the
+oxygen fed the embryos through the shell. Somehow, by life's marvellous
+alchemy, the blood was laying hold of the material of the yolk, turning
+it into more blood, and carrying it away to be used in building up bone
+and muscle everywhere from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail.
+You might not have detected the actual transformation, but you could
+have seen the beating of the engine, and the throbbing rush of the
+little red rivers, all toiling with might and main to make a big, strong
+trout out of this weak and diminutive baby. And you could have seen the
+corpuscles hurrying along so thick and fast that at times they blocked
+up the passages, and the current was checked till the heart could bring
+enough pressure to bear to burst the dam and send them rushing on again.
+For the corpuscles of a trout's blood are considerably larger than those
+of most fishes, and they sometimes get "hung up," like a drive of logs
+sent down a stream hardly large enough to float it.
+
+With a full haversack to be drawn upon in such a convenient manner the
+Troutlet was not obliged to take food through his mouth or to think
+about hustling around in search of a living. This was very fortunate,
+for the stream was full of hungry beasts of prey who would be very
+likely to gobble him up quick the first time he went abroad; and,
+besides, his frail little body was still so weak and delicate that he
+could not bear the light of day. So, instead of swimming away to seek
+his fortune, he simply dived down deeper into the gravel, and stayed
+there. For some weeks he led a very quiet life among the pebbles, and
+the only mishap that befell him during that time was the direct result
+of his retiring disposition. In his anxiety to get as far away from the
+world as possible he one day wedged himself into a cranny so narrow that
+he couldn't get out again. He couldn't even breathe, for his gill-covers
+were squeezed down against the sides of his head as if he were in a
+vise. A trout's method of respiration is to open his mouth and fill it
+with water, and then to close it again and force the water out through
+his gills, between his cheeks and his shoulders, about where his neck
+would be if he had one. It's very simple when you once know how, but you
+can't do it with your gill-covers clamped down. His tail wiggled more
+pathetically than ever, and did its level best to pull him out, but
+without success. He was wedged in so tightly that he couldn't move, and
+he was fast smothering, like a baby that has rolled over on its face
+upon the pillow. But at the last moment, when his struggles had grown
+feebler and feebler until they had almost ceased, something stirred up
+the gravel around him and set him free. He never knew what did it.
+Perhaps a deer or a bear waded through the stream; or a saw-log may have
+grounded for a moment in the shallow; or possibly it was only the
+current, for by this time most of the snow had melted, and the little
+river was working night and day to carry the water out of the woods. But
+whatever it was, he was saved.
+
+He stayed in the gravel nearly a month, but his yolk-sac was gradually
+shrinking, and after a time it drew itself up into a little cleft in his
+breast and almost disappeared. There was nothing left of it but a little
+amber-colored bead, and it could no longer supply food enough for his
+growing body. There were times when he felt decidedly hungry. And other
+changes had come while he lay and waited in the gravel. The embryonic
+fin which had made his tail so like a paddle was gone, the true dorsal
+and caudal and anal fins had taken their proper shape, and he looked a
+little less like a tadpole and a little more like a fish. He was
+stronger than he had been at first, and he was losing his dread of the
+sunlight; and so at last he left the gravel-bed, to seek his rightful
+place in the world of moving, murmuring waters.
+
+He was rather weak and listless at first, and quite given to resting in
+the shallows and back water, and taking things as easily as possible.
+But that was to be expected for a time, and he was much better off than
+some of the other trout babies. He saw one that had two heads and only
+one body, and another with two heads and two bodies joined together at
+the tail. Still others there were who had never been strong enough to
+straighten their backbones, and who had lain in the egg till the shell
+wore thin and let them out head first, which is not at all the proper
+way for a trout to hatch. Even now they still retained the horseshoe
+curve, and could never swim straight ahead, but only spin round and
+round like whirligigs. These cripples and weaklings seemed to have got
+on pretty well as long as their food-sacs lasted, but now that they had
+to make their own living they were at a serious disadvantage. They all
+disappeared after a day or two, and our friend never saw them again.
+They couldn't stand the real struggle of life.
+
+Many a strong, healthy baby disappeared at the same time, and if there
+had not been so many of them it is not likely that any would have
+survived the first few days and weeks. Even as it was, I doubt if more
+than one fish out of each thousand eggs ever lived to grow up. It is not
+difficult to guess where they went. Our Trout had hardly emerged from
+his hiding-place in the gravel when a queer, ugly, big-headed little
+fish darted at him from under a stone, with his jaws open and an awful
+cavity yawning behind them. The Troutlet dodged between a couple of
+pebbles and escaped, but another youngster just beyond him was caught
+and swallowed alive. That was his first meeting with the star-gazer, who
+kills more babies than ever Herod did. Then there were minnows, and
+herrings, and lizards, and frogs, and weasels, and water-snakes, and
+other butchers of all sorts and sizes, too numerous to mention. And
+perhaps the worst of all were the older trout, who never seemed to have
+the least compunction about eating their small relations, and who were
+so nimble and lively that it was almost impossible to keep out of their
+way. Our friend spent most of his time in the shallow water near the
+banks, where larger fishes were not so likely to follow him, but even
+there he had many narrow escapes and was obliged to keep himself hidden
+as much as possible under chips and dead leaves, and behind stones.
+
+Often he found himself in great peril when he least suspected it. Once
+he lay for some time in the edge of a dark forest of water-weeds, only
+an inch from a lumpish, stupid-looking creature, half covered with mud,
+that was clinging to one of the stems. The animal appeared so dull and
+unintelligent that the young Trout paid little attention to him until
+another baby came up and approached a trifle closer. Then, quick as a
+flash, the creature shot out an arm nearly three-quarters of an inch
+long, bearing on its end two horrible things which were not exactly
+claws, nor fingers, nor teeth, but which partook of the nature of all
+three, and which came together on the infant's soft, helpless little
+body like a pair of tongs or the jaws of a steel trap, and drew him in
+to where the real jaws were waiting to make mince-meat of him. Our
+friend fled so precipitately that he did not see the end of the tragedy,
+but neither did he ever see that baby again. Before the summer had
+passed, the dull, lumpish-looking creature had become a magnificent
+insect, with long, gauzy wings, clad in glittering mail, and known to
+everybody as a dragon-fly, but I doubt if any of his performances in the
+upper air were ever half as dragon-like as the deeds of darkness that he
+did when he was an ugly, shapeless larva down under the water.
+
+Fortunately, not all the larvae in the stream were thus to be feared.
+Many were so small that the Troutlet could eat them, instead of letting
+them eat him; and nowhere were they more plentiful than in this same
+forest of water-weeds. His first taste of food was a great experience,
+and gave him some entirely new ideas of life. One day he was lying with
+his head up-stream, as was his usual habit, when a particularly fat,
+plump little larva, torn from his home by the remorseless river, came
+drifting down with the current. He looked very tempting, and our friend
+sallied out from under a stick and caught him on the fly, just as he had
+seen the star-gazer catch his own brother. The funny little creature
+wriggled deliciously on his tongue, and he held him between his jaws for
+a moment in a kind of ecstasy; but he couldn't quite make up his mind to
+swallow him, and presently he spat him out again and went back to the
+shadow of his stick to rest and think about it. It was the first time in
+his life that he had ever done such a thing, and he felt rather
+overwhelmed, but an hour or two later he tried it again, and this time
+the living morsel did not stop in his mouth, but went straight on down.
+
+It was really something more than a new experience--this first mouthful
+of food--for it marked a turning-point in his career. Up to this time he
+had lived entirely on the provisions which his parents had left him, but
+henceforth he was independent and could take care of himself. He was no
+longer an embryo; he was a real fish, a genuine _Salvelinus fontinalis_,
+as carnivorous as the biggest and fiercest of all his relations. The
+cleft in his breast might close up now, and the last remnant of his
+yolk-sac vanish forever. He was done with it. He had graduated from the
+nursery, and had found his place on the battle-field of life.
+
+It must be admitted, however, that he did not look much like a mature
+trout, even now. He was less than three-quarters of an inch long, and
+his big head, bulging eyes, and capacious mouth were out of all
+proportion to his small and feeble body. But time and food were all
+that was needed to set these matters right; and now that he had learned
+how, he set to work and did his level best. I should be afraid to guess
+how many tiny water-creatures, insects and larvae and crustaceae, found
+their way down his throat, but it is pretty safe to say that he often
+ate more than his own weight in a single day. And so he grew in size and
+strength and symmetry, and from being a quiet, languid baby, always
+hiding in dark corners, and attending strictly to his own affairs, he
+became one of the liveliest and most inquisitive little fishes in all
+the stream. To a certain extent he developed a fondness for travelling,
+and in company with other troutlets of his own age and size he often
+journeyed from place to place in search of new surroundings and new
+things to eat. In fly-time he found a bountiful food-supply in the
+mosquitoes and black-flies that swarmed over the stream, and it was fun
+to see him leap from the water, catch one of them in his mouth, and drop
+back with a triumphant little splash. It wasn't really very considerate
+in him to prey on those biting, stinging flies, for in after years they
+would be his best defenders against anglers and fishermen, but
+consideration doesn't seem to be one of the strong points in a brook
+trout's character.
+
+It would take too long to tell of all his youthful doings during the
+next year, and of all his narrow escapes, and the many tight places that
+he got into and out of. It was a wonder that he ever pulled through at
+all, but I suppose it is necessary that a few trout should grow up, for,
+if they didn't, who would there be to eat the little ones?
+
+Once a kingfisher dived for him, missed him by a hair's-breadth, and
+flew back, scolding and chattering, to his perch on an old stub that
+leaned far out over the water. And once he had a horrible vision of an
+immense loon close behind him, with long neck stretched out, and huge
+bill just ready to make the fatal grab. He dodged and got away, but it
+frightened him about as badly as anything can frighten a creature with
+no more nerves than a fish. And many other such adventures he had--too
+many to enumerate. However, I don't think they ever troubled him very
+much except for the moment. He grew more wary, no doubt, but he didn't
+do much worrying. Somehow or other he always escaped by the skin of his
+teeth, and the next spring he was swallowing the new crop of young fry
+with as little concern as his older relations had shown in trying to
+swallow him. So far he seemed to be one of the few who are foreordained
+to eat and not be eaten, though it was more than likely that in the end
+he, too, would die a violent death.
+
+When he was about a year and a half old he noticed that all the larger
+trout in the stream were gathering in places where the water was
+shallow, the bottom pebbly, and the current rapid; and that they acted
+as if they thought they had very important business on hand. He wanted
+to do as the others did, and so it happened that he went back again to
+the gravelly shallow where the air-bubbles had first found him. By this
+time he was about as large as your finger, or possibly a trifle larger,
+and he had all the bumptiousness of youth and was somewhat given to
+pushing himself in where he wasn't wanted.
+
+The male trout were the first to arrive, and they promptly set to work
+to prepare nests for their mates, who were expected a little later. It
+was a simple process. All they did was to shove the gravel aside with
+their noses and fins and tails, and then fan the sediment away until
+they had made nice, clean little hollows in the bed of the stream; but
+there was a good deal of excitement and jealousy over it, and every
+little while they had to stop and have a scrap. The biggest and
+strongest always wanted the best places, and if they happened to take a
+fancy for a location occupied by a smaller and weaker fish, they drove
+him out without ceremony and took possession by right of the conqueror.
+For the most part their fighting seemed rather tame, for they did little
+more than butt each other in the ribs with their noses, but once in a
+while they really got their dander up and bit quite savagely. And when
+the lady trout came to inspect the nests that had been prepared for
+them, then times were livelier than ever, and the jealousy and rivalry
+ran very high, indeed.
+
+Of course our Trout was too young to bear a very prominent part in these
+proceedings, but he and some companions of about his own age skirmished
+around the edges of the nesting grounds, and seemed to take a wicked
+delight in teasing the old males and running away just in time to escape
+punishment. And when the nests began to be put to practical use, the
+yearlings were very much in evidence. Strictly fresh eggs are as good
+eating down under the water as they are on land, and, partly on this
+account, and partly because direct sunshine is considered very injurious
+to them, the mothers always covered them with gravel as quickly as
+possible. But in spite of the best of care the current was constantly
+catching some of them and sweeping them away, and our young friend would
+creep up as near as he dared, and whenever one of the yellow-brown balls
+came his way he would gobble it down with as little remorse as he had
+felt for his first larva. Now and then an irate father would turn upon
+him fiercely and chase him off, but in a few minutes he would be back
+again, watching for eggs as eagerly as ever. Once, indeed, he had a
+rather close call, for the biggest old male in all the stream came after
+him with mouth open as if he would swallow him whole, as he could very
+easily have done. Our friend was almost caught when the big fellow
+happened to glance back and saw another trout coming to visit his wife,
+and promptly abandoned the chase and went home to see about it.
+
+A year later our Trout went again to the gravelly shallow, and this
+time, being six inches long and about thirty months old, he decided to
+make a nest of his own. He did so, and had just induced a most beautiful
+young fish of the other sex to come and examine it, with a view to
+matrimony, when that same big bully appeared on the scene, promptly
+turned him out of house and home, and began courting the beautiful young
+creature himself. It was very exasperating, not to say humiliating, but
+it was the sort of thing that one must expect when one is only a
+two-year-old.
+
+The next year he had better luck. As another summer passed away, and the
+cooler weather came on, he arrayed himself in his wedding finery, and it
+almost seemed as if he had stolen some of the colors of the swamp
+maples, in their gay fall dress, and was using them to deck himself out
+and make a brave display. In later years he was larger and heavier, but
+I don't think he was ever much handsomer than he was in that fourth
+autumn of his life. His back was a dark, dusky, olive-green, with
+mottlings that were still darker and duskier. His sides were lighter--in
+some places almost golden yellow; and scattered irregularly over them
+were the small, bright carmine spots that gave him one of his _aliases_,
+the "Speckled Trout." Beneath he was usually of a pale cream color, but
+now that he had put on his best clothes his vest was bright orange, and
+some of his fins were variegated with red and white, while others were a
+fiery yellow. He was covered all over with a suit of armor made of
+thousands and thousands of tiny scales, so small and fine that the eye
+could hardly separate them, and from the bony shoulder-girdle just
+behind his gills a raised line, dark and slightly waving, ran back to
+his tail, like the sheer-line of a ship. There were other fishes that
+were more slender and more finely modelled than he, and possibly more
+graceful, but in him there was something besides beauty--something that
+told of power and speed and doggedness. He was like a man-o'-war dressed
+out in all her bunting for some great gala occasion, but still showing
+her grim, heavy outlines beneath her decorations. His broad mouth opened
+clear back under his eyes, and was armed with rows of backward-pointing
+teeth, so sharp and strong that when they once fastened themselves upon
+a smaller fish they never let him go again. The only way out from
+between those jaws was down his throat. His eyes were large and bright,
+and were set well apart; and the bulge of his forehead between them
+hinted at more brains than are allotted to some of the people of the
+stream. Altogether, he was a most gallant and knightly little fish, and
+it would certainly have been a pity if he hadn't found a mate.
+
+[Illustration: _Nesting Grounds._]
+
+And now he started the third time for the gravelly shallow, and
+travelled as he had never travelled before in all his life. Streams are
+made to swim against--every brook trout knows that--and the faster they
+run, the greater is the joy of breasting them. The higher the
+water-fall, the prouder do you feel when you find you can leap it. And
+our friend was in a mood for swimming, and for swimming with all his
+might. Never had he felt so strong and vigorous and so full of life and
+energy, and he made his fins and his tail go like the oars of a
+racing-shell. Now he was working up the swift current of a long rapid
+like a bird in the teeth of the wind. Now he was gathering all his
+strength for the great leap to the top of the water-fall. And now,
+perhaps, he rested for a little while in a quiet pool, and presently
+went hurrying on again, diving under logs and fallen trees, swinging
+round the curves, darting up the still places where the water lay
+a-dreaming, and wriggling over shallow bars where it was not half deep
+enough to cover him; until at last he reached the old familiar place
+where so many generations of brook trout had first seen the light of day
+and felt the cold touch of the snow-water.
+
+As before, he and the other males arrived at the nesting grounds some
+days in advance of their mates, and spent the intervening time in
+scooping hollows in the gravel and quarrelling among themselves. Two or
+three times he was driven from a choice location by someone who was
+bigger than he, but he always managed in some way to regain it, or else
+stole another from a smaller fish; and when the ladies finally appeared
+he had a fine large nest in a pleasant situation a little apart from
+those of his rivals. But for some reason the first candidates who came
+to look at it declined to stay. Perhaps they were not quite ready to
+settle down, or perhaps they were merely disposed to insist on the
+feminine privilege of changing their minds. But finally there came one
+who seemed to be quite satisfied, and with whom the Trout himself had
+every reason to be pleased.
+
+She was not a native of the stream, but of one of the hatcheries of the
+Michigan Fish Commission; and while he was lying in the gravel she was
+one of a vast company inhabiting a number of black wooden troughs that
+stood in a large, pleasant room filled with the sound of running water.
+Here there were no yearlings nor musk-rats nor saw-bill ducks looking
+for fresh eggs, nor any dragons nor star-gazers lying in wait for the
+young fry. Instead there were nice, kind men, who kept the hatching
+troughs clean and the water at the right temperature, and who gently
+stirred up the troutlets with a long goose-feather whenever too many of
+them crowded together in one corner, trying to get away from the hateful
+light. Under this sort of treatment most of the thirty million babies in
+the hatchery lived and thrived. Only a few thousands of them were brook
+trout, but among those thousands one of the smartest and most precocious
+was the one in whom we are just now most interested. She was always
+first into the dark corners, as long as dark corners seemed desirable;
+and later, when they began to come up into the light and partake of the
+pulverized beef-liver which their attendants offered them, there was no
+better swimmer or more voracious feeder than she. All this was
+especially fortunate because there was a very hard and trying experience
+before her--one in which she would have need of all her strength and
+vitality, and in which her chances of life would be very small, indeed.
+It came with planting time, when she and a host of her companions were
+whisked through a rubber tube and deposited in a big can made of
+galvanized iron, in which they were borne away to the trout stream. The
+journey was a long one, they were pretty badly cramped for room, and
+before they reached their destination the supply of oxygen in the water
+became exhausted. The baby trout began to think they had blown out the
+gas, and they all crowded to the surface, where, if anywhere, the minute
+bubbles that keep one alive are to be found. They gulped down great
+mouthfuls of water and forced it out through their gills as fast as ever
+they could, but, somehow, all the life seemed to be gone out of it, and
+it did them no good whatever. Pretty soon a few turned over on their
+backs and died, and every last one of them would have suffocated if the
+man who had charge of the party hadn't noticed what was going on and
+come to the rescue. Picking up a dipperful of water and troutlets, and
+holding it high in the air, he poured it back into the can with much
+dashing and splashing. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny bubbles were caught
+in the rush and carried down to the bottom, and so the oxygen came back
+again to the tired gills, and the danger was over.
+
+The emigrants reached the trout stream at last, and one would have
+supposed that their troubles were ended. In reality the chapter of
+trials and tribulations had only just begun, for the same fishes and
+frogs and lizards that had so persecuted our friend and his brothers and
+sisters were on hand to welcome the new arrivals, and very few escaped.
+And so, in spite of its quiet beginnings in the peaceful surroundings
+of the hatchery, this young lady trout's life proved quite as exciting
+and adventurous as our friend's, and it is possible that the good care
+which she received during her early infancy really served to make things
+all the harder for her when she came to be thrown entirely on her own
+resources. The mere change in the temperature of the water when she was
+turned out of the can was quite a shock to her nervous system; and,
+whereas most trout are somewhat acquainted with the dangers and
+hardships of the stream, almost from the time they rip their shells
+open, she did not even know that there was such a place until she was
+set down in it and told to shift for herself.
+
+However, by dint of strength, speed, agility, and good judgment in
+selecting hiding-places--and also, in all probability, by a run of
+remarkably good luck--she made her way unharmed through all the perils
+of babyhood and early youth, and now she was one of the most beautiful
+little three-year-old pirates that ever swooped down upon a helpless
+victim.
+
+As she and our friend swam side by side, her nose and the end of her
+tail were exactly even with his. Her colors were the same that he had
+worn before he put on his wedding garments, and if you had seen them
+together in the early summer I don't believe you could ever have told
+them apart. They were a well-matched pair, more evenly mated, probably,
+than is usual in fish marriages.
+
+But they were not to be allowed to set up housekeeping together without
+fighting for the privilege. Hardly had she finished inspecting the nest,
+and made up her mind that it would answer, and that he was, on the
+whole, quite eligible as a husband, when a third trout appeared and
+attempted to do as the big bully had done the year before. This time,
+however, our young friend's blood was up, and, though the enemy was
+considerably larger than he, he was ready to strike for his altars and
+his fires. He made a quick rush, like a torpedo-boat attacking a
+man-of-war, and hit the intruder amidships, ramming him with all his
+might. Then the enemy made as sudden a turn, and gave our Trout a poke
+in the ribs, and for a few minutes they dodged back and forth, and round
+and round, and over and under each other, each getting in a punch
+whenever he had a chance. So far it seemed only a trial of strength and
+speed and dexterity, and if our Trout was not quite as large and
+powerful as the other, yet he proved himself the quicker and the more
+agile and lively. But before it was over he did more than that, for,
+suddenly ranging up on the enemy's starboard quarter, he opened his
+mouth, and the sharp teeth of his lower jaw tore a row of bright scales
+from his adversary's side, and left a long, deep gash behind. That
+settled it. The big fellow lit out as fast as he could go, and our Trout
+was left in undisputed possession.
+
+The nesting season cannot last forever, and by and by, when the days
+were very short and the nights were very long, when the stars were
+bright, and when each sunrise found the hoar-frost lying thick and heavy
+on the dead and fallen leaves, the last trout went in search of better
+feeding grounds, and again the gravelly shallow seemed deserted. But it
+was only seeming. There were no eggs in sight--the frogs, the rats, the
+ducks, and the yearlings had taken care of that, and I am very much
+afraid that our friend may have eaten a few himself, on the sly, when
+his wife wasn't looking--but hidden away among the pebbles there were
+thousands, and the old, old miracle was being re-enacted, and multitudes
+of little live creatures were getting ready for the time when something
+should tell them to tear their shells open and come out into the world.
+
+One of the Trout's most remarkable adventures, and the one which
+probably taught him more than any other, came during the hot weather of
+the following summer. The stream had grown rather too warm for comfort,
+and lately he had got into the habit of frequenting certain deep, quiet
+pools where icy springs bubbled out of the banks and imparted a very
+grateful coolness to the slow current. It was delightful to spend a long
+July afternoon in the wash below one of these fountains, having a lazy,
+pleasant time, and enjoying the touch of the cold water as it went
+sliding along his body from nose to tail. One sunshiny day, as he lay in
+his favorite spring-hole, thinking about nothing in particular, and just
+working his fins enough to keep from drifting down stream, a fly lit on
+the surface just over his head--a bright, gayly colored fly of a species
+which was entirely new to him, but which looked as if it must be very
+finely flavored. As it happened, there had been several days of very
+warm, sultry weather, and even the fish had grown sullen and lazy, but
+this afternoon the wind had whipped around to the north, straight off
+Lake Superior, and all the animals in the Great Tahquamenon Swamp felt
+as if they had been made over new. How the brook trout could have known
+of it so quickly, down under the water, is a mystery; but our friend
+seemed to wake up all of a sudden, and to realize that he hadn't been
+eating as much as usual, and that he was hungry. He made a dash at the
+fly and seized it, but he had no sooner got it between his lips than he
+spat it out again. There was something wrong with it. Instead of being
+soft and juicy and luscious, as all flies ought to be, it was stiff, and
+dry, and hard, and it had a long, crooked stinger that was different
+from anything belonging to any other fly that he had ever tasted. It
+disappeared as suddenly as it had come, and the Trout sank back to the
+bottom of the pool.
+
+But presently three more flies came down together, and lit in a row, one
+behind another. They were different from the first, and he decided to
+try again. He chose the foremost of the three, and found it quite as
+ill-tasting as the other had been; but this time he didn't spit it out,
+for the stinger was a little too quick for him, and before he could let
+go it was fast in his lip. For the next few minutes he tore around the
+pool as if he was crazy, frightening some of the smaller fishes almost
+out of their wits, and sending them rushing up-stream in a panic. He
+himself had more than once been badly scared by seeing other trout do
+just what he was doing, but he had never realized what it all meant. Now
+he understood.
+
+The first thing he did was to go shooting along the surface for several
+feet, throwing his head from side to side as he went, and doing his best
+to shake that horrible fly out of his mouth. But it wouldn't shake, so
+he tried jumping out of the water and striking at the line with his
+tail. That wasn't any better, and next he rushed off up the stream as
+hard as he could go. But the line kept pulling him round to the left
+with gentle but irresistible force, and before he knew it he was back in
+the pool again. Wherever he went, and whatever he did, it was always
+pulling, pulling, pulling--not hard enough to tear the hook away, but
+just enough to keep him from getting an inch of slack. If there had been
+any chance to jerk he would probably have got loose in short order. He
+rushed around the pool so hard that he soon grew weary, and presently he
+sank to the bottom, hoping to lie still for a few minutes, and rest, and
+perhaps think of some new way of escape. But even there that steady
+tugging never ceased. It seemed as if it would pull his jaw out of his
+head if he didn't yield, and before long he let himself be drawn up
+again to the surface. Once he was so close to the shore that the angler
+made a thrust at him with the landing-net, and just grazed his side. It
+frightened him worse than ever, and he raced away again so fast that the
+reel sang, and the line swished through the water like a knife.
+
+[Illustration: "_He tried jumping out of the water._"]
+
+The other two flies were trailing behind, and the short line that held
+them was constantly catching on his fins and twisting itself around his
+tail in a way that annoyed him greatly. He almost thought he could get
+away if they were not there to hinder him. And yet, as it finally turned
+out, it was one of those flies that saved his life. He was coming slowly
+back from that last unsuccessful rush for liberty, fighting for every
+inch, and only yielding to a strength a thousand times greater than his
+own, when the trailer caught on a sunken log and held fast. Instantly
+the strain on his mouth relaxed. The angler was no longer pulling on
+him, but on the log. He could jerk now, and he immediately began to
+twitch his head this way and that, backward and forward, right and
+left, tearing the hole in his lip a little larger at every yank,
+until the hook came away and he was free.
+
+It was a painful experience, and he carried the scar as long as he
+lived, but the lesson he learned was worth all it cost. I won't say that
+he never touched bait again, but he was much more cautious, and no other
+artificial fly ever stung him as badly as that one.
+
+The years went by, and the Trout increased in size and strength and
+wisdom, as a trout should. One after another his rivals went away to the
+happy hunting-grounds, most of them losing their lives because they
+could not resist the temptation to taste a made-up fly, or to swallow a
+luscious angle-worm festooned on a dainty little steel hook; and the
+number of fish who dared dispute his right to do whatever he pleased
+grew beautifully less. And at last there was only one trout left in all
+the stream who was larger and stronger than he. That was the same big
+fellow who had come so near swallowing him on the occasion of his first
+visit to the nesting-grounds; and the way the fierce, solemn old brute
+finally departed this life deserves a paragraph all to itself.
+
+It happened one morning in early spring, just after the ice had gone
+out. Our friend was still a trifle sleepy and lazy after the long, dull
+winter, though he had an eye open, as always, for anything particularly
+good to eat. I doubt if he would have jumped at any kind of a fly, for
+it was not the right time of year for flies, and he did not believe in
+eating them out of season; but almost anything else was welcome. He was
+faring very well that morning, as it chanced, for the stream was running
+high, and many a delicious grub and earthworm had been swept into it by
+the melting snow. And presently, what should come drifting down with the
+current but a poor little field-mouse, struggling desperately in a vain
+effort to swim back to the shore. Once before our friend had swallowed a
+mouse whole, just as you would take an oyster from the half-shell, and
+he knew that they were very nice, indeed. He made a rush for the unlucky
+little animal, and in another second he would have had him; but just
+then the big bully came swaggering up with an air which seemed to say:
+"That's my meat. You get out of this!"
+
+Our friend obeyed, the big fellow gave a leap and seized the mouse, and
+then--his time had come. He fought bravely, but he was fairly hooked,
+and in a few minutes he lay out on the bank, gasping for breath,
+flopping wildly about, and fouling his beautiful sides with sand and
+dirt. If he had understood English he might have overheard an argument
+which immediately took place between the angler and a girl, and which
+began something like this:
+
+"There!" in a triumphant tone; "who says mice aren't good bait? This is
+the biggest trout that's been caught in this stream for years."
+
+"Oh, George, don't kill him! He's so pretty! Put him back in the water."
+
+"Put him back in the water? Well, I should say not! What do you take me
+for?"
+
+Evidently the girl took him for one who could be easily influenced by
+the right person, for she kept up the argument, and in the end she won
+her case. The trout was tossed back into the stream, where he gave
+himself a shake or two, to get rid of the sand, and then swam away,
+apparently as well as ever. But girls don't always know what is good for
+trout. It would really have been kinder if the angler had hit him over
+the head with the butt of his fishing-rod, and then carried him home and
+put him in the frying-pan. In his struggles a part of the mucus had been
+rubbed from his body, and that always means trouble for a fish. A few
+days later our friend met him again, and noticed that a curious growth
+had appeared on his back and sides--a growth which bore a faint
+resemblance to the bloom on a peach, and which had taken the exact shape
+of the prints of the angler's fingers. The fungus had got him. He was
+dying, slowly but surely, and within a week he turned over on his back
+and drifted away down the stream. A black bear found him whirling round
+and round in a little eddy under the bank, and that was the end of him.
+
+And so our friend became the King of the Trout Stream.
+
+You are not to suppose, however, that he paid very much attention to his
+subjects, or that he was particularly fond of having them about him and
+giving them orders. On the contrary, he had become very hermit-like in
+his habits. In his youth he had been fond of society, and he and his
+companions had often roamed the stream in little schools and bands, but
+of late years his tastes seemed to have undergone a change, and he kept
+to himself and lurked in the shady, sunless places till his skin grew
+darker and darker, and he more and more resembled the shadows in which
+he lived. His great delight was to watch from the depths of some
+cave-like hollow under an overhanging bank until a star-gazer, or a
+herring, or a minnow, or some other baby-eater came in sight, and then
+to rush out and swallow him head first. He took ample revenge on all
+those pesky little fishes for all that they had done and tried to do to
+him and his brethren in the early days. The truth is that every brook
+trout is an Ishmaelite. The hand of every creature is against him, from
+that of the dragon-fly larva to that of the man with the latest
+invention in the way of patent fishing-tackle. It is no wonder if he
+turns the tables on his enemies whenever he has a chance, or even if he
+sometimes goes so far, in his general ruthlessness, as to eat his own
+offspring.
+
+Yet, in spite of our friend's moroseness and solitary habits, there were
+certain times and seasons when he did come more or less in contact with
+his inferiors. In late spring and early summer he liked to sport for a
+while in the swift rapids--perhaps to stretch his muscles after the
+dull, quiet life of the winter-time, or possibly to free himself from
+certain little insects which sometimes fastened themselves to his body,
+and which, for lack of hands, it was rather difficult to get rid of.
+Here he often met some of his subjects, and later, when the hot weather
+came on, they all went to the spring-holes which formed their summer
+resorts. And at such times he never hesitated to take advantage of his
+superior size and strength. He always picked out the coolest and most
+comfortable places in the pools, and helped himself to the choicest
+morsels of food; and the others took what was left, without question.
+And when the summer was gone, and the water grew cold and invigorating,
+and once more he put on his wedding-garment and hurried away to the
+gravelly shallows, how different was his conduct from what it had been
+when he was a yearling! Then he was only a hanger-on; now he selected
+his nest and his mate to suit himself; and nobody ever dared to
+interfere. Whether he ever again chose that beautiful little fish from
+the hatchery, whom he had been so fond of when he was a three-year-old,
+is a question which I would rather not try to answer. Among all the
+vicissitudes, dangers, and rivalries of life in a trout stream, a
+permanent marriage seems to be almost an impossibility; and I fear that
+the affections of a fish are not remarkable for depth or constancy.
+
+The Trout had altered in many ways besides his relations to his
+fellows. The curving lines of his body were not quite as graceful as
+they had once been, and sometimes he wore a rather lean and dilapidated
+look, especially in the six months from November to May. His tail was
+not as handsomely forked as when he was young, but was nearly square
+across the end, and was beginning to be a little frayed at the corners.
+His lower jaw had grown out beyond the upper, and its extremity was
+turned up in a wicked-looking hook which was almost a disfigurement, but
+which he often found very useful in hustling a younger trout out of the
+way. Even his complexion had grown darker, as we have already seen.
+Altogether he was less prepossessing than of old, but of a much more
+formidable appearance, and the very look of him was enough to scare a
+minnow out of a year's growth.
+
+But, notwithstanding all changes, the two great interests of his
+every-day life continued to be just what they had always been--namely,
+to get enough to eat, and to keep out of the way of his enemies; for
+enemies he still had, and would have as long as he lived. The
+fly-fishermen, with their feather-weight rods and their scientific
+tackle, came every spring and summer; and only the wisdom born of
+experience kept him from falling into their hands. Several times he met
+with an otter, and had to run for his life. Once, a black bear, fishing
+for suckers, came near catching a brook trout. And perhaps the very
+closest of all his close calls came one day when some river-drivers
+exploded a stick of dynamite in the water to break up a log-jam. The
+trout was some distance up the stream at the time, but the concussion
+stunned him so that he floated at the surface, wrong side up, for
+several minutes before his senses gradually came back. That is a fish's
+way of fainting.
+
+His luck stayed by him, however, and none of these things ever did him
+any serious harm. His reign proved a long one, and as the years went by
+he came to exercise a more and more autocratic sway over the smaller
+fry. For in spite of his age he was still growing. A trout has an
+advantage over a land animal in this, that he is not obliged to use any
+of his food as fuel for keeping himself warm. He can't keep warm
+anyhow--not as long as he lives in the water--and so he doesn't try, but
+devotes everything he eats to enlarging his body and repairing wear and
+tear. If nothing happens to put a stop to the process, he seems to be
+able to keep it up almost indefinitely. But the size of the stream in
+which he lives appears to limit him to a certain extent. Probably the
+largest trout stream in the world is the Nepigon, and they say that
+seventeen-pounders were caught there in the early days. Our friend's
+native river was a rather small one. In the course of time, however, he
+attained a weight of very nearly three pounds, and I doubt if he would
+ever have been much larger. Perhaps it was fitting that his reign should
+end there.
+
+But it seems a great pity that it could not have ended in a more
+imposing manner. The last act of the drama was so inglorious that I am
+almost ashamed to tell it. He was the King of the Trout Stream; over and
+over he had run Fate's gauntlet, and escaped with his body unharmed and
+his wits sharper than ever; he knew the wiles of the fly-fishermen
+better than any other trout in the river; and yet, alas! he fell a
+victim to a little Indian boy with a piece of edging for a rod, coarse
+string for a line, and salt pork for bait.
+
+I'm sure it wouldn't have happened if he had stayed at home; but one
+spring he took it into his head to go on an exploring expedition out
+into Lake Superior. I understand that his cousins in the streams of
+eastern Canada sometimes visit salt water in somewhat the same manner,
+and that they thereupon lose the bright trimmings of their coats and
+become a plain silver-gray. Superior did not affect our friend in that
+way, but something worse happened to him--he lost his common-sense.
+Perhaps his interest in his new surroundings was so great that he forgot
+the lessons of wisdom and experience which it had cost him so much to
+learn.
+
+In the course of his wanderings he came to where a school of perch were
+loafing in the shadow of a wharf; and just as he pushed his way in among
+them, that little white piece of fat pork sank slowly down through the
+green water. It was something new to the trout; he didn't quite know
+what to make of it. But the perch seemed to think it was good, and they
+would be sure to eat it if he didn't; and so, although the string was in
+plain sight and ought to have been a sufficient warning, he exercised
+his royal prerogative, shouldered those yellow-barred plebeians out of
+the way, and took the tid-bit for himself. It is too humiliating; let us
+draw a veil over that closing scene.
+
+The King of the Trout Stream had gone the way of his fathers, and
+another reigned in his stead.
+
+
+
+
+THE STRENUOUS LIFE OF A CANADA LYNX
+
+
+THE Canada lynx came down the runway that follows the high bank along
+the northern shore of the Glimmerglass, his keen, silvery eyes watching
+the woods for foe or prey, and his big feet padding softly on the dead
+leaves. He was old, was the Canada lynx, and he had grown very tall and
+gaunt, but this afternoon his years sat lightly on him. And in a moment
+more they had vanished entirely, and he was as young as ever he was in
+his life, for, as he stepped cautiously around a little spruce, he came
+upon another lynx, nearly as tall as he, and quite as handsome in her
+early winter coat. They both stopped short and stared. And no wonder.
+Each of them was decidedly worth looking at, especially if the one who
+did the looking happened to be another lynx of the opposite sex.
+
+He was some twenty-odd inches in height and about three and a half feet
+in length, and had a most villanous cast of countenance, a very
+wicked-looking set of teeth, and claws that were two inches long and so
+heavy and strong and sharp that you could sometimes hear them crunch
+into the bark when he climbed a tree. His long hind legs, heavy
+buttocks, thick fore-limbs, and big, clumsy-looking paws told of a
+magnificent set of muscles pulling and sliding and hauling under his
+cloak. She was nearly as large as he, and very much like him in general
+appearance. Both of them wore long, thick fur, of a lustrous steel-gray
+color, with paler shades underneath, and darker trimmings along their
+back-bones and up and down their legs. Their paws were big and broad and
+furry, their tails were stubby and short, and they wore heavy, grizzled
+whiskers on the sides of their jaws and mustachios under their noses,
+while from the tips of their ears rose tassels of stiff, dark hairs that
+had an uncommonly jaunty effect. Altogether they looked very fierce and
+imposing and war-like--perhaps rather more so than was justified by
+their actual prowess. So it was not surprising that they took to each
+other. Perhaps he wasn't really quite as heroic as he appeared, but
+that's not uncommon among other lovers besides those belonging to the
+lynx tribe, and what difference did it make, anyhow, as long as she
+didn't know it?
+
+That winter was a hard one. The cold was intense, the snow was very
+deep, and the storms came often. Spruce hens and partridges were scarce,
+even rabbits were hard to find, and sometimes it seemed to the two
+lynxes as if they were the only animals left in the woods. Except the
+deer. There were always plenty of deer down in the cedar swamp, and
+their tracks were as plain as a lumberman's logging road. But although
+the lynxes sometimes killed and ate young fawns in the summertime, they
+seldom tasted venison in the winter. It was well for them that they had
+each other, for when one failed in the hunt the other sometimes
+succeeded, yet I cannot help thinking that the old male, especially,
+might perhaps have been of more use to his mate if he had not confined
+his hunting so entirely to the smaller animals. More than once he sat on
+a branch of a tree and watched a buck or doe go by, and his claws
+twitched and his eyes blazed, and he fairly trembled with eagerness and
+excitement as he saw the big gray creature pass, all unconscious,
+beneath his perch. Splendidly armed as he was, it would seem as though
+he must have succeeded if only he had jumped and risked a tussle. But he
+never tried it. I suppose he was afraid. And yet--such were the
+contradictions of his nature--one dark night he trotted half a mile
+after a shanty-boy who was going home with a haunch of venison over his
+shoulder, and was just gathering himself for a spring, intending to leap
+on him from behind, when another man appeared. Two against one was not
+fair, he thought, and he gave it up and beat a retreat without either of
+them seeing him. They found his footprints the next morning in their
+snow-shoe tracks, and wondered how far behind them he had been. I don't
+know whether it was a vein of real courage that nerved him up to doing
+such a foolhardy thing as to follow a man with the intention of
+attacking him, or whether it was simply a case of recklessness. The
+probability is, however, that he was hungrier than usual, and that the
+smell of the warm blood made him forget everything else. Anyhow, he had
+a pretty close call, for the shanty-boy had a revolver in his pocket.
+
+Aside from any question of heroism, I am afraid that he was not really
+as wise and discriminating as he looked. I have an idea that when Nature
+manufactured him she thought he did not need as much wisdom or as many
+wits as some of the other people of the woods, inasmuch as he was larger
+and stronger and better armed than most of them. Except possibly the
+bear, who was altogether too easy-going to molest him, there was not
+one of the animals that could thrash him, and they all knew it and let
+him alone. You can often manage very well without brains if only you
+have the necessary teeth and muscle and claws; and the old lynx had
+them, without a doubt. But I fear that Nature, in adapting a wild animal
+to his environment, now and then forgets to allow for the human element
+in the problem. Brains are a good thing to have, after all. Even to a
+lynx the time is pretty sure to come, sooner or later, when he needs
+them in his business. Your fellow-citizens of the woods may treat you
+with all due respect, but the trapper won't, and he'll get you if you
+don't watch out.
+
+One day he found some more snow-shoe tracks, just like those that the
+shanty-boy had left, and instead of running away, as he ought to have
+done, and as most of the animals would have had sense enough to do, he
+followed them up to see where they led. He wasn't particularly hungry
+that day, and there was absolutely no excuse for what he did. It
+certainly wasn't bravery that inspired him, for he had not the least
+idea of attacking anyone. It was simply a case of foolish curiosity. He
+followed the trail a long way, not walking directly in it, but keeping
+just a little to one side, wallowing heavily as he went, for a foot and
+a half of light, fluffy snow had fallen the day before, and the walking
+was very bad. Presently he caught sight of a little piece of scarlet
+cloth fastened to a stick that stood upright in a drift. It ought to
+have been another warning to him, but it only roused his curiosity to a
+still higher pitch, as the trapper knew it would. He sat down in the
+snow and considered. The thing didn't really look as if it were good to
+eat, and yet it might be. The only way to find out would be to go up to
+it and taste it. But, eatable or not, such a bright bit of color was
+certainly very attractive to the eye. You would think so yourself if you
+hadn't seen anything scarlet since last summer's wild-flowers faded.
+Finally, he got up and walked slowly toward it, and the first thing he
+knew a steel trap had him by the right foreleg.
+
+The way of the foolish is sometimes as hard as that of the transgressor.
+For a few minutes he was the very maddest cat in all the Great
+Tahquamenon Swamp, and he yelled and howled and caterwauled at the top
+of his voice, and jumped and tore around as if he was crazy. But, of
+course, that sort of thing did him no good, and after a while he quieted
+down and took things a little more calmly. Instead of being made fast
+to a tree, the trap was bound by a short chain to a heavy wooden clog,
+and he found that by pulling with all his might he could drag it at a
+snail's pace through the snow. So off he went on three legs, hauling the
+trap and clog by the fourth, with the blood oozing out around the steel
+jaws and leaving a line of bright crimson stains behind him. The strain
+on his foot hurt him cruelly, but a great fear was in his heart, and he
+knew that he must go away or die. So he pushed on, hour after hour,
+stopping now and then to rest for a few minutes in a thicket of cedar or
+hemlock, but soon gathering his strength for another effort. How he
+growled and snarled with rage and pain, and how his great eyes flamed as
+he looked ahead to see what was before him, or back along his trail to
+know if the trapper was coming!
+
+It was a terrible journey that he made that night, and the hours dragged
+by slow as his pace and heavy as his clog. He was heading toward the
+hollow tree by the Glimmerglass that he and his mate called home, but he
+had not made more than half the distance, and his strength was nearly
+gone. Half-way between midnight and dawn he reached the edge of a steep
+and narrow gully that lay straight across his path. The moon had risen
+some time before, and the white slopes gleamed and shone in the frosty
+light, all the whiter by contrast with the few bushes and trees that
+were scattered up and down the little valley. The lynx stood on the
+brink and studied the proposition before him. It would be hard, hard
+work to climb the farther side, dragging that heavy clog, but at least
+it ought to be easy going down. He scrambled over the edge, hauling the
+clog after him till it began to roll of its own accord. The chain
+slackened, and he leaped forward. It was good to be able to jump again.
+But he jumped too far, or tried to, and the chain tightened with a jerk
+that brought him down head-first in the snow. Before he could recover
+himself the clog shot past him, and the chain jerked again and sent him
+heels over head. And then cat, trap, and clog all went rolling over and
+over down the slope, and landed in a heap at the bottom. All the breath
+and the spirit were knocked out of him, and for a long time he could do
+nothing but lie still in the snow, trembling with weakness and pain, and
+moaning miserably. It must have been half an hour before he could pull
+himself together again, and then, just as he was about to begin the
+climb up the far side of the gully, he suddenly discovered that he was
+no longer alone. Off to the left, among some thick bushes, he saw the
+lurking form of a timber-wolf. He looked to the right, and there was
+another. Behind him was a third, and he thought he saw several others
+still farther away, slinking from bush to bush, and gradually drawing
+nearer. Ordinarily they would hardly have dreamed of tackling him, and,
+if they had mustered up sufficient courage to attempt to overpower him
+by mere force of numbers, he would simply have climbed a tree and
+laughed at them. But now it was different.
+
+The lynx cowered down in the snow and seemed to shrink to half his
+normal size; and then, as all the horror and the hopelessness of it came
+over him, he lifted up his voice in such a cry of abject fear, such a
+wail of utter agony and despair, as even the Great Tahquamenon Swamp had
+very seldom heard. I suppose that he had killed and eaten hundreds of
+smaller animals in his time, but I doubt if any of his victims ever
+suffered as he did. Most of them were taken unawares, and were killed
+and eaten almost before they knew what was coming; but he had to lie
+still and see his enemies slowly closing in upon him, knowing all the
+time that he could not fight to any advantage, and that to fly was
+utterly impossible. But when the last moment arrived he must have braced
+up and given a good account of himself. At least that was what the
+trapper decided when he came a few hours later to look for his trap. The
+lynx was gone--not even a broken bone of him was left--but there in the
+trodden and blood-stained snow was the record of an awful struggle.
+There must have been something heroic about him, after all.
+
+For the rest of the winter his widow had to hunt alone. This was not
+such a great hardship in itself, for they had frequently gone out
+separately on their marauding expeditions--more often, perhaps, than
+they had gone together. But now there was never anyone to curl up beside
+her in the hollow tree and help her keep warm, or to share his kill with
+her when her own was unsuccessful. And when the spring should come and
+bring her a family of kittens, she would have to take on her own
+shoulders the whole burden of parental responsibility. Or, rather, the
+burden was already there, for if she did not find enough meat to keep
+herself in good health the babies would be weak and wizened and
+unpromising, with small chance of growing up to be a credit to her or a
+satisfaction to themselves. So she hunted night and day, and, on the
+whole, with very good results. To tell the truth, I think she was rather
+more skilful in the chase than her mate had been, and this seems to be a
+not uncommon state of things in cat families. Perhaps feminine fineness
+of instinct and lightness of tread are better adapted to the still-hunt
+than the greater clumsiness and awkwardness of masculinity. Or, is there
+something deeper than that? Has something whispered to these savage
+mothers that on their success depends more than their own lives, and
+that it is their sacred duty to kill, kill, kill? However that may be,
+she proved herself a mighty huntress before the Lord. Her eye was keen,
+and her foot was sure, and she made terrible havoc among the rabbits and
+partridges.
+
+And yet there were times when even she was hungry and tired and
+disheartened. Once, on a clear, keen, cold winter night when all the
+great white world seemed frozen to death, she serenaded a land-looker
+who had made his bed in a deserted lumber-camp and was trying to sleep.
+She had eaten almost nothing for several days, and she knew that her
+strength was ebbing. That very evening she had fallen short in a flying
+leap at a rabbit, and had seen him dive head-first into his burrow,
+safe by the merest fraction of an inch. She had fairly screeched with
+rage and disappointment, and as the hours went by and she found no other
+game, she grew so blue and discouraged that she really couldn't contain
+herself any longer. Perhaps it did her good to have a cry. For two hours
+the land-looker lay in his bunk and listened to a wailing that made his
+heart fairly sink within him. Now it was a piercing scream, now it was a
+sob, and now it died away in a low moan, only to rise again, wilder and
+more agonized than ever. He knew without a doubt that it was only some
+kind of a cat--knew it just as well as he knew that his compass needle
+pointed north. Yet there had been times in his land-looking experience
+when he had been ready to swear that the needle was pointing
+south-southeast; and to-night, in spite of his certain knowledge that
+the voice he heard was that of a lynx or a wild-cat or cougar, he
+couldn't help being almost dead sure that it came from a woman in
+distress, there was in it such a note of human anguish and despair.
+Twice he got half-way out of bed to go to her assistance, and then lay
+down again and called himself a fool. At last he could stand it no
+longer, and taking a burning brand from the broken stove that stood in
+the centre of the room, he went to the door and looked out. The great
+arc-light of the moon had checkered the snow-crust with inky shadows,
+and patches of dazzling white. The cold air struck him like needles, and
+he said to himself that it was no wonder that either a cat or a woman
+should cry if she had to stay out in the snow on such a night. The
+moaning and wailing ceased as he opened the door, but now two round
+spots of flame shone out of a black shadow and stared at him
+unwinkingly. The lynx's pupils were wide open, and the golden-yellow
+tapeta in the backs of her eyeballs were glowing like incandescent
+lamps. It was no woman. No human eyes could ever shine like that. The
+land-looker threw the brand with all his might; an ugly snarl came from
+the shadow, and he saw a big gray animal go tearing away across the
+hard, smooth crust in a curious kind of gallop, taking three or four
+yards at a bound, coming down on all four feet at once, and spring
+forward again as if she was made of rubber. He shut the door and went
+back to bed.
+
+That was the end of the concert, and, as it turned out, it was also the
+end of the lynx's troubles, at least for the time being. Half an hour
+later, as she was loping along in the moonlight, she thought she heard a
+faint sound from beneath her feet. She stood still to listen, and the
+next minute she was sure. During the last heavy snow-storm three
+partridges had dived into a drift for shelter from the wind and the
+cold, and such a thick, hard crust had formed over their heads that they
+had not been able to get out again. She resurrected them in short order
+and reinterred them after a fashion of her own, and then she went home
+to her hollow tree and slept the sleep of those who have done what
+Nature tells them to, and whose consciences are clear and whose stomachs
+full.
+
+That was her nearest approach to starvation. She never was quite so
+hungry again, and in the early spring she had a great piece of luck. Not
+very far from her hollow tree she met a buck that had been mortally
+wounded by a hunter. He had had strength enough to run away, and to
+throw his pursuer off his track, but there was very little fight left in
+him. In such a case as this she was quite ready to attack, and it did
+not take her long to finish him. Probably it was a merciful release, for
+he had suffered greatly in the last few days. Fortunately no wolves or
+other large animals found him, and he gave her meat till after the
+kittens had come and she had begun to grow well and strong again.
+
+The kittens were a great success--two of the finest she had ever had,
+and she had had many. But at first, of course, they were rather
+insignificant-looking--just two little balls of reddish-brown fur that
+turned over once in a while and mewed for their dinner. Some of the
+scientific men say that a new-born baby has no mind, but only a blank
+something that appears to be capable of receiving and retaining
+impressions, and that may in certain cases have tendencies. There is
+reason for thinking that the baby lynxes had tendencies. But imagine, if
+you can, what their first impressions were like. And remember that they
+were blind, and that if their ears heard sounds they certainly did not
+comprehend them. Sometimes they were cold and hungry and lonesome, and
+that was an impression of the wrong sort. They did not know what the
+trouble was, but something was the matter, that was certain, and they
+cried about it, like other babies. Then would come a great, warm,
+comforting presence, and all would be right again; and that was a very
+pleasant impression, indeed. I don't suppose they knew exactly what had
+been done to them. Probably they were not definitely aware that their
+empty stomachs had been filled, or that their shrinking, shivering
+little bodies were snuggled down in somebody's thick fur coat, or that
+somebody's warm red tongue was licking and stroking and caressing them.
+Much less could they have known how that big, strong, comforting
+somebody came to be there, or how many harmless and guiltless little
+lives had been snuffed out to give her life and to enable her to give it
+to them. But they knew that all was well with them, and that everything
+was just as it should be--and they took another nap.
+
+[Illustration: "_The hole was suddenly darkened, and a round, hairy face
+looked in._"]
+
+By and by they began to look about for impressions, and were no longer
+content with lying still and taking only what came to them. They seemed
+to acquire a mental appetite for impressions that was almost as ravenous
+as their stomachs' appetite for milk, and their weak little legs were
+forced to lift their squat little bodies and carry them on exploring
+expeditions around the inside of the hollow tree, where they bumped
+their heads against the walls, and stumbled and fell down over the
+inequalities of the floor. They got a good many impressions during these
+excursions, and some of them were mental and some were physical. And
+sometimes they explored their mother, and went scrambling and
+sprawling all over her, probably getting about as well acquainted with
+her as it is possible to be with a person whom one has never seen. For
+their eyes were still closed, and they must have known her only as a
+big, kind, loving, furry thing, that fed them, and warmed them, and
+licked them, and made them feel good, and yet was almost as vague and
+indefinite as something in a dream. But the hour came at last when for
+the first time they saw the light of day shining in through the hole in
+the side of their tree. And while they were looking at it--and probably
+blinking at it--a footstep sounded outside, the hole was suddenly
+darkened, and a round, hairy face looked in--a face with big, unwinking
+eyes, pointed, tufted ears, and a thick whisker brushed back from under
+its chin. Do you suppose they recognized their mother? I don't believe
+they did. But when she jumped in beside them, then they knew her, and
+the impression they gained that day was one of the most wonderful of
+all.
+
+In looks, these kittens of the woods were not so very different from
+those of the backyard, except that they were bigger and perhaps a little
+clumsier, and that their paws were very large, and their tails very
+short and stubby. They grew stronger as the days went on, and their
+legs did not wobble quite so much when they went travelling around the
+inside of the tree. And they learned to use their ears as well as their
+eyes. They knew what their mother's step meant at the entrance, and they
+liked to hear her purr.
+
+Other sounds there were which they did not understand so well, and to
+most of which they gave little heed--the scream of the rabbit when the
+big gray cat leaps on him from behind a bush; the scolding of the red
+squirrel, disturbed and angry at the sight, and fearful that he may be
+the next victim; the bark of the fox; the rasping of the porcupine's
+teeth; and oftenest of all the pleasant rustling and whispering of the
+trees, for by this time the sun and the south wind had come back and
+done their work, and the voice of the leaves was heard in the land. All
+these noises of the woods, and many others besides, came to them from
+outside the walls of the tree, from a vast, mysterious region of which
+as yet they knew nothing except that their mother often went there. She
+was beginning to think that they were big enough and old enough to learn
+something more about it, and so one day she led them out of the hole,
+and they saw the sunshine, and the blue of the sky, and the green of
+the trees, and the whiteness of the sailing clouds, and the beauty of
+the Glimmerglass. But I don't think they appreciated the wonder and the
+glory of it all, or paid as much attention to it as they ought. They
+were too much interested in making their legs work properly, for their
+knees were still rather weak, and were apt to give out all of a sudden,
+and to let a fellow sit down when he didn't want to. And the dry leaves
+and little sticks kept sliding around under one's feet so that one never
+knew what was going to happen next. It was very different from the
+hollow tree, and they were glad when their mother picked them up one at
+a time by the back of the neck, carried them home, gave them their
+supper, and told them to lie still and take a nap while she went after
+another rabbit.
+
+But they had really done very well, considering that it was their first
+day out. One of them in particular was very smart and precocious, and
+she had taken much pleasure in watching the independent way in which he
+went staggering about, looking for impressions. And the other was not
+far behind him. Her long hours of still-hunting had brought their rich
+reward, and her babies were all that she could ask.
+
+She was in the habit of occasionally bringing something home for them to
+play with--a wood-mouse, perhaps, or a squirrel, or a partridge, or even
+a larger animal; and they played with it with a vengeance, shaking and
+worrying it, and spitting and growling and snarling over it in the most
+approved fashion. And you should have seen them the first time they saw
+their mother catch a rabbit. They did not try to help her, for she had
+told them not to, but they watched her as if it was a matter of life and
+death--as, indeed, it was, but not to them. The rabbit was nibbling some
+tender young sprouts. The old lynx crept up behind him very quietly and
+stealthily, and the kittens' eyes stuck out farther and farther as they
+saw her gradually work up within leaping distance. They nearly jumped
+out of their skins with excitement when at last she gave a bound and
+landed with both forepaws on the middle of his back. And when the rabbit
+screamed out in his fright and pain, they could not contain themselves
+any longer, but rushed in and helped finish him. They seemed to
+understand the game as perfectly as if they had been practising it for
+years. I suppose that was where their tendencies came in.
+
+A few days later they had another experience--or at least one of them
+did. Their mother happened to see two little wood-mice run under a
+small, half-decayed log, and she put her forefeet against it and rolled
+it half-way over; and then, while she held it there, the larger
+Kitten--the one who had made the better record the day they first left
+the den--thrust his paw under and grabbed one of them. The other mouse
+got away, but I don't think the Kitten cared very much. He had made his
+first kill, and that was glory enough for one day.
+
+From wood-mice the kittens progressed to chipmunks, and from them to
+larger game. With use and exercise their soft baby muscles grew hard and
+strong, and it was not long before they were able to follow the old lynx
+almost anywhere, to the tops of the tallest trees, over the roughest
+ground, and through the densest thickets. And they learned other things
+besides how to walk and climb and hunt. Their mother was a good teacher
+and a rather rigid disciplinarian, and very early in life they were
+taught that they must obey promptly and without question, and that on
+certain occasions it was absolutely necessary to keep perfectly still
+and not make the slightest sound. For instance, there was the time when
+the whole family lay sprawled out on a limb of a tree, fifteen or
+twenty feet up from the ground, and watched the land-looker go by with
+his half-axe over his shoulder, his compass in his hand, and a note-book
+sticking out of his pocket. They were so motionless, and the grayish
+color of their fur matched so well with the bark of the tree, that he
+never saw them, although for a moment they were right over his head, and
+could have leaped to his shoulders as easily as not.
+
+In short, the kittens were learning to take care of themselves, and it
+was well that they were, for one day their mother was taken from them in
+a strange, sad way, and there was nothing they could do but cry, and try
+to follow her, and at last see her pass out of sight, still looking back
+and calling to them pitifully. It was the river that carried her off,
+and it was a floating saw-log that she rode upon, an unwilling
+passenger. The trouble began with a steel trap, just as it did in their
+father's case. Traps are not nearly as much to be feared in summer or
+early fall as in winter, for the simple reason that one's fur is not as
+valuable in warm weather as in cold. The lynx's, for instance, was
+considerably shorter and thinner than it had been in the preceding
+December, when she and her mate first met, and it had taken on a
+reddish tinge, as if the steel had begun to rust a trifle. But the
+killing machines are to be found occasionally at all seasons of the
+year, and somebody had set this one down by the edge of the water--not
+the Glimmerglass, but a branch of the Tahquamenon River--and had chained
+it to a log that had been hung up in last spring's drive. When she first
+felt its grip on her leg she yelled and tore around just as her mate had
+done, while the kittens looked on in wonder and amazement. They had seen
+their mother in many moods, but never in one like this. But by and by
+she grew weary, and a little later it began to rain. She was soon
+soaking wet, and as the hours dragged on every ounce of courage and
+gumption seemed to ooze out of her. If the trapper had come then he
+would have found her very meek and limp. Possibly she would have been
+ready to fight him for her children's sakes, but nothing else could have
+nerved her to it. But she was not put to any such test; the trapper did
+not come.
+
+It rained very hard, and it rained very long. In fact it had been
+raining most of the time for two or three days before the lynx found the
+trap, and in a few more hours the Great Tahquamenon Swamp was as full
+of water as a soaked sponge, and the river was rising rapidly. The lynx
+was soon lying in a puddle, and to get out of it she climbed upon the
+log and stretched herself out on the wet, brown bark. Still the river
+rose, and by and by the log began to stir in its bed, as if it were
+thinking of renewing its voyage. At last, when she had been there nearly
+twenty-four hours, and was faint with hunger, as well as cold and wet,
+it quietly swung out into the current and drifted away down the stream.
+She was an excellent swimmer, and she promptly jumped overboard and
+tried to reach the shore, but of course the chain put a stop to that.
+Weakened by fasting, and borne down by the weight of the trap, she came
+very near drowning before she could scramble up again over the end of
+the log and seat herself amidships.
+
+The kittens were foraging among the bushes, but she called to them in a
+tone which told them plainly enough that some new trouble had befallen
+her, and they hurried down to the water's edge, and stood there, mewing
+piteously. She implored them to follow her, and after much persuasion
+the bigger and bolder of the two plunged bravely in. But he didn't get
+very far. It was very cold and very wet, and he wasn't used to
+swimming. Besides, the water got into his nose and made him sneeze,
+which distracted his attention so that for a moment he forgot all about
+his mother, and just turned around and hustled back to the shore as fast
+as he could go. After that he, contented himself with following along
+the bank and keeping as near her as he could. Once the log drifted in so
+close that she thought she could jump ashore, and the Kitten watched
+eagerly as she gathered herself for the spring. But the chain was too
+short, and she fell into the water. Her forepaw just grazed the
+grass-tuft where the Kitten was standing, and for an instant she felt
+the blades slipping between her toes; but the next moment she was
+swimming for the log again, and the Kitten was mewing his sympathy at
+the top of his voice.
+
+They journeyed on for nearly an hour longer, she on her prison-ship, and
+he on land; and then, before either of them knew just what had happened,
+the little tributary had emptied itself into the main stream of the
+Tahquamenon, and they suddenly realized that they were much farther
+apart than they had been at any time before. This new river was several
+times as broad as the one on which the voyage had begun, and the wind
+was steadily carrying her away from the shore, while the current bore
+her resistlessly on in its long, slow voyage to Lake Superior. She was
+still calling to him, but her voice was growing fainter and fainter in
+the distance, and so, at last, she passed out of his sight and hearing
+forever.
+
+[Illustration: "_He was a very presentable young lynx._"]
+
+And then, for the first time, he missed his brother. The other kitten
+had always been a trifle the slower of the two, and in some way he had
+dropped behind. Our friend was alone in the world.
+
+But the same river that had carried his mother away brought him a little
+comfort in his desolation, for down by the water's edge, cast up on the
+sand by a circling eddy, he found a dead sucker. He ate it with relish,
+and felt better in spite of himself. It made a very large meal for a
+lynx of his size, and by the time he had finished it he began to be
+drowsy, so he picked out the driest spot he could find, under the thick
+branches of a large hemlock, and curled himself up on the brown needles
+and went to sleep.
+
+The next day he had to hustle for a living, and the next it was the
+same, and the next, and the next. As the weeks and the months went by
+there was every indication that life would be little else than one long
+hustle--or perhaps a short one--and in spite of all he could do there
+were times when he was very near the end of the chapter. But his
+mother's lessons stood him in good stead, and he was exceedingly well
+armed for the chase. It would have been hard to find in all the woods
+any teeth better adapted than his to the work of pulling a
+fellow-creature to pieces. In front, on both the upper and lower jaws,
+were the chisel-shaped incisors. Flanking them were the canines, very
+long and slender, and very sharply pointed, thrusting themselves into
+the meat like the tines of a carving-fork, and tearing it away in great
+shreds. And back of the canines were other teeth that were still larger,
+but shorter and broader, and shaped more like notched knife-blades.
+Those of the lower jaw worked inside those of the upper, like shears,
+and they were very handy for cutting the large chunks into pieces small
+enough to go down his throat. By the time he got through with a
+partridge there was not much left of it but a puddle of brown feathers.
+His claws, too, were very long and white, and very wickedly curved; and
+before starting out on a hunt he would often get up on his hind legs
+and sharpen those of his forefeet on a tree-trunk, just as your
+house-cat sharpens hers on the leg of the kitchen-table. When he wasn't
+using them he kept them hidden between his toes, so that they would not
+be constantly catching and breaking on roots and things; but all he had
+to do when he wanted them was to pull certain muscles, and out they
+came, ready to scratch and tear to his heart's content. They were not by
+any means full grown as yet, but they bade fair to equal his father's
+some day. He was warmly and comfortably clothed, of course, and along
+his sides and flanks the hair hung especially thick and long, to protect
+his body when he was obliged to wade through light, fluffy snow. When
+there was a crust he didn't need it, for his paws were so big and broad
+and hairy that at such times they bore him up almost as well as if they
+had been two pairs of snow-shoes.
+
+But, well armed, well clad, and well shod though he was, it was
+fortunate for the Kitten that his first winter was a mild one--mild,
+that is, for the Glimmerglass country. Otherwise things might have gone
+very hard with him, and they were none too easy as it was. There were
+days when he was even hungrier than his mother had been the night she
+serenaded the land-looker, and it was on one of these occasions that he
+found a porcupine in a tree and tried to make a meal of him. That was a
+memorable experience. The porky was sitting in a crotch, doing nothing
+in particular, and when the Kitten approached he simply put his nose
+down and his quills up. The Kitten spat at him contemptuously, but
+without any apparent effect. Then he put out a big forepaw and tapped
+him lightly on the forehead. The porcupine flipped his tail, and the
+Kitten jumped back, and spat and hissed harder than ever. He didn't
+quite know what to make of this singular-looking creature, but he was
+young and rash, besides being awfully, awfully hungry, and in another
+minute he pitched in.
+
+The next thing they knew, the porcupine had dropped to the ground, where
+he lit in a snow-bank, and presently picked himself up and waddled off
+to another tree, while the Kitten--well, the Kitten just sat in the
+crotch and cried as hard as ever he could cry. There were quills in his
+nose, and quills in his side, and quills in both his forepaws; and every
+motion was agony. He himself never knew exactly how he got rid of them
+all, so of course I can't tell you. A few of those that were caught only
+by their very tips may possibly have dropped out, but it is probable
+that most of them broke off and left their points to work deeper and
+deeper into the flesh until the skin finally closed over them and they
+disappeared. I have no doubt that pieces of those quills are still
+wandering about in various parts of his anatomy, like the quart of lead
+that "Little Bobs" carries around with him, according to Mr. Kipling. It
+was weeks before he ceased to feel the pain of them.
+
+For several days after this mishap it was impossible for him to hunt,
+and he would certainly have starved to death if it had not been for a
+cougar who providentially came to the Glimmerglass on a short visit. The
+Kitten found his tracks in the snow the very next day, and cautiously
+followed them up, limping as he went, to see what the big fellow had
+been doing. For a mile or more the large, round, shapeless
+footprints--very much like his own, but on a bigger scale--were spaced
+so regularly that it was evident the cougar had been simply walking
+along at a very leisurely gait, with nothing to disturb his frame of
+mind. But after a while the record showed a remarkable change. The
+footprints were only a few inches apart, and his cougarship had carried
+himself so low that his body had dragged in the snow and left a deep
+furrow behind. The Kitten knew what that meant. He had been there
+himself, though not after the same kind of prey. And then the trail
+stopped entirely, and for a space the snow lay fresh and virgin and
+untrodden. But twenty feet away was the spot where the cougar had come
+down on all-fours, only to leap forward again like a ricochetting
+cannon-ball; and twenty-five feet farther lay the greater part of the
+carcass of a deer.
+
+The Kitten stuffed himself as full as he could hold, and then climbed a
+tree and watched. About midnight the cougar appeared, and after he had
+eaten his fill and gone away again the Kitten slipped down and ate some
+more. He was making up for lost time. For four successive nights the
+cougar came and feasted on venison, but after that the Kitten never saw
+him or heard of him again. There was still a goodly quantity of meat
+left, and it seems somewhat curious that he did not return for it, but
+he was a stranger in those parts, and it is probable that he went back
+to his old haunts, up toward Whitefish Point, perhaps, or the Grand
+Sable. Anyhow, it was very nice for the Kitten, for that deer kept him
+in provisions until he was able to take up hunting once more.
+
+He had one rather exciting experience during this period. One day, just
+as he was finishing a very enjoyable meal of venison tenderloin, he
+heard the tramp of snow-shoes on the crust, and in a moment more that
+same land-looker came pacing down a section line and halted squarely in
+front of him. Now there are trappers who say that a Canada lynx is a
+fool and a coward, that he will run from a small dog, and that he makes
+his living entirely by preying on animals that are weaker and more
+poorly armed than he. I admit, of course, that the majority of lynxes do
+not go ramming around the woods with chips on their shoulders, looking
+for hunters armed with bowie-knives and repeating rifles. You wouldn't,
+either--not as long as there were rabbits to be had for the stalking.
+But on this occasion the Kitten's conduct certainly savored of
+recklessness, if not of real bravery. Being entirely unacquainted with
+the land-looking profession, he naturally supposed that the man had come
+for his deer. And he didn't propose to let him have it. He considered
+that that venison belonged to him, and he took his stand on the carcass,
+laid his ears back, showed his white teeth, made his eyes blaze, and
+spit and growled and snarled defiantly. The land-looker didn't quite
+know what to do. His section line lay straight across the deer's body,
+and he did not want to leave it for fear of confusing his reckoning, but
+the Kitten, though only half grown, looked uncommonly business-like. He
+had no gun, nor even a revolver, for he was hunting for pine, not fresh
+meat. He had left his half-axe in camp, and when he felt in his pocket
+for his jack-knife it was not there. Then he looked about for a club. He
+had been told that lynxes always had very thin skulls, and that a light
+blow on the back of the head was enough to kill the biggest and fiercest
+of them, let alone a kitten. But he couldn't even find a stick that
+would answer his purpose.
+
+"Well," he said, when they had stared at each other a minute or two
+longer without coming to any understanding, "I suppose if you won't turn
+out for me, I'll have to turn out for you"; and he made a careful
+circuit at a respectful distance, picked up his line again, and went on
+his way.
+
+The winter dragged on very slowly, with many ups and downs, but it was
+gone at last. Summer was easier, if only because he was not obliged to
+use up any of his vitality in keeping warm. Sometimes, indeed, he was
+really too warm for comfort, so he presently changed his coat and put
+on a thinner one. People like to talk about the coolness of the deep
+woods, but the truth is that there isn't any place much hotter and
+stuffier than a dense growth of timber, where the wind never comes, and
+where the air is heavy and still. And then there are the windfalls and
+the old burnings, where the sun beats fiercely down among the fallen
+trees till the blackened soil is hot as a city pavement, and where dead
+trunks and half-burned logs lie thrown together in the wildest
+confusion--places which are almost impassable for men, and which even
+the land-lookers avoid whenever they can, but which a cat will thread as
+readily as the locomotive follows the rails. These were the localities
+which the Kitten was most fond of frequenting, and here his youth
+slipped rapidly away. He was fast becoming an adult lynx.
+
+The summer passed, and half the autumn; the first snow came and went,
+and again the Kitten put on his winter coat of gray, with the white
+underneath, and the dark trimmings up and down his legs and along his
+back. What with his mustachios, and his whiskers, and the tassels on his
+ears, he was a very presentable young lynx. It would be many years
+before he could hope to be as large and powerful as his father, but,
+nevertheless, he was making remarkably good progress. And the time was
+at hand when he would need both his good looks and his muscle.
+
+Since his mother had left him he had seen only two or three lynxes, and
+those were all much older and larger than he, and not well suited to be
+his companions. But history repeats itself. One Indian-summer afternoon
+he was tramping along the northern bank of the Glimmerglass, just as his
+father had done two years before, and as he rounded a bend in the path
+he came face to face with someone who was enough like him to have been
+his twin sister. And they did as his parents had done, stood still for a
+minute or two and looked at each other as if they had just found out
+what they were made for. After all, life is something more than hustling
+for a living, even in the woods.
+
+But just then something else happened, and another ruling passion came
+into play--the old instinct of the chase, which neither of them could
+very long forget. A faint "Quack, quack, quack," came up from the lake,
+and they crept to the edge of the bank, side by side, and looked down.
+Above them the trees stood dreamily motionless in the mellow sunshine.
+Below was a steep slope of ten or fifteen feet; beyond it a tiny strip
+of sandy beach, and then the quiet water. A squadron of ducks, on their
+way from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf, had taken stop-over checks for
+the Glimmerglass; and now they came loitering along through the dead
+bulrushes, murmuring gently, in soft, mild voices, of delicious minnows
+and snails, and pausing a moment now and then to put their heads under
+and dabble in the mud for some particularly choice morsel. The lynxes
+crouched and waited, while their stubby tails twitched nervously, their
+long, narrow pupils grew still narrower, and their paws fumbled about
+among the dry pine-needles, feeling for the very best footing for the
+flying leap. The ducks came on, still prattling pleasantly over their
+own private affairs. Closer and closer they swam, without a thought of
+death waiting for them at the top of the bank, and suddenly four
+splendid sets of muscles jerked like bowstrings, four long hind-legs
+straightened with a mighty thrust and shove, and two big gray creatures
+shot out from the brink and came sailing down through the air with their
+heads up, their tails on end, their eyes blazing, and their forepaws
+stretched out to grab the nearest unhappy duck. The flock broke up with
+frightened cries and a wonderful whirring of wings, and in a moment
+more they were far away and going like the very wind.
+
+[Illustration: "_They both stood still and looked at each other._"]
+
+But two of its members stayed behind, and presently the lynxes waded out
+on the beach and sat down to eat their supper together. They talked as
+much over that meal as the ducks had over theirs, but the lynx language
+is very different from that of the water-fowl. Instead of soft, gentle
+murmurings there were low growls and snarls as the long, white claws and
+teeth tore the warm red flesh from the bones. It could hardly have been
+a pleasant conversation to anyone but themselves, but I suppose they
+enjoyed it as much as the choicest repartee. In truth they had good
+reason to be satisfied and contented with themselves and each other, and
+with what they had just done, for not every flying leap is so
+successful, and not every duck is as plump and juicy as the two that
+they were discussing. So they talked on in angry, threatening tones,
+that sounded like quarrelling, but that really meant only a fierce,
+savage kind of pleasure; and when the meal was ended, and the very last
+shred of duck-flesh had disappeared, they washed their faces, and
+purred, and lay still a while to visit and get acquainted.
+
+There were many other meetings during the weeks that followed--some
+under as pleasant circumstances as the first, and some not. Perhaps the
+best were those of the clear, sharp days of early winter, when the sky
+was blue, and the sunshine was bright, and a thin carpet of fine, dry
+snow covered the floor of the forest. It was cold, of course; but they
+were young and strong and healthy, and their fur was thick and warm,
+like the garments of a Canadian girl. The keen air set the live blood
+leaping and dancing, and they frisked and frolicked, and romped and
+played, and rolled each other over and over in the snow, and were as
+wildly and deliciously happy as it is ever given to two animals to be.
+
+It was too good to last long without some kind of an interruption, and
+one glorious winter evening, when the full moon was flooding the woods
+with the white light that brings a touch of madness, a third young lynx
+came upon the scene. And then there was trouble. The Kitten's new friend
+sat back in the bushes and looked on, while he and his rival squatted
+face to face in the snow and sassed each other to the utmost limits of
+the lynx vocabulary, their voices rising and falling in a hideous duet,
+and their eyes gleaming and glowing with a pale, yellow-green fire.
+Presently there was a rush, and the fur began to fly. The snow flew,
+too; and the woods rang and rang again with yelling and caterwauling,
+and spitting and swearing, and all manner of abuse. The rabbits heard
+it, and trembled; and the partridges, down in the cedar swamp, glanced
+furtively over their shoulders and were glad it was no nearer. They bit
+and scratched and clawed like two little devils, and the onlooker in the
+bushes must have felt a thrill of pride over the strenuous way in which
+they strove for her favors. First one was on top, and then the other.
+Now our Kitten had his rival by the ears, and now by the tail. One
+minute heads, legs, and bodies were all mixed up in such a snarl that it
+seemed as if they could never be untangled, and the next they backed off
+just long enough to catch their breath, and then flew at each other's
+throats more savagely than ever. It was really more difficult than you
+would suppose for either of them to get a good hold of the other, partly
+because their fur was so thick, and partly because Nature had purposely
+made their skins very loose, with an eye to just such performances as
+this. But they managed to do a good deal of damage, nevertheless; and in
+the end the pretender was thoroughly whipped, and fled away in disgrace
+down the long, snowy aisles of the forest, howling as he went, while
+the Kitten turned slowly and painfully to the one who was at the bottom
+of all this unpleasantness. His ears were slit; one eye was shut, and
+the lid of the other hung very low; he limped badly with his right
+hind-leg, and many were the wounds and scratches along his breast and
+sides. But he didn't care. He had won his spurs.
+
+The story of the Kitten is told, for he was a kitten no longer.
+
+
+
+
+POINTERS FROM A PORCUPINE QUILL
+
+
+HE wasn't handsome--the original owner of this quill--and I can't say
+that he was very smart. He was only a slow-witted, homely old porky who
+once lived by the Glimmerglass. But in spite of his slow wits and his
+homeliness a great many things happened to him in the course of his
+life.
+
+He was born in a hollow hemlock log, on a wild April morning, when the
+north wind was whipping the lake with snow, and when winter seemed to
+have come back for a season. The Glimmerglass was neither glimmering nor
+glassy that morning, but he and his mother were snug and warm in their
+wooden nest, and they cared little for the storm that was raging
+outside.
+
+It has been said by some that porcupines lay eggs, the hard, smooth
+shells of which are furnished by a kind and thoughtful Providence for
+the protection of the mothers from their prickly offspring until the
+latter have fairly begun their independent existence. Other people say
+that two babies invariably arrive at once, and that one of them is
+always dead before it is born. But when my Porcupine discovered America
+he had neither a shell on his back nor a dead twin brother by his side.
+Neither was he prickly. He was covered all over with soft, furry,
+dark-brown hair. If you had searched carefully along the middle of his
+back you might possibly have found the points of the first quills, just
+peeping through the skin; but as yet the thick fur hid them from sight
+and touch unless you knew just where and how to look for them.
+
+He was a very large baby, larger even than a new-born bear cub, and no
+doubt his mother felt a justifiable pride in his size and his general
+peartness. She was certainly very careful of him and very anxious for
+his safety, for she kept him out of sight, and no one ever saw him
+during those first days and weeks of his babyhood. She did not propose
+to have any lynxes or wild-cats or other ill-disposed neighbors fondling
+him until his quills were grown. After that they might give him as many
+love-pats as they pleased.
+
+He grew rapidly, as all porcupine babies do. Long hairs, tipped with
+yellowish-white, came out through the dense fur, and by and by the
+quills began to show. His teeth were lengthening, too, as his mother
+very well knew, and between the sharp things in his mouth and those on
+his back and sides he was fast becoming a very formidable nursling.
+Before he was two months old she was forced to wean him, but by that
+time he was quite able to travel down to the beach and feast on the
+tender lily-pads and arrow-head leaves that grew in the shallow water,
+within easy reach from fallen and half-submerged tree-trunks.
+
+One June day, as he and his mother were fishing for lily-pads, each of
+them out on the end of a big log, a boy came down the steep bank that
+rose almost from the water's edge. He wasn't a very attractive boy. His
+clothes were dirty and torn--and so was his face. His hat was gone, and
+his hair had not seen a comb for weeks. The mosquitoes and black-flies
+and no-see-'ems had bitten him until his skin was covered with blotches
+and his eyelids were so swollen that he could hardly see. And worst of
+all, he looked as if he were dying of starvation. There was almost
+nothing left of him but skin and bones, and his clothing hung upon him
+as it would on a framework of sticks. If the Porcupine could have
+philosophized about it he would probably have said that this was the
+wrong time of year for starving; and from his point of view he would
+have been right. June, in the woods, is the season of plenty for
+everybody but man. Man thinks he must have wheat-flour, and that doesn't
+grow on pines or maple-trees, nor yet in the tamarack swamp. But was
+there any wild, fierce glare in the boy's eyes, such a light of hunger
+as the story-books tell us is to be seen in the eyes of the wolf and the
+lynx when they have not eaten for days and days, and when the snow lies
+deep in the forest, and famine comes stalking through the trees? I don't
+think so. He was too weak and miserable to do any glaring, and his
+stomach was aching so hard from eating green gooseberries that he could
+scarcely think of anything else.
+
+But his face brightened a very little when he saw the old she-porcupine,
+and he picked up a heavy stick and waded out beside her log. She clacked
+her teeth together angrily as he approached; but he paid no attention,
+so she drew herself into a ball, with her head down and her nose covered
+by her forepaws. Reaching across her back and down on each side was a
+belt or girdle of quills, the largest and heaviest on her whole body,
+which could be erected at will, and now they stood as straight as young
+spruce-trees. Their tips were dark-brown, but the rest of their length
+was nearly white, and when you looked at her from behind she seemed to
+have a pointed white ruffle, edged with black, tied around the middle of
+her body. But the boy wasn't thinking about ruffles, and he didn't care
+what she did with her quills. He gave her such a thrust with his stick
+that she had to grab at the log with both hands to keep from being
+shoved into the water. That left her nose unprotected, and he brought
+the stick down across it once, twice, three times. Then he picked her up
+by one foot, very gingerly, and carried her off; and our Porky never saw
+his mother again.
+
+Perhaps we had best follow her up and see what finally became of her.
+Half a mile from the scene of the murder the boy came upon a woman and a
+little girl. I sha'n't try to describe them, except to say that they
+were even worse off than he. Perhaps you read in the papers, some years
+ago, about the woman and the two children who were lost for several
+weeks in the woods of northern Michigan.
+
+"I've got a porky," said the boy.
+
+[Illustration: "_High up in the top of a tall hemlock._"]
+
+He dropped his burden on the ground, and they all stood around and
+looked at it. They were hungry--oh, so hungry!--but for some reason they
+did not seem very eager to begin. An old porcupine with her clothes on
+is not the most attractive of feasts, and they had no knife with which
+to skin her, no salt to season the meat, no fire to cook it, and no
+matches with which to start one. Rubbing two sticks together is a very
+good way of starting a fire when you are in a book, but it doesn't work
+very well in the Great Tahquamenon Swamp. And yet, somehow or other--I
+don't know how, and I don't want to--they ate that porcupine. And it did
+them good. When the searchers found them, a week or two later, the woman
+and the boy were dead, but the little girl was still alive, and for all
+I know she is living to this day.
+
+Let us return to the Glimmerglass. The young Porcupine ought to have
+mourned deeply for his mother, but I grieve to say that he did nothing
+of the kind. I doubt if he was even very lonesome. His brain was
+smaller, smoother, and less corrugated than yours is supposed to be; its
+wrinkles were few and not very deep; and it may be that the bump of
+filial affection was quite polished, or even that there wasn't any such
+bump at all. Anyhow, he got along very well without her, dispensing with
+her much more easily than the woman and the boy and girl could have.
+He watched stolidly while the boy killed her and carried her off, and a
+little later he was eating lily-pads again.
+
+As far as his future prospects were concerned, he had little reason for
+worrying. He knew pretty well how to take care of himself, for that is a
+kind of knowledge which comes early to young porcupines. Really, there
+wasn't much to learn. His quills would protect him from most of his
+enemies, if not from all of them; and, what was still better, he need
+never suffer from a scarcity of food. Of all the animals in the woods
+the porcupine is probably the safest from starvation, for he can eat
+anything from the soft green leaves of the water-plants to the bark and
+the small twigs of the tallest hemlock. Summer and winter, his
+storehouse is always full. The young lions may lack, and suffer hunger,
+and seek their meat from God; but the young porky has only to climb a
+tree and set his teeth at work. All the woods are his huckleberry.
+
+And, by the way, our Porcupine's teeth were a great institution,
+especially the front ones, and were well worthy of a somewhat detailed
+description. They were long and sharp and yellow, and there were two in
+the upper jaw and two in the lower, with a wide gap on each side between
+them and the molars. They kept right on growing as long as he lived, and
+there is no telling how far they would have gone if there had been
+nothing to stop them. Fortunately, he did a great deal of eating and
+chewing, and the constant friction kept them worn down, and at the same
+time served to sharpen them. Like a beaver's, they were formed of thin
+shells of hard enamel in front, backed up by softer pulp behind; and of
+course the soft parts wore away first, and left the enamel projecting in
+sharp, chisel-like edges that could gnaw crumbs from a hickory
+axe-handle.
+
+The next few months were pleasant ones, with plenty to eat, and nothing
+to do but keep his jaws going. By and by the leaves began to fall, and
+whenever the Porky walked abroad they rustled around him like silk
+skirts going down the aisle of a church. A little later the beechnuts
+came down from the sky, and he feasted more luxuriously than ever. His
+four yellow chisels tore the brown shells open, his molars ground the
+sweet kernels into meal, and he ate and ate till his short legs could
+hardly keep his fat little belly off the ground.
+
+Then came the first light snow, and his feet left tracks which bore a
+faint resemblance to a baby's--that is, if your imagination was
+sufficiently vigorous. The snow grew deeper and deeper, and after a
+while he had to fairly plough his way from the hollow log to the tree
+where he took his meals. It was hard work, for his clumsy legs were not
+made for wading, and at every step he had to lift and drag himself
+forward, and then let his body drop while he shifted his feet. A
+porcupine's feet will not go of themselves, the way other animals' do.
+They have to be picked up one at a time and lifted forward as far as
+they can reach--not very far at the best, for they are fastened to the
+ends of very short legs. It almost seems as if he could run faster if he
+could drop them off and leave them behind. One evening, when the snow
+was beginning to freeze again after a thawing day, he lay down to rest
+for a few minutes; and when he started on, some of his quills were fast
+in the hardening crust and had to be left behind. But no matter how
+difficult the walk might be, there was always a good square meal at the
+end of it, and he pushed valiantly on till he reached his dinner-table.
+
+Sometimes he stayed in the same tree for several days at a time,
+quenching his thirst with snow, and sleeping in a crotch.
+
+He was not by any means the only porcupine in the woods around the
+Glimmerglass, although weeks sometimes passed without his seeing any of
+his relations. At other times there were from one to half a dozen
+porkies in the trees close by, and when they happened to feel like it
+they would call back and forth to each other in queer, harsh, and often
+querulous voices.
+
+One afternoon, when he and another porcupine were occupying trees next
+each other, two land-lookers came along and camped for the night between
+them. Earlier in the day the men had crossed the trail of a pack of
+wolves, and they talked of it as they cut their firewood, and, with all
+the skill of the _voyageurs_ of old, cooked their scanty supper, and
+made their bed of balsam boughs. The half-breed was much afraid that
+they would have visitors before morning, but the white man only laughed
+at the idea.
+
+The meal was hardly finished when they lay down between their
+blankets--the white man to sleep, and the half-breed to listen, listen,
+listen for the coming of the wolves. Beyond the camp-fire's little
+circle of ruddy light, vague shadows moved mysteriously, as if living
+things were prowling about among the trees and only waiting for him to
+fall asleep. Yet there was no wolf-howl to be heard, nor anything else
+to break the silence of the winter night, save possibly the dropping of
+a dead branch, or the splitting open of a tree-trunk, torn apart by the
+frost. And by and by, in spite of himself, the half-breed's eyelids
+began to droop.
+
+But somebody else was awake--awake, and tempted with a great temptation.
+The porcupine--not ours, but the other one--had caught the fragrance of
+coffee and bacon. Here were new odors--different from anything that had
+ever before tickled his nostrils--strange, but indescribably delicious.
+He waited till the land-lookers were snoring, and then he started down
+the tree. Half-way to the ground he encountered the cloud of smoke that
+rose from the camp-fire. Here was another new odor, but with nothing
+pleasant about it. It stung his nostrils and made his eyes smart, and he
+scrambled up again as fast as he could go, his claws and quills rattling
+on the bark. The half-breed woke with a start. He had heard
+something--he was sure he had--the wolves were coming, and he gave the
+white man a punch in the ribs.
+
+"Wake up, wake up, m'shoor!" he whispered, excitedly. "The wolves are
+coming. I can hear them on the snow."
+
+The white man was up in a twinkling, but by that time the porcupine hod
+settled himself in a crotch, out of reach of the smoke, and the woods
+were silent again. The two listened with all their ears, but there was
+not a sound to be heard.
+
+"You must have been dreaming, Louis."
+
+The half-breed insisted that he had really heard the patter of the
+wolves' feet on the snow-crust, but the timber cruiser laughed at him,
+and lay down to sleep again. An hour later the performance was repeated,
+and this time the white man was angry.
+
+"Don't you wake me up again, Louis. You're so rattled you don't know
+what you're doing."
+
+Louis was silenced, but not convinced, and he did not let himself go to
+sleep again. The fire was dying down, and little by little the
+smoke-cloud grew thinner and thinner until it disappeared entirely. Then
+the half-breed heard the same sound once more, but from the tree
+overhead, and not from across the snow. He waited and watched, and
+presently a dark-brown animal, two or three feet in length and about
+the shape of an egg, came scrambling cautiously down the trunk. The
+porky reached the ground in safety, and searched among the tin plates
+and the knives and forks until he found a piece of bacon rind; but he
+got just one taste of it, and then Louis hit him over the head with a
+club. Next morning the land-lookers had porcupine soup for breakfast,
+and they told me afterward that it was very good indeed.
+
+Our Porky had seen it all. He waited till the men had tramped away
+through the woods, with their packs on their backs and their snow-shoes
+on their feet, and then he, too, came down from his tree on a tour of
+investigation. His friend's skin lay on the snow not very far away--if
+you had pulled the quills and the longer hairs out of it, it would have
+made the pelt which the old fur-traders sometimes sold under the name of
+"spring beaver"--but he paid no attention to it. The bacon rind was what
+interested him most, and he chewed and gnawed at it with a relish that
+an epicure might have envied. It was the first time in all his
+gluttonous little life that he had ever tasted the flavor of salt or
+wood-smoke; and neither lily-pads, nor beechnuts, nor berries, nor
+anything else in all the woods could compare with it. Life was worth
+living, if only for this one experience; and it may be that he stowed a
+dim memory of it away in some dark corner of his brain, and hoped that
+fortune would some day be good to him and send him another rind.
+
+The long, long winter dragged slowly on, the snow piled up higher and
+deeper, and the cold grew sharper and keener. Night after night the
+pitiless stars seemed sucking every last bit of warmth out of the old
+earth and leaving it dead and frozen forever. Those were the nights when
+the rabbits came out of their burrows and stamped up and down their
+runways for hours at a time, trying by exercise to keep from freezing to
+death, and when the deer dared not lie down to sleep. And hunger came
+with the cold and the deep snow. The buck and the doe had to live on
+hemlock twigs till they grew thin and poor. The partridges were buried
+in the drifting snow, and starved to death. The lynxes and the wild-cats
+hunted and hunted and hunted, and found no prey; and it was well for the
+bears and the woodchucks that they could sleep all winter and did not
+need food. Only the Porcupine had plenty and to spare. Starvation had no
+terrors for him.
+
+But the hunger of another may mean danger for us, as the Porcupine
+discovered. In ordinary times most of the animals let him severely
+alone. They knew better than to tackle such a living pin-cushion as he;
+and if any of them ever did try it, one touch was generally enough. But
+when you are ready to perish with hunger, you will take risks which at
+other times you would not even think about; and so it happened that one
+February afternoon, as the Porky was trundling himself deliberately over
+the snow-crust, a fierce-looking animal with dark fur, bushy tail, and
+pointed nose sprang at him from behind a tree and tried to catch him by
+the throat, where the quills did not grow, and there was nothing but
+soft, warm fur. The Porcupine knew just what to do in such a case, and
+he promptly made himself into a prickly ball, very much as his mother
+had done seven or eight months before, with his face down, and his
+quills sticking out defiantly. But this time his scheme of defence did
+not work as well as usual, for the sharp little nose dug into the snow
+and wriggled its way closer and closer to where the jugular vein was
+waiting to be tapped. That fisher must have understood his business, for
+he had chosen the one and only way by which a porcupine may be
+successfully attacked. For once in his life our friend was really
+scared. Another inch, and the fisher would have won the game, but he was
+in such a hurry that he grew careless and reckless, and did not notice
+that he had wheeled half-way round, and that his hind-quarters were
+alongside the Porcupine's. Now, sluggish and slow though a porky may be,
+there is one of his members that is as quick as a steel trap, and that
+is his tail. Something hit the fisher a whack on his flank, and he gave
+a cry of pain and fury, and jumped back with half a dozen spears
+sticking in his flesh. He must have quite lost his head during the next
+few seconds, for before he knew it his face also had come within reach
+of that terrible tail and its quick, vicious jerks. That ended the
+battle, and he fled away across the snow, almost mad with the agony in
+his nose, his eyes, his forehead, and his left flank. As for the Porky,
+he made for the nearest tree as fast as he could go, hardly trusting in
+his great deliverance. And I don't believe there is any sight in all the
+Great Tahquamenon Swamp much funnier than a porky in a hurry--a porky
+who has really made up his mind that he is in danger and must hustle for
+dear life. He is the very personification of haste and a desire to go
+somewhere quick, and he picks his feet up and puts them down again as
+fast as ever he can; and yet, no matter how hard he works, his legs are
+so short and his body so fat that he can't begin to travel as fast as he
+wants to.
+
+Another day the lynx tried it, and fared even worse than the fisher--not
+the Canada lynx, with whom we are already somewhat acquainted, but the
+bay lynx. The fisher had had some sense, and would probably have
+succeeded if he had been a little more careful, but the lynx was a fool.
+He didn't know the very first thing about the proper way to hunt
+porcupines, and he ought never to have tried it at all, but he was
+literally starving, and the temptation was too much for him. Here was
+something alive, something that had warm red blood in its veins and a
+good thick layer of flesh over its bones, and that was too slow to get
+away from him; and he sailed right in, tooth and claw, regardless of the
+consequences. Immediately he forgot all about the Porcupine, and his own
+hunger, and everything else but the terrible pain in his face and his
+forepaws. He made the woods fairly ring with his howls, and he jumped up
+and down on the snow-crust, rubbing his head with his paws, and driving
+the little barbed spears deeper and deeper into the flesh. And then,
+all of a sudden, he ceased his leaping and bounding and howling, and
+dropped on the snow in a limp, lifeless heap, dead as last summer's
+lily-pads. One of the quills had driven straight through his left eye
+and into his brain. Was it any wonder if in time the Porcupine came to
+think himself invulnerable?
+
+Even a northern Michigan winter has its ending, and at last there came
+an evening when all the porcupines in the woods around the Glimmerglass
+were calling to each other from one tree to another. They couldn't help
+it. There was something in the air that stirred them to a vague
+restlessness and uneasiness, and our own particular Porky sat up in the
+top of a tall hemlock and sang. Not like Jenny Lind, nor like a thrush
+or a nightingale, but his harsh voice went squealing up and down the
+scale in a way that was all his own, without time or rhythm or melody,
+in the wildest, strangest music that ever woke the silent woods. I don't
+believe that he himself quite knew what he meant or why he did it.
+Certainly no one else could have told, unless some wandering Indian or
+trapper may have heard the queer voices and prophesied that a thaw was
+coming.
+
+The thaw arrived next day, and it proved to be the beginning of spring.
+The summer followed as fast as it could, and again the lily-pads were
+green and succulent in the shallow water along the edge of the
+Glimmerglass, and again the Porcupine wandered down to the beach to feed
+upon them, discarding for a time his winter diet of bark and twigs. Why
+should one live on rye-bread when one can have cake and ice-cream?
+
+And there among the bulrushes, one bright June morning, he had a fight
+with one of his own kind. Just as he was approaching his favorite log,
+two other porcupines appeared, coming from different directions, one a
+male, and the other a female. They all scrambled out upon the log, one
+after another, but it soon became evident that three was a crowd. Our
+Porky and the other bachelor could not agree at all. They both wanted
+the same place and the same lily-pads, and in a little while they were
+pushing and shoving and growling and snarling with all their might, each
+doing his best to drive the other off the log and into the water. They
+did not bite--perhaps they had agreed that teeth like theirs were too
+cruel to be used in civilized warfare--but they struggled and chattered
+and swore at each other, and made all sorts of queer noises while they
+fought their funny little battle--all the funnier because each of them
+had to look out for the other's quills. If either had happened to push
+the wrong way, they might both have been in serious trouble. It did not
+last long. Our Porky was the stronger, and his rival was driven backward
+little by little till he lost his hold completely and slipped into the
+lake. He came to the surface at once, and quickly swam to the shore,
+where he chattered angrily for a few minutes, and then, like the
+sensible bachelor that he was, wandered off up the beach in search of
+other worlds more easily conquered. There was peace on our Porky's log,
+and the lily-pads that grew beside it had never been as fresh and juicy
+as they were that morning.
+
+Two months later, on a hot August afternoon, I was paddling along the
+edge of the Glimmerglass in company with a friend of mine, each of us in
+a small dug-out canoe, when we found the Porky asleep in the sunshine.
+He was lying on the nearly horizontal trunk of a tree whose roots had
+been undermined by the waves till it leaned far out over the lake,
+hardly a foot from the water.
+
+My friend, by the way, is the foreman of a lumber-camp. He has served in
+the British army, has hunted whales off the coast of Greenland, married
+a wife in Grand Rapids, and run a street-car in Chicago; and now he is
+snaking logs out of the Michigan woods. He is quite a chunk of a man,
+tall and decidedly well set up, and it would take a pretty good
+prize-fighter to whip him, but he learned that day that a porcupine at
+close quarters is worse than a trained pugilist.
+
+"Look at that porky," he called to me. "I'm going to ram the canoe into
+the tree and knock him off into the water. Just you watch, and you'll
+see some fun."
+
+I was somewhat uncertain whether the joke would ultimately be on the
+Porcupine or the man, but it was pretty sure to be worth seeing, one way
+or the other, so I laid my paddle down and awaited developments. Bang!
+went the nose of the dug-out against the tree, and the Porcupine
+dropped, but not into the water. He landed in the bow of the canoe, and
+the horrified look on my friend's face was a delight to see. The Porky
+was wide awake by this time, for I could hear his teeth clacking as he
+advanced to the attack.
+
+"Great Scott! He's coming straight at me!"
+
+The Porcupine was certainly game. I saw the paddle rise in the air and
+come down with a tremendous whack, but it seemed to have little effect.
+The Porky's coat of quills and hair was so thick that a blow on the back
+did not trouble him much. If my friend could have hit him across the
+nose it would have ended the matter then and there, but the canoe was
+too narrow and its sides too high for a crosswise stroke. He tried
+thrusting, but that was no better. When a good-sized porcupine has
+really made up his mind to go somewhere he may be slow, but it takes
+more than a punch with the end of a stick to stop him; and this Porky
+had fully determined to go aft and get acquainted with the foreman.
+
+[Illustration: "_He quickly made his way to the beach._"]
+
+My friend couldn't even kick, for he was kneeling on the bottom of the
+dug-out, with his feet behind him, and if he tried to stand up he would
+probably capsize.
+
+"Say, Hulbert, what am I going to do?"
+
+I didn't give him any advice, for my sympathies were largely with the
+Porcupine. Besides, I hadn't any advice to give. Just then the canoe
+drifted around so that I could look into it, and I beheld the Porcupine
+bearing down on my helpless friend like Birnam Wood on its way to
+Dunsinane, his ruffle of quills erect, fire in his little black eyes,
+and a thirst for vengeance in his whole aspect. My friend made one or
+two final and ineffectual jabs at him, and then gave it up.
+
+"It's no use!" he called; "I'll have to tip over!" and the next second
+the canoe was upside down and both belligerents were in the water. The
+Porcupine floated high--I suppose his hollow quills helped to keep him
+up--and he proved a much better swimmer than I had expected, for he
+quickly made his way to the beach and disappeared in the woods, still
+chattering disrespectfully. My friend waded ashore, righted his canoe,
+and we resumed our journey. I don't think I'll tell you what he said. He
+got over it after a while, and in the end he probably enjoyed his joke
+more than if it had turned out as he had intended.
+
+The summer followed the winter into the past, and the Moon of Falling
+Leaves came round again. The Porcupine was not alone. Another porky was
+with him, and the two seemed very good friends. In fact, his companion
+was the very same lady porcupine who had stood by while he fought the
+battle of the log and the lily-pads, though I do not suppose that they
+had been keeping company all those months, and I am by no means certain
+that they remembered that eventful morning at all. Let us hope they
+did, for the sake of the story. Who knows how much or how little of love
+was stirring the slow currents of their sluggish natures--of such love
+as binds the dove or the eagle to his mate, or of such steadfast
+affection as the Beaver and his wife seem to have felt for each other?
+Not much, perhaps; yet they climbed the same tree, ate from the same
+branch, and drank at the same spring; and the next April there was
+another arrival in the old hollow log--twins, this time, and both of
+them alive.
+
+But the Porcupine never saw his children, for a wandering fit seized
+him, and he left the Glimmerglass before they were born. Two or three
+miles away was a little clearing where a mossback lived. A railway
+crossed one edge of it, between the hill and the swamp, and five miles
+away was a junction, where locomotives were constantly moving about,
+backing, hauling, and making up their trains. As the mossback lay awake
+in the long, quiet, windless winter nights, he often heard them puffing
+and snorting, now with slow, heavy coughs, and now quick and sharp and
+rapid. One night when he was half asleep he heard something that said,
+"chew-chew-chew-chew-chew-chew," like an engine that has its train
+moving and is just beginning to get up speed. At first he paid no
+attention to it. But the noise suddenly stopped short, and after a pause
+of a few seconds it began again at exactly the same speed; stopped
+again, and began a third time. And so it went on, chewing and pausing,
+chewing and pausing, with always just so many chews to the second, and
+just so many seconds to each rest. No locomotive ever puffed like that.
+The mossback was wide awake now, and he muttered something about
+"another of those pesky porkies." He had killed the last one that came
+around the house, and had wanted his wife to cook it for dinner and see
+how it tasted, but she wouldn't. She said that the very sight of it was
+enough for her, and more than enough; and that it was all she could do
+to eat pork and potatoes after looking at it.
+
+He turned over and tried to go to sleep again, but without success. That
+steady "chew-chew-chew" was enough to keep a woodchuck awake, and at
+last he got up and went to the door. The moonlight on the snow was
+almost as bright as day, and there was the Porcupine, leaning against
+the side of the barn, and busily rasping the wood from around the head
+of a rusty nail. The mossback threw a stick of stove-wood at him, and
+he lumbered clumsily away across the snow. But twenty minutes later he
+was back again, and this time he marched straight into the open shed at
+the back of the house, and began operations on a wash-tub, whose mingled
+flavor of soap and humanity struck him as being very delicious. Again
+the mossback appeared in the doorway, shivering a little in his
+night-shirt.
+
+The Porcupine was at the foot of the steps. He had stopped chewing when
+the door opened, and now he lifted his forepaws and sat half-erect, his
+yellow teeth showing between his parted lips, and his little eyes
+staring at the lamp which the mossback carried. The quills slanted back
+from all around his diminutive face, and even from between his
+eyes--short at first, but growing longer toward his shoulders and back.
+Long whitish bristles were mingled with them, and the mossback could not
+help thinking of a little old, old man, with hair that was grizzly-gray,
+and a face that was half-stupid and half-sad and wistful. He was not yet
+two years of age, but I believe that a porcupine is born old. Some of
+the Indians say that he is ashamed of his homely looks, and that that is
+the reason why, by day, he walks so slowly, with hanging head and
+downcast eyes; but at night, they say, when the friendly darkness hides
+his ugliness, he lifts his head and runs like a dog. In spite of the
+hour and the cheering influence of the wash-tub, our Porky seemed even
+more low-spirited than usual. Perhaps the lamplight had suddenly
+reminded him of his personal appearance. At any rate he looked so
+lonesome and forlorn that the mossback felt a little thrill of pity for
+him, and decided not to kill him after all, but to drive him away again.
+He started down the steps with his lamp in one hand and a stick of wood
+in the other, and then--he never knew how it happened, but in some way
+he stumbled and fell. Never in all his life, not even when his wildest
+nightmare came and sat on him in the wee, sma' hours, had he come so
+near screaming out in terror as he did at that moment. He thought he was
+going to sit down on the Porcupine. Fortunately for both of them, but
+especially for the man, he missed him by barely half an inch, and the
+Porky scuttled away as fast as his legs could carry him.
+
+In spite of this unfriendly reception, the Porcupine hung around the
+edges of the clearing for several months, and enjoyed many a meal such
+as seldom falls to the lot of the woods-people. One night he found an
+empty pork-barrel out behind the barn, its staves fairly saturated with
+salt, and hour after hour he scraped away upon it, perfectly content.
+Another time, to his great satisfaction, he discovered a large piece of
+bacon rind among some scraps that the mossback's wife had thrown away.
+Later he invaded the sugar-bush by night, gnawing deep notches in the
+edges of the sap buckets and barrels, and helping himself to the sirup
+in the big boiling-pan.
+
+Life was not all feasting, however. There was a dog who attacked him two
+or three times, but who finally learned to keep away and mind his own
+business. Once, when he had ventured a little too close to the house,
+and was making an unusual racket with his teeth, the mossback came to
+the door and fired a shotgun at him, cutting off several of his quills.
+And still another night, late in the spring, when he was prowling around
+the barn, a bull calf came and smelled him. Next morning the mossback
+and his boys threw that calf down on the ground and tied his feet to a
+stump, and three of them sat on him while a fourth pulled the quills
+from his nose with a pair of pincers. You should have heard him grunt.
+
+Then came the greatest adventure of all. Down beside the railway was a
+small platform on which supplies for the lumber-camps were sometimes
+unloaded from the trains. Brine and molasses and various other
+delectable things had leaked out of the barrels and kegs and boxes, and
+the Porcupine discovered that the planks were very nicely seasoned and
+flavored. He visited them once too often, for one summer evening, as he
+was gnawing away at the site of an ancient puddle of molasses, the
+accommodation train rolled in and came to a halt. He tried to hide
+behind a stump, but the trainmen caught sight of him, and before he knew
+it they had shoved him into an empty box and hoisted him into the
+baggage-car. They turned him loose among the passengers on the station
+platform at Sault Ste. Marie, and his arrival created a sensation.
+
+When the first excitement had subsided, all the girls in the crowd
+declared that they must have some quills for souvenirs, and all the
+young men set to work to procure them, hoping to distinguish themselves
+by proving their superiority in strength and courage over this poor
+little twenty-pound beast just out of the woods. Most of them succeeded
+in getting some quills, and also in acquiring some painful
+experience--especially the one who attempted to lift the Porcupine by
+the tail, and who learned that that interesting member is the very
+hottest and liveliest portion of the animal's anatomy. They finally
+discovered that the best way to get quills from a live porcupine is to
+hit him with a piece of board. The sharp points penetrate the wood and
+stick there, the other ends come loose from his skin, and there you have
+them. Our friend lost most of his armor that day, and it was a good
+thing for him that departed quills, like clipped hair, will renew
+themselves in the course of time.
+
+One of the brakemen carried him home, and he spent the next few months
+in the enjoyment of city life. Whether he found much pleasure in it is,
+perhaps, a question, but I am rather inclined to think that he did. He
+had plenty to eat, and he learned that apples are very good indeed, and
+that the best way to partake of them is to sit up on your haunches and
+hold them between your forepaws. He also learned that men are not always
+to be regarded as enemies, for his owner and his owner's children were
+good to him and soon won his confidence. But, after all, the city was
+not home, and the woods were; so he employed some of his spare time in
+gnawing a hole through the wall in a dark corner of the shed where he
+was confined, and one night he scrambled out and hid himself in an empty
+barn. A day or two later he was in the forest again.
+
+The remaining years of his life were spent on the banks of St. Mary's
+River, and for the most part they were years of quietness and
+contentment. He was far from his early home, but the bark of a birch or
+a maple or a hemlock is much the same on St. Mary's as by the
+Glimmerglass. He grew bigger and fatter as time went on, and some weeks
+before he died he must have weighed thirty or forty pounds.
+
+Once in a while there was a little dash of excitement to keep life from
+becoming too monotonous--if too much monotony is possible in a
+porcupine's existence. One night he scrambled up the steps of a little
+summer cottage close to the edge of the river, and, finding the door
+unlatched, he pushed it open and walked in. It proved to be a cottage
+full of girls, and they stood around on chairs and the tops of
+wash-stands, bombarded him with curling-irons, poked feebly with
+bed-slats, and shrieked with laughter till the farmers over on the
+Canadian shore turned in their beds and wondered what could be happening
+on Uncle Sam's side of the river. The worst of it was that in his
+travels around the room he had come up behind the door and pushed it
+shut, and it was some time before even the red-haired girl could muster
+up sufficient courage to climb down from her perch and open it again.
+
+At another time an Indian robbed him of the longest and best of his
+quills--nearly five inches in length some of them--and carried them off
+to be used in ornamenting birch-bark baskets. And on still another
+occasion he narrowly escaped death at the hands of an irate canoe-man,
+in the side of whose Rob Roy he had gnawed a great hole.
+
+The end came at last, and it was the saddest, hardest, strangest fate
+that can ever come to a wild creature of the woods. He--who had never
+known hunger in all his life, who was almost the only animal in the
+forest who had never looked famine in the eye, whose table was spread
+with good things from January to December, and whose storehouse was full
+from Lake Huron to the Pictured Rocks--he of all others, was condemned
+to die of starvation in the midst of plenty. The Ancient Mariner, with
+water all around him and not a drop to drink, was no worse off than our
+Porcupine; and the Mariner finally escaped, but the Porky didn't.
+
+One of the summer tourists who wandered up into the north woods that
+year had carried with him a little rifle, more of a toy than a weapon,
+a thing that a sportsman would hardly have condescended to laugh at. And
+one afternoon, by ill luck, he caught sight of the Porcupine high up in
+the top of a tall tree. It was his first chance at a genuine wild beast,
+and he fired away all his cartridges as fast as he could load them into
+his gun. He thought that every shot missed, and he was very much ashamed
+of his marksmanship. But he was mistaken. The very last bullet broke one
+of the Porcupine's lower front teeth, and hurt him terribly. It jarred
+him to the very end of his tail, and his head felt as if it was being
+smashed to bits. For a minute or two the strength all went out of him,
+and if he had not been lying in a safe, comfortable crotch he would have
+fallen to the ground.
+
+The pain and the shock passed away after a while, but when supper-time
+came--and it was almost always supper-time with the Porcupine--his left
+lower incisor was missing. The right one was uninjured, however, and for
+a while he got on pretty well, merely having to spend a little more time
+than usual over his meals. But that was only the beginning of trouble.
+The stump of the broken tooth was still there and still growing, and it
+was soon as long as ever, but in the meantime its fellow in the upper
+jaw had grown out beyond its normal length, and the two did not meet
+properly. Instead of coming together edge to edge, as they should have
+done, each wearing the other down and keeping it from reaching out too
+far, each one now pushed the other aside, and still they kept on
+growing, growing, growing. Worst of all, in a short time they had begun
+to crowd his jaws apart so that he could hardly use his right-hand
+teeth, and they too were soon out of shape. The evil days had come, and
+the sound of the grinding was low. Little by little his mouth was forced
+open wider and wider, and the food that passed his lips grew less and
+less. His teeth, that had all his life been his best tools and his most
+faithful servants, had turned against him in his old age, and were
+killing him by inches. Let us not linger over those days.
+
+He was spared the very last and worst pangs--for that, at least, we may
+be thankful. On the last day of his life he sat under a beech-tree, weak
+and weary and faint. He could not remember when he had eaten. His coat
+of hair and quills was as thick and bushy as ever, and outwardly he had
+hardly changed at all, but under his skin there was little left but
+bones. And as he sat there and wished that he was dead--if such a wish
+can ever come to a wild animal--the Angel of Mercy came, in the shape
+of a man with a revolver in his pistol pocket--a man who liked to kill
+things.
+
+"A porky!" he said. "Guess I'll shoot him, just for fun."
+
+The Porcupine saw him coming and knew the danger; and for a moment the
+old love of life came back as strong as ever, and he gathered his feeble
+strength for one last effort, and started up the tree. He was perhaps
+six feet from the ground when the first report came.
+
+"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" Four shots, as fast as the self-cocking
+revolver could pour the lead into his body. The Porky stopped climbing.
+For an instant he hung motionless on the side of the tree, and then his
+forepaws let go, and he swayed backward and fell to the ground. And that
+was the end of the Porcupine.
+
+
+
+
+THE ADVENTURES OF A LOON
+
+
+HIS name was Mahng, and the story which I am about to relate is the
+story of his matrimonial career--or at least of a portion of it.
+
+One snowy autumn night, three years ago, he was swimming on the
+Glimmerglass in company with his first wife--one of the first, that is.
+There may possibly have been others before her, but if so I wasn't
+acquainted with them. It was a fine evening--especially for loons. There
+was no wind, and the big, soft flakes came floating lazily down to lose
+themselves in the quiet lake. The sky, the woods, and the shores were
+all blotted out; and the loons reigned alone, king and queen of a dim
+little world of leaden water and falling snow. And right royally they
+swam their kingdom, with an air as if they thought God had made the
+Glimmerglass for their especial benefit. Perhaps He had.
+
+[Illustration: "_He went under as simply as you would step out of
+bed._"]
+
+It was very, very lonely, but they liked it all the better for that. At
+times they even lost sight of each other for a little while, as one
+dived in search of a herring or a young salmon trout. I wish we could
+have followed Mahng down under the water and watched him at his hunting.
+He didn't dive as you do, with a jump and a plunge and a splash. He
+merely drew his head back a little and then thrust it forward and
+downward, and went under as simply and easily as you would step out of
+bed, and with a good deal more dignity. It was his feet that did it, of
+course. They were not good for much for walking, but they were the real
+thing when it came to swimming or diving. They were large and broad and
+strongly webbed, and the short stout legs which carried them were
+flattened and compressed that they might slip edgewise through the
+water, like a feathered oar-blade. The muscles which worked them were
+very powerful, and they kicked backward with so much vigor that two
+little jets of spray were often tossed up in his wake as he went under,
+like the splash from a steamer's paddles. And he had a rudder, too, for
+in the after part of his body there were two muscles just like
+tiller-ropes, fastened to his tail in such a way that they could twist
+it to either side, and steer him to port or starboard as occasion
+demanded. With his long neck stretched far out in front, his wings
+pressed tightly against his sides, and his legs and feet working as
+if they went by steam, he shot through the water like a submarine
+torpedo-boat. "The Herdsman of the Deep," the Scottish Highlanders used
+to say, when in winter a loon came to visit their lochs and fiords.
+Swift and strong and terrible, he ranged the depths of the Glimmerglass,
+seeking what he might devour; and perhaps you can imagine how hastily
+the poor little fishes took their departure whenever they saw him coming
+their way. Sometimes they were not quite quick enough, and then his long
+bill closed upon them, and he swallowed them whole without even waiting
+to rise to the surface.
+
+The chase thus brought to a successful conclusion, or perhaps the supply
+of air in his lungs giving out, he returned to the upper world, and
+again his voice rang out through the darkness and the falling snow. Then
+his wife would answer him from somewhere away off across the lake, and
+they would call back and forth to each other with many a laugh and
+shout, or, drawing closer and closer together, they would cruise the
+Glimmerglass side by side, with the big flakes dropping gently on their
+backs and folded wings, and the ripples spreading out on either hand
+like the swell from the bow of a ship.
+
+Once Mahng stayed down a little longer than usual, and when he came up
+he heard his wife calling him in an excited tone, as if something had
+happened to her. He hurried toward her, and presently he saw a light
+shining dimly through the throng of moving snow-flakes, and growing
+brighter and brighter as he approached until it was fairly dazzling. As
+he drew nearer still he caught sight of his wife sitting on the water
+squarely in front of that light, and watching it with all her eyes. She
+was not calling now. She had forgotten Mahng, she had forgotten to
+paddle, she had forgotten everything, in her wonder at this strange,
+beautiful thing, the like of which had never before been seen upon the
+Glimmerglass. She herself was a rarely beautiful sight--if she had only
+known it--with the dark water rippling gently against her bosom, her big
+black head thrust forward, and the feathers of her throat and breast
+glistening in the glare of the headlight, white as the snow that was
+falling around her.
+
+All this Mahng saw. What he did not see, because his eyes were dazzled,
+was a boat in the shadow behind the light, and a rifle-barrel pointing
+straight at his wife's breast. There was a blinding flash, a sharp,
+crashing report, and a cloud of smoke; and Mahng dived as quick as a
+wink. But his wife would never dive again. The bullet had gone tearing
+through her body, and she lay stretched out on the water, perfectly
+motionless, and apparently dead. And then, just as Mahng came to the
+surface a hundred yards away, and just as my partner put out his hand to
+pick her up, she lifted her head and gave a last wild cry. Mahng heard
+it and answered, but he was too far away to see what happened. He dared
+not return till the light had disappeared, and by that time she was
+gone. She had straggled violently for a moment, and had struck savagely
+at the hunter's hand, and then she had as suddenly collapsed, the water
+turned red, and her eyes closed forever. Did you know that among all
+God's creatures the birds are the only ones whose eyes close naturally
+in death? Even among men it is not so, for when our friends die we lay
+our hands reverently upon their faces, and weight their stiff lids with
+gold. But for the bird, Nature herself performs the last kindly office,
+and as the light fades out from the empty windows of the soul, the
+curtain falls of its own accord.
+
+[Illustration: "_She herself was a rarely beautiful sight._"]
+
+During the next two or three days Mahng's voice was frequently to be
+heard, apparently calling his wife. Sometimes it was a mournful,
+long-drawn cry--"Hoo-WOOOO-ooo"--that might have been heard a mile
+away--a cry that seemed the very essence of loneliness, and that went
+right down where you lived and made you feel like a murderer. And
+sometimes he broke into a wild peal of laughter, as if he hoped that
+that might better serve to call her back to him.
+
+His children had gone south some time before. They had seemed anxious to
+see the world. Perhaps, too, they had dreaded the approach of colder
+weather more than the older birds, who had become somewhat seasoned by
+previous autumns. Anyhow, they had taken the long trail toward the Gulf
+of Mexico, and now that his wife was gone Mahng was entirely alone. At
+last he seemed to make up his mind that he might as well follow them,
+and one afternoon, as he was swimming aimlessly about, I saw him
+suddenly dash forward, working his wings with all their might, beating
+the water at every stroke, and throwing spray like a side-wheeler.
+Slowly--for his body was heavy, and his wings were rather small for his
+size--slowly he lifted himself from the water, all the time rushing
+forward faster and faster. He couldn't have made it if he hadn't had
+plenty of sea-room, but by swinging round and round in long, wide
+circles he managed to rise little by little till at last he was clear of
+the tree-tops. He passed right over my head as he stood away to the
+south--his long neck stretched far out in front, his feet pointing
+straight back beyond the end of his short tail, and his wings beating
+the air with tremendous energy. How they did whizz! He made almost as
+much noise as a train of cars. He laughed as he went by, and you would
+have said that he was in high spirits; but before he disappeared that
+lonely, long-drawn cry came back once more--"Hoo-WOOOO-ooo."
+
+In the course of his winter wanderings through the South he happened to
+alight one day on a certain wild pond down in Mississippi, and there he
+found another loon--a widow whose former husband had lost his life the
+previous summer under rather peculiar circumstances.
+
+Beside a small lake in Minnesota there lives an old Dutchman who catches
+fish with empty bottles. On any calm, still day you may see a lot of
+them floating upright in the water, all tightly corked, and each with
+the end of a fishing-line tied around its neck. They seem very decorous
+and well-behaved, but let a fish take one of the hooks and begin to
+pull, and immediately that particular bottle turns wrong end up, and
+acts as if it had taken a drop too much of its own original contents.
+Then the Dutchman paddles out in his little scow, and perhaps by the
+time he has hauled in his fish and re-baited the hook another bottle is
+excitedly standing on its head. But never before nor since have any of
+them behaved as wildly as the one that a loon got hold of.
+
+The loon--not Mahng, you understand, but the first husband of his new
+acquaintance--had dived in search of his dinner, and the first thing he
+saw that looked as if it might be good to eat was the bait on one of the
+Dutchman's hooks. He swallowed it, of course, and for the next five
+minutes he went charging up and down that pond at a great rate, followed
+by a green glass monster with the name of a millionnaire brewer blown in
+its side. Sometimes he was on the surface, and sometimes he was under
+it; but wherever he went that horrible thing was close behind him,
+pulling so hard that the sharp cord cut the corners of his mouth till it
+bled. Once or twice he tried to fly, but the line caught his wing and
+brought him down again. When he dived, it tangled itself around his legs
+and clogged the machinery; and when he tried to shout, the hook in his
+throat would not let him do anything more than cough. The Dutchman got
+him at last, and eventually Mahng got his widow, as you shall see.
+
+She had her children to take care of, and for a time she was very busy,
+but after a few weeks they flew away to the south, as Mahng's had done,
+and she was free to go where she liked and do what she pleased. For a
+while she stayed where she was, like a sensible person. Minnesota suited
+her very well, and she was in no hurry to leave. But, of course, she
+could not stay on indefinitely, for some frosty night the lake would
+freeze over, and then she could neither dive for fish nor rise upon the
+wing. A loon on ice is about as helpless as an oyster. And so at last
+she, too, went south. She travelled by easy stages, and had a pleasant
+journey, with many a stop, and many a feast in the lakes and rivers
+along the route. I should like to know, just out of curiosity, how many
+fish found their way down her capacious gullet during that pilgrimage
+through Illinois and Kentucky and Tennessee.
+
+Well, no matter about that. The Mississippi pond was in sight, and she
+was just slanting down toward the water, when a hunter fired at her from
+behind a clump of trees. His aim was all too true, and she fell headlong
+to the ground, with a broken wing dangling helplessly at her side.
+
+Now, as you probably know, a loon isn't built for running. There is an
+old story, one which certainly has the appearance of truth, to the
+effect that when Nature manufactured the first of these birds she forgot
+to give him any legs at all, and that he had started off on the wing
+before she noticed her mistake. Then she picked up the first pair that
+came to hand and threw them after him. Unfortunately they were a misfit,
+and, what was, perhaps, still worse, they struck his body in the wrong
+place. They were so very short and so very far aft that, although he
+could stand nearly as straight as a man, it was almost impossible for
+him to move about on them. When he had to travel on land, which he
+always avoided as far as he could, he generally shoved himself along on
+his breast, and often used his wings and his bill to help himself
+forward. All his descendants are just like him, so you can see that the
+widow's chances were pretty small, with the hunter bursting out of the
+bushes, and a broad strip of beach between her and the friendly pond.
+
+But she was a person of resource and energy, and in this great emergency
+she literally rose to the occasion, and did something that she had
+never done before in all her life, and probably will never do again. The
+astonished hunter saw her lift herself until she stood nearly upright,
+and then actually _run_ across the beach toward the water. She was
+leaning forward a trifle, her long neck was stretched out, her two short
+legs were trotting as fast as they could go, and her one good wing was
+wildly waving in a frantic endeavor to get on. It was a sight that very
+few people have ever seen, and it would have been comical if it hadn't
+been a matter of life and death. The hunter was hard after her, and his
+legs were a yard long, while hers were only a few inches, so it was not
+surprising that he caught her just as she reached the margin. She
+wriggled out of his grasp and dashed on through the shallow water, and
+he followed close behind. In a moment he stooped and made another grab
+at her, and this time he got his arms around her body and pinned her
+wings down against her sides. But he had waded out a little too far, and
+had reached the place where the bottom suddenly shelves off from fifteen
+inches to seventy-two. His foot slipped, and in another moment he was
+splashing wildly about in the water, and the loon was free.
+
+A broken wing is not necessarily as serious a matter as you might
+suppose. The cold water kept the inflammation down, and it seemed as if
+all the vital forces of her strong, healthy body set to work at once to
+repair the damage. If any comparative anatomist ever gets hold of the
+widow and dissects her, he will find a curious swelling in the principal
+bone of her left wing, like a plumber's join in a lead pipe, and he will
+know what it means. It is the place where Nature soldered the broken
+pieces together. And it was while Nature was engaged in this soldering
+operation that Mahng arrived and began to cultivate the widow's
+acquaintance.
+
+          "_In the spring a fuller crimson
+                      comes upon the robin's breast,_"
+
+and in the spring the loon puts on his wedding-garment, and his fancy,
+like the young man's, "lightly turns to thoughts of love."
+
+But speaking of Mahng's wedding-garment reminds me that I haven't told
+you about his winter dress. His back and wings were very dark-brown, and
+his breast and under-parts were white. His head and the upper portion of
+his neck were black; his bill was black, or blackish, and so were his
+feet. His coat was very thick and warm, and his legs were feathered
+right down to the heel-joint. More than five feet his wings stretched
+from tip to tip, and he weighed at least twelve pounds, and would be
+still larger before he died.
+
+As to his nuptial finery, its groundwork was much the same, but its
+trimmings were different and were very elegant. White spots appeared all
+over his back and the upper surfaces of his wings, some of them round,
+and some square. They were not thrown on carelessly, but were arranged
+in gracefully curving lines, and they quite changed his appearance,
+especially if one were as near him as one is supposed to be during a
+courting. His spring neckwear, too, was in exceedingly good taste, for
+he put on a sort of collar of very narrow vertical stripes, contrasting
+beautifully with the black around and between them. Higher up on his
+neck and head the deep black feathers gleamed and shone in the sunlight
+with brilliant irridescent tints of green and violet. He was a very
+handsome bird.
+
+And now everything was going north. The sun was going north, the wind
+was going north, the birds were going, and summer herself was sweeping
+up from the tropics as fast as ever she could travel. Mahng was getting
+very restless. A dozen times a day he would spread his wings and beat
+the air furiously, dashing the spray in every direction, and almost
+lifting his heavy body out of the water. But the time was not yet come,
+and presently he would fold his pinions and go back to his courting.
+
+Do you think he was very inconstant? Do you blame him for not being more
+faithful to the memory of the bird who was shot at his side only a few
+months before? Don't be too hard on him. What can a loon do when the
+springtime calls and the wind blows fresh and strong, when the new
+strong wine of life is coursing madly through his veins, and when his
+dreams are all of the vernal flight to the lonely northland, where the
+water is cold and the fish are good, and where there are such delightful
+nesting-places around the marshy ponds?
+
+But how did his new friend feel about it? Would she go with him? Ah!
+Wouldn't she? Had not she, too, put on a wedding-garment just like his?
+And what was she there for, anyhow, if not to be wooed, and to find a
+mate, and to fly away with him a thousand miles to the north, and there,
+beside some lonely little lake, brood over her eggs and her young? Her
+wing was gaining strength all the time, and at last she was ready. You
+should have heard them laugh when the great day came and they pulled out
+for Michigan--Mahng a little in the lead, as became the larger and
+stronger, and his new wife close behind. There had been nearly a week of
+cooler weather just before the start, which had delayed them a little,
+but now the south wind was blowing again, and over and over it seemed to
+say,
+
+          "_And we go, go, go away from here!
+            On the other side the world we're overdue!
+               'Send the road lies clear before you
+                When the old Spring-fret comes o'er you,
+            And the Red Gods call for you._"
+
+And the road was clear, and they went. Up, and up, and up; higher and
+higher, till straight ahead, stretching away to the very edge of the
+world, lay league after league of sunshine and air, only waiting the
+stroke of their wings. Now steady, steady! Beat, beat, beat! And the old
+earth sliding southward fifty miles an hour! No soaring--their wings
+were too short for that sort of work--and no quick wheeling to right or
+left, but hurtling on with whizzing pinions and eager eyes, straight
+toward the goal. Was it any wonder that they were happy, and that
+joyful shouts and wild peals of laughter came ringing down from the sky
+to tell us poor earthbound men and women that somewhere up in the blue,
+beyond the reach of our short-sighted eyes, the loons were hurrying
+home?
+
+[Illustration: "_The old earth sliding southward fifty miles an hour._"]
+
+Over the fresh fields, green with the young wheat; over the winding
+rivers and the smiling lakes; over the--shut your eyes, and dream a
+little while, and see if you can imagine what it was like. Does it make
+you wish you were a loon yourself? Never mind; some day, perhaps, we too
+shall take our wedding-journeys in the air; not on feathered pinions,
+but with throbbing engines and whizzing wheels, and with all the power
+of steam or electricity to lift us and bear us onward. We shall skim the
+prairies and leap the mountains, and roam over the ocean like the
+wandering albatross. To-day we shall breathe the warm, spicy breath of
+the tropic islands, and to-morrow we shall sight the white gleam of the
+polar ice-pack. When the storm gathers we shall mount above it, and
+looking down we shall see the lightning leap from cloud to cloud, and
+the rattling thunder will come upward, not downward, to our ears. When
+the world below is steeped in the shadows of coming night, we shall
+still watch the sunset trailing its glories over the western woods
+and mountains; and when morning breaks we shall be the first to welcome
+the sunrise as it comes rushing up from the east a thousand miles an
+hour. The wind of the upper heavens will be pure and keen and strong,
+and not even a sleigh-ride on a winter's night can set the live blood
+dancing as it will dance and tingle up there above the clouds. And
+riding on the air, alone with the roaring engines that have become for
+the time a part of ourselves, we shall know at last what our earth is
+really like, for we shall see it as the loons see it--yes, as God and
+His angels see it--this old earth, on which we have lived for so many
+thousand years, and yet have never seen.
+
+But, after all, the upper heavens will not be home; and some day, as we
+shoot northward, or southward, or eastward, or westward, we shall see
+beneath us the spot that is to be for us the best and dearest place in
+all the world, and dropping down out of the blue we shall find something
+that is even better than riding on the wings of the wind. That was what
+happened to Mahng and his wife, for one spring evening, as they came
+rushing over the pine-tops and the maples and birches, they saw the
+Glimmerglass just ahead. The water lay like polished steel in the fading
+light, and the brown ranks of the still leafless trees stood dark and
+silent around the shores. It was very quiet, and very, very lonely; and
+the lake and the woods seemed waiting and watching for something. And
+into that stillness and silence the loons came with shouting and
+laughter, sweeping down on a long slant, and hitting the water with a
+splash. The echoes awoke and the Glimmerglass was alive, and summer had
+come to the northland.
+
+They chose a place where the shore was low and marshy, and there, only
+two or three yards from the water's edge, they built a rude nest of
+grass and weeds and lily-pads. Two large greenish eggs, blotched with
+dark-brown, lay in its hollow; and the wife sat upon them week after
+week, and covered them with the warm feathers of her broad, white
+breast. Once in a while she left them long enough to stretch her wings
+in a short flight, or to dive in search of a fish, but she was never
+gone very long. It was a weary vigil that she kept, but she sat there in
+daylight and darkness, through sunshine and storm, till at last the day
+came when there were four loons instead of two at the Glimmerglass.
+
+The chicks were very smart and active, and they took to the water almost
+as soon as they were out of the shell, swimming and diving as if they
+had been accustomed to it for weeks instead of hours. In some ways,
+however, they required a good deal of care. For one thing, their little
+stomachs were not quite equal to the task of assimilating raw fish, and
+the parents had to swallow all their food for them, keep it down till it
+was partly digested, and then pass it up again to the hungry children.
+It made a good deal of delay, and it must have been very unpleasant, but
+it seemed to be the only practicable way of dealing with the situation.
+I am glad to say that it did not last very long, for by the time they
+were two weeks old the young loons were able to take their fish and
+reptiles and insects at first hand.
+
+When they first arrived the chicks were covered all over with stiff
+down, of a dark, sooty gray on their backs, and white underneath. But
+this did not last long, either. The first feathers soon appeared, and
+multiplied rapidly. I can't say that the young birds were particularly
+handsome, for even when their plumage was complete it was much quieter
+and duller of hue than their parents'. But they were fat and plump, and
+I think they thoroughly enjoyed life, especially before they discovered
+that there were enemies as well as friends in the world. That was a kind
+of knowledge that could not be avoided very long, however. They soon
+learned that men, and certain other animals such as hawks and skunks,
+were to be carefully shunned; and you should have seen them run on the
+water whenever a suspicious-looking character hove in sight. Their wings
+were not yet large enough for flying, but they flapped them with all
+their might, and scampered across the Glimmerglass so fast that their
+little legs fairly twinkled, and they actually left a furrow in the
+water behind them. But the bottom of the lake was really the safest
+refuge, and if a boat or a canoe pressed them too closely they would
+usually dive below the surface, while the older birds tried to lure the
+enemy off in some other direction by calling and shouting and making all
+sorts of demonstrations.
+
+Generally these tactics were successful, but not always. Once some boys
+cornered the whole family in a small, shallow bay, where the water was
+not deep enough for diving; and before they could escape one of the
+youngsters was driven up onto the beach. He tried to hide behind a log,
+but he was captured and earned off, and I wish I had time to tell you
+of all the things that happened to him before he was finally killed and
+eaten by a dog. It was pretty tough on the old birds, as well as on him,
+but they still had one chick left, and you can't expect to raise _all_
+your children as long as bigger people are so fond of kidnapping and
+killing them.
+
+Not all the people who came to see them were bent on mischief, however.
+There was a party of girls and boys, for instance, who camped beside the
+Glimmerglass for a few weeks, and who liked to follow them around the
+lake in a row-boat and imitate their voices, just for the fun of making
+them talk back. One girl in particular became so accomplished in the
+loon language that Mahng would often get very much excited as he
+conversed with her, and would sometimes let the boat creep nearer and
+nearer until they were only a few rods apart. And then, all of a sudden,
+he would duck his head and go under, perhaps in the very middle of a
+laugh. The siren was getting a little too close. Her intentions might
+possibly be all right, but it was just as well to be on the safe side.
+
+The summer was nearly gone, and now Mahng did something which I fear you
+will strongly disapprove. I didn't want to tell you about it, but I
+suppose I must. Two or three male loons passed over the Glimmerglass
+one afternoon, calling and shouting as they went, and he flew up and
+joined them, and came back no more that summer. It looked like a clear
+case of desertion, but we must remember that he had stood by his wife
+all through the trying period of the spring and early summer, and that
+the time was at hand when the one chick that was left would go out into
+the world to paddle his own canoe, and when she would no longer need his
+help in caring for a family of young children. But you think he might
+have stayed with her, anyhow? Well, so do I; I'm sorry he didn't. They
+say that his cousins, the Red-throated Loons, marry for life, and live
+together from the wedding-day till death, and I don't see why he
+couldn't have done as well as they. But it doesn't seem to be the custom
+among the Great Northern Divers. Mahng was only following the usual
+practice of his kind, and if his first wife had not been shot it is
+likely that they would have separated before they had gone very far
+south. And yet it does not follow that the marriage was not a
+love-match. If you had seen them at their housekeeping I think you would
+have pronounced him a very good husband and father. Perhaps the conjugal
+happiness of the spring and early summer was all the better for a taste
+of solitude during the rest of the year.
+
+As I said, the time was near when the chick would strike out for
+himself. He soon left his mother, and a little later she too started for
+the Gulf of Mexico. Summer was over, and the Glimmerglass was lonelier
+than ever.
+
+Mahng came back next spring, and of course he brought a wife with him.
+But was she the same wife who had helped him make the Glimmerglass ring
+with his shouting twelve months before? Well, I--I don't quite know. She
+looked very much like her, and I certainly hope she was the same bird. I
+should like to believe that they had been reunited somewhere down in
+Texas or Mississippi or Louisiana, and that they had come back together
+for another season of parental cares and joys. But when I consider the
+difficulties in the way I cannot help feeling doubtful about it. The two
+birds had gone south at different times and perhaps by different routes.
+Before they reached the lower Mississippi Valley they may have been
+hundreds of miles apart. Was it to be reasonably expected that Mahng,
+when he was ready to return, would search every pond and stream from
+the Cumberland to the Gulf? And is it likely that, even if he had tried
+for weeks and weeks, he could ever have found his wife of the previous
+summer? His flight was swift and his sight keen, and his clarion voice
+rang far and wide over the marshes; but it is no joke to find one
+particular bird in a region covering half a dozen States. If they had
+arranged to come north separately, and meet at the Glimmerglass, there
+would not have been so many difficulties in the way, but they didn't do
+that. Anyhow, Mahng brought a wife home. That much, at least, is
+established. They set to work at once to build a nest and make ready for
+some new babies; but, alas! there was little parental happiness or
+responsibility in store for them that year.
+
+If you had been there you might have seen them swimming out from shore
+one bright, beautiful spring morning, when the sun had just risen, and
+the woods and waters lay calm and peaceful in the golden light, fairer
+than words can tell. They were after their breakfast, and presently they
+dived to see what was to be had. The light is dim down there in the
+depths of the Glimmerglass, the weeds are long and slimy, and the mud of
+the bottom is black and loathsome. But what does that matter? One can
+go back whenever one pleases. A few quick, powerful strokes will take
+you up into the open air, and you can see the woods and the sky. Aha!
+There is a herring, his scales shining like silver in the faint green
+light that comes down through the water. And there is a small salmon
+trout, with his gray-brown back and his golden sides. A fish for each of
+us.
+
+The loons darted forward at full speed; but the two fish made no effort
+to escape, and did not even wriggle when the long, sharp bills closed
+upon them. They were dead, choked to death by the fine threads of a
+gill-net. And now those same threads laid hold of the loons themselves,
+and a fearful struggle began.
+
+Mahng and his wife did not always keep their wings folded when they were
+under water. Sometimes they used them almost as they did in flying, and
+just now they had need of every muscle in their bodies. How their
+pinions lashed the water, and how their legs kicked and their long necks
+writhed, and how the soft mud rose in clouds and shut out the dim light!
+But the harder they fought the more tightly did the net grapple them,
+winding itself round and round their bodies, and soon lashing their
+wings down against their sides. Expert divers though they were, the
+loons were drowning. There was a ringing in their ears and a roaring in
+their heads, and the very last atoms of oxygen in their lungs were
+almost gone. Death was drawing very near, and the bright, sunshiny world
+where they had been so happy a moment before, the world to which they
+had thought they could return so quickly and easily, seemed a thousand
+miles away. One last effort, one final struggle, and if that failed
+there would be nothing more to do but go to sleep forever.
+
+Fortunately for Mahng, his part of the net had been mildewed, and much
+of the strength had gone out of the linen threads. He was writhing and
+twisting with all his might, and suddenly he felt something give. One of
+the rotten meshes had torn apart. He worked with redoubled energy, and
+in a moment another thread gave way, and then another, and another. A
+second more and he was free. Quick, now, before the last spark goes out!
+With beating wings and churning paddles he fairly flew up through the
+green water toward the light, and on a sudden he shot out into the air,
+panting and gasping, and staring wildly around at the blue sky, and the
+quiet woods, and the smiling Glimmerglass. And how royally beautiful
+was the sunshine, and how sweet was the breath of life!
+
+But his mate was not with him, and a few hours later the fisherman found
+in his net the lifeless body of a drowned loon.
+
+Mahng went north. He had thought that his spring flight was over and
+that he would go no farther, but now the Glimmerglass was no longer
+home, and he spread his wings once more and took his way toward the
+Arctic Circle. Over the hills, crowded with maple and beech and birch;
+over the Great Tahquamenon Swamp, with its cranberry marshes, its
+tangles of spruce and cedar, and its thin, scattered ranks of tamarack;
+over the sandy ridges where the pine-trees stand tall and stately, and
+out on Lake Superior. The water was blue, and the sunshine was bright;
+the wind was fresh and cool, and the billows rolled and tumbled as if
+they were alive and were having a good time together. Together--that's
+the word. They were together, but Mahng was alone; and he wasn't having
+a good time at all. He wanted a home, and a nest, and some young ones,
+but he didn't find them that year, though he went clear to Hudson Bay,
+and looked everywhere for a mate. There were loons, plenty of them, but
+they had already paired and set up housekeeping, and he found no one who
+was in a position to halve his sorrows and double his joys.
+
+Something attracted his attention one afternoon when he was swimming on
+a little lake far up in the Canadian wilderness--a small red object that
+kept appearing and disappearing in a very mysterious fashion among the
+bushes that lined the beach. Mahng's bump of curiosity was large and
+well developed, and he gave one of his best laughs and paddled slowly in
+toward the shore. I think he had a faint and utterly unreasonable hope
+that it might prove to be what he was looking and longing for, though he
+knew very well that no female loon of his species ever had red
+feathers--nor a male, either, for that matter. It was a most absurd
+idea, and his dreams, if he really had them, were cut short by the
+report of a shotgun. A little cloud of smoke floated up through the
+bushes, and a charge of heavy shot peppered the water all around him.
+But if Mahng was curious he was also quick to take a hint. He had heard
+the click of the gun-lock, and before the leaden hail could reach him he
+was under water. His tail feathers suffered a little, but otherwise he
+was uninjured, and he did not come to the surface again till he was far
+away from that deceitful red handkerchief.
+
+The summer was an entire failure, and after a while Mahng gave it up in
+despair, and started south much earlier than usual. At the Straits of
+Mackinac he had another narrow escape, for he came very near killing
+himself by dashing head first against the lantern of a lighthouse, whose
+brilliant beams, a thousand times brighter than the light which had
+lured his first wife to her death, had first attracted and then dazzled
+and dazed him. Fortunately he swerved a trifle at the last moment, and
+though he brushed against an iron railing, lost his balance, and fell
+into the water, there were no bones broken and no serious damage done.
+
+The southland, as everybody knows, is the only proper place for a loon
+courtship. There, I am pleased to say, Mahng found a new wife, and in
+due time he brought her up to the Glimmerglass. That was only last
+spring, and there is but one more incident for me to relate. This summer
+has been a happy and prosperous one, but there was a time when it seemed
+likely to end in disaster before it had fairly begun.
+
+Just northeast of the Glimmerglass there lies a long, narrow, shallow
+pond. I believe I mentioned it when I was telling you about the Beaver.
+One afternoon Mahng had flown across to this pond, and as he was
+swimming along close to the shore he put his foot into a beaver-trap,
+and sprung it. Of course he did his best to get away, but the only
+result of his struggling was to work the trap out into deeper and deeper
+water until he was almost submerged. He made things almost boil with the
+fierce beating of his wings, but it was no use; he might better have
+saved his strength. He quieted down at last and lay very still, with
+only his head and neck out of water, and there he waited two mortal
+hours for something to happen.
+
+Meanwhile his wife sat quietly on her eggs--there were three of them
+this year--and drowsed away the warm spring afternoon. By and by she
+heard a tramping as of heavy feet approaching, and glancing between the
+tall grasses she saw, not a bear nor a deer, but something far worse--a
+man. She waited till he was within a few yards, and then she jumped up,
+scuttled down to the water as fast as she could go, and dived as if she
+was made of lead. The trapper glanced after her with a chuckle.
+
+"Seems pretty badly scared," he said to himself, but his voice was not
+unkindly. His smile faded as he stood a moment beside the nest, looking
+at the eggs, and thinking of what would some day come forth from them.
+He was a solitary old fellow, with never a wife nor a child, nor a
+relation of any kind. His life in the woods was just what he had chosen
+for himself, and he would not have exchanged it for anything else in the
+world; but sometimes the loneliness of it came over him, and he wished
+that he had somebody to talk to. And now, looking at those eggs, and
+thinking of the fledglings that were coming to the loons, he wondered
+how it would seem if he had some children of his own. Pretty soon he
+glanced out on the lake again, and saw Mahng's wife sitting quietly on
+the water, just out of range.
+
+"Hope she won't stay away till they get cold," he thought, and went on
+his way across the swamp. The loon watched him till he passed out of
+sight, and then she swam in to the beach and pushed herself up her
+narrow runway to her old place. The eggs were still warm.
+
+Half an hour later the trapper stepped out of the bushes beside the
+pond, and caught sight of Mahng's head sticking out of the water. He
+was considerably astonished, but he promptly laid hold of the chain and
+drew bird, trap, and all up onto the bank, and then he sat down on a log
+and laughed till the echoes went flying back and forth across the pond.
+Plastered with mud, dripping wet, and with his left leg fast in the big
+steel killing-machine, Mahng was certainly a comical sight. All the
+fight was soaked out of him, and he lay prone upon the ground and waited
+for the trapper to do what he pleased. But the trapper did nothing--only
+sat on his log, and presently forgot to laugh. He was thinking of the
+sitting loon whom he had disturbed a little while before. This was
+probably her mate, and again there came over him a vague feeling that
+life had been very good to these birds, and had given them something
+which he, the man, had missed. He was growing old. A few more seasons
+and there would be one trapper less in the Great Tahquamenon Swamp; and
+he would die without--well, what was the use of talking or thinking
+about it? But the loons would hatch their young, and care for them and
+protect them until they were ready to go out into the world, and then
+they would send them away to the south. A few weeks later they would
+follow, and next spring they would come back and do it all over again.
+That is--they would if he didn't kill them.
+
+He rose from his log, smiling again at the abject look with which Mahng
+watched him, and putting one foot on each of the two heavy steel
+springs, he threw his weight upon them and crushed them down. Mahng felt
+the jaws relax, and suddenly he knew that he was free. The strength came
+back with a rush to his weary limbs, and he sprang up, scrambled down
+the bank and into the water, and was gone. A few minutes later he
+reappeared far down the pond, and rising on the wing he flew away with a
+laugh toward the Glimmerglass.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAKING OF A GLIMMERGLASS BUCK
+
+
+I DON'T know that he was a record-breaker, but he was certainly much
+larger and more powerful than the average buck, and he was decidedly
+good-looking, even for a deer. There were one or two slight
+blemishes--to be described later--in his physical make-up; but they were
+not very serious, and except for them he was very handsome and
+well-formed. I can't give you the whole story of his life, for that
+would take several books, but I shall try to tell you how he became the
+biggest buck and the best fighter of his day and generation in the woods
+around the Glimmerglass. He was unusually favored by Providence, for
+besides being so large and strong he was given a weapon such as very few
+full-grown Michigan bucks have ever possessed.
+
+He had a good start in life, and it is really no wonder that he
+distanced all his relations. In the first place, he arrived in the woods
+a little earlier in the year than deer babies usually do. This was
+important, for it lengthened his first summer, and gave more opportunity
+for growth before the return of cold weather. If the winter had
+lingered, or if there had been late frosts or snow-storms, his early
+advent might have been anything but a blessing; but the spring proved a
+mild one, and there was plenty of good growing weather for fawns. Then,
+too, his mother as in the very prime of life, and for the time being he
+was her only child. If there had been twins, as there were the year
+before, he would, of course, have had to share her milk with a brother
+or sister; but as it was he enjoyed all the benefits of a natural
+monopoly, and he grew and prospered accordingly, and was a baby to be
+proud of.
+
+[Illustration: "_He was a baby to be proud of._"]
+
+And his mother took good care of him, and never tried to show him off
+before the other people of the woods. She knew that it was far safer and
+wiser to keep him concealed as long as possible, and not let anyone know
+that she had him. So instead of letting him wander with her through the
+woods when she went in search of food, she generally left him hidden in
+a thicket or behind a bush or a fallen tree. There he spent many a long,
+lonely hour, idly watching the waving branches and the moving shadows,
+and perhaps thinking dim, formless, wordless baby thoughts, or looking
+at nothing and thinking of nothing, but just sleeping the quiet sleep
+of infancy, and living, and growing, and getting ready for hard times.
+
+At first the Fawn knew no difference between friends and enemies, but
+the instinct of the hunted soon awoke and told him when to be afraid. If
+a hostile animal came by while the doe was gone, he would crouch low,
+with his nose to the ground and his big ears laid back on his neck; or
+if pressed too closely he would jump up and hurry away to some better
+cover, with leaps and bounds so light and airy that they seemed the very
+music of motion. But that did not happen very often. His hiding-places
+were well chosen, and he usually lay still till his mother came back.
+
+When she thought he was large enough, and strong and swift enough, she
+let him travel with her; and then he became acquainted with several new
+kinds of forest--with the dark hemlock groves, and the dense cedar
+swamps; with the open tamarack, where the trees stand wide apart, and
+between them the great purple-and-white lady's-slippers bloom; with the
+cranberry marshes, where pitcher-plants live, and white-plumed grasses
+nod in the breeze; with sandy ridges where the pine-trees purr with
+pleasure when the wind strokes them; with the broad, beautiful
+Glimmerglass, laughing and shimmering in the sunshine, and with all the
+sights and the sounds of that wonderful world where he was to spend the
+years of his deerhood.
+
+They were a very silent pair. When his breakfast was ready she would
+sometimes call him with a low murmuring, and he would answer her with a
+little bleat; but those were almost the only sounds that were ever heard
+from them, except the rustling of the dry leaves around their feet. Yet
+they understood each other perfectly, and they were very happy together.
+There was little need of speech, for all they had to do the livelong day
+was to wander about while the doe picked up her food, and then, when she
+had eaten her fill, to lie down in some sheltered place, and there rest
+and chew the cud till it was time to move again.
+
+Life wasn't all sunshine, of course. There were plenty of hard things
+for the baby Buck to put up with, and perhaps the worst were the
+mosquitoes and the black-flies and "no-see-'ems" that swarmed in the
+woods and swamps through the month of June. They got into his mouth and
+into his nose; they gathered in circles around his eyes; and they
+snuggled cosily down between the short hairs of his pretty, spotted
+coat, and sucked the blood out of him till it seemed as if he would
+soon go dry. For a while they were almost unbearable, but I suppose the
+woods-people get somewhat hardened to them. Otherwise I should think our
+friends would have been driven mad, for there was never any respite from
+their attacks, except possibly a very stormy day, or a bath in the lake,
+or a saunter on the shore.
+
+At the eastern end of the Glimmerglass there is a broad strip of sand
+beach, where, if there happens to be a breeze from the water, one can
+walk and be quite free from the flies; though in calm weather, or with
+an offshore wind, it is not much better than the woods. There, during
+fly-time, the doe and her baby were often to be found; and to see him
+promenading up and down the hard sand, with his mother looking on, was
+one of the prettiest sights in all the wilderness. The ground-color of
+his coat was a bright bay red, somewhat like that of his mother's summer
+clothing; but deeper and richer and handsomer, and with pure white spots
+arranged in irregular rows all along his neck and back and sides. He was
+so sleek and polished that he fairly glistened in the sunshine, like a
+well-groomed horse; his great dark eyes were brighter than a girl's at
+her first ball; and his ears were almost as big as a mule's, and a
+million times as pretty. But best and most beautiful of all was the
+marvellous life and grace and spirit of his every pose and motion. When
+he walked, his head and neck were thrust forward and drawn back again at
+every step with the daintiest gesture imaginable; and his tiny pointed
+hoofs touched the ground so lightly, and were away again so quickly,
+that you hardly knew what they had done. If anything startled him, he
+stamped with his forefoot on the hard sand, and tossed his head in the
+air with an expression that was not fear, but alertness, and even
+defiance. And when he leaped and ran--but there's no use in trying to
+describe that.
+
+By the middle of July most of the flies were gone, and the deer could
+travel where they pleased without being eaten alive. And then, almost
+before they knew what had happened, the summer was gone, too, and the
+autumn had come. The Fawn's white spots disappeared, and both he and his
+mother put off their thin red summer clothing and donned the blue coat
+of fall, which would by and by fade into the gray of winter--a garment
+made of longer, coarser hairs, which were so thick that they had to
+stand on end because there wasn't room for them to lie down, and which
+made such a warm covering that one who wore it could sleep all night in
+the snow, and rise in the morning dry and comfortable.
+
+The Fawn had thriven wonderfully. Already the budding antlers were
+pushing through the skin on the top of his head, which alone is pretty
+good proof that he was a remarkable baby. But, of course, the infancy of
+a wild animal is always much shorter than that of a human child. It is
+well that this is so, for if the period of weakness and helplessness was
+not shortened for them, there would probably be very few who would ever
+survive its dangers and reach maturity. The Fawn was weaned early in the
+autumn; though he still ran with his mother, and she showed him what
+herbs and leaves were pleasantest to the taste and best for building up
+bone and muscle, and where the beechnuts were most plentiful. The mast
+was good that fall, which isn't always the case, and that was another
+lucky star in young Buck's horoscope. So much depends on having plenty
+to eat the first year.
+
+And now the doe was thriving as well as her son. Through the summer she
+had been thin and poor, for the Fawn had fed on her life and strength,
+and the best of all that came to her she had given to him; but the
+strain was over at last, and there were granted her a few weeks in
+which to prepare for the season of cold and storm and scanty food. She
+made the best of them, and in an amazingly short time she was rolling
+fat.
+
+Everything was lovely and the goose hung high, when all of a sudden the
+peace and quiet of their every-day lives were rudely broken. The hunting
+season had come, and half-a-dozen farmers from lower Michigan had camped
+beside the Glimmerglass. They were not really very formidable. If one
+wants to kill deer, one should learn to shoot straight and to get around
+in the woods without making quite as much noise as a locomotive. But
+their racket was intolerable, and after a day or two the doe and the
+Fawn left home and spent the next three or four weeks near a secluded
+little pond several miles away to the southeast.
+
+By the first of December these troublous times were over, and they had
+returned to their old haunts in the beech and maple woods, where they
+picked up a rather scanty living by scraping the light snow away with
+their forefeet in search of the savory nuts. But before Christmas there
+came a storm which covered the ground so deeply that they could no
+longer dig out enough food to keep them from going hungry; and they
+were forced to leave the high lands and make their way to the evergreen
+swamps around the head-waters of the Tahquamenon. There they lived on
+twigs of balsam and hemlock and spruce, with now and then a mouthful of
+moss or a nutritious lichen. Little by little the fat on their ribs
+disappeared, they grew lank and lean again, and the bones showed more
+and more plainly through their heavy winter coats. If one of those
+November hunters had succeeded in setting his teeth in their flesh he
+would have found that it had a very pleasant, nutty flavor, but in
+February it would have tasted decidedly of hemlock. Yet they were strong
+and healthy, in spite of their boniness, and of course you can't expect
+to be very fat in winter.
+
+There were worse things than hunger. One afternoon they were following a
+big buck down a runway--all three of them minding their own business and
+behaving in a very orderly and peaceable manner--when a shanty-boy
+stepped out from behind a big birch just ahead of them, and said, "Aah!"
+very derisively and insultingly. The wind was blowing from them to him,
+and they hadn't had the least idea that he was there until they were
+within three rods of his tree. The buck was so startled that for an
+instant he simply stood still and stared, which was exactly what the
+shanty-boy had expected him to do. He had stopped so suddenly that his
+forefeet were thrust forward into the snow, and he was leaning backward
+a trifle. His head was up, his eyes were almost popping out of their
+sockets, and there was such a look of astonishment on his face that the
+man laughed as he raised his gun and took aim. In a second the deer had
+wheeled and was in the air, but a bullet broke his back just as he left
+the ground, and he came tumbling down again in a shapeless heap. His
+spinal cord was cut, and half his body was dead; but he would not give
+up even then, and he half rose on his forefeet and tried to drag himself
+away. The shanty-boy stepped to his side with a knife in his hand, the
+deer gave one loud bleat of fear and pain, and then it was all over.
+
+But by that time the doe and the Fawn were far down the runway--out of
+sight, and out of danger. Next day they passed that way again, and saw a
+Canada lynx standing where the buck had fallen, licking his chops as if
+he had just finished a good meal. It is hard work carrying a deer
+through the woods, and the shanty-boy had lightened his load as much as
+possible. Lynxes are not nice. The mother and son pulled their freight
+as fast as they could travel.
+
+When the world turned green again they went back to the Glimmerglass,
+but they had not been there long before the young Buck had his nose put
+out of joint by the arrival of two new babies. Thenceforth his mother
+had all she could do to take care of them, without paying any further
+attention to him. The days of his fawnhood were over, and it was time
+for him to strike out into the world and make his own living.
+
+However, I don't think he was very lonesome. There were plenty of other
+deer in the woods, and though he did not associate with any of them as
+he had with his mother, yet he may have enjoyed meeting them
+occasionally in his travels. And there was ever so much to do and to
+think about. Eating took up a good deal of time, for he was very active
+and was still growing, and his strong young body was constantly calling
+for more food. And it wasn't enough merely to find the food and swallow
+it, for no sooner was his stomach full than he had to lie down and chew
+the cud for an hour or so. And, of course, the black-flies and
+mosquitoes and "no-see-'ems" helped to make things interesting, just as
+they had the year before. Strictly speaking, it is impossible to be
+lonely in the woods during fly-time. He changed his clothes, too, and
+put on a much handsomer dress, though I doubt if he took as much
+interest in that operation as most of us would. The change contributed
+greatly to his comfort, for his light summer garment was much better
+adapted to warm weather than his winter coat, but it did not require any
+conscious effort on his part. On hot days he sometimes waded out into
+the lake in search of lily-pads, and the touch of the cool water was
+very grateful. Occasionally he would take a long swim, and once or twice
+he paddled clear across the Glimmerglass, from one shore to the other.
+
+And it was during this summer that he raised his first real antlers.
+Those of the previous autumn had been nothing but two little buds of
+bone, but these were pointed spikes, several inches in length, standing
+straight up from the top of his head without a fork or a branch or a
+curve. They did not add very much to his good looks, and, of course,
+they dropped off early in the following winter, but they were the
+forerunners of the beautiful branching antlers of his later years, and
+if he thought about them at all they were probably as welcome as a
+boy's first mustache.
+
+Late in the following autumn an event occurred which left its mark on
+him for the rest of his life. One night he wandered into a part of the
+woods where some lumbermen had been working during the day. On the
+ground where they had eaten their lunch he found some baked beans and a
+piece of dried apple-pie, and he ate them greedily and was glad that he
+had come. But he found something else, too. One of the road-monkeys had
+carelessly left his axe in the snow with the edge turned up. The Buck
+stepped on it, and it slipped in between the two halves of his cloven
+hoof, and cut deep into his foot. The wound healed in the course of
+time, but from that night the toes--they were those of his left hind
+foot--were spread far apart, instead of lying close together as they
+should have done. Sticks and roots sometimes caught between them in a
+way that was very annoying, and his track was different from that of any
+other deer in the woods, which was not a thing to be desired. He was not
+crippled, however, for he could still leap almost, if not quite, as far
+as ever, and run almost as fast.
+
+He continued to grow and prosper, and the next summer he raised a pair
+of forked antlers with two tines each.
+
+And now he is well started down the runway of life, and we must leave
+him to travel by himself for two or three years. He ranged the woods far
+and near, and came to know them as a man knows his own house; but no
+matter what places he visited, the old haunts that his mother had shown
+him were the best of all, as the deer have learned by the experience of
+generation after generation. He always came back again to the
+Glimmerglass, and as the seasons went by I often saw his broad,
+spreading hoof-print on the sandy beach where they two had so often
+walked in that first summer. He evidently had plenty of company, and was
+probably enjoying life, for all around were other foot-prints that were
+narrow and delicately pointed, as a deer's should be. Some of them, of
+course, were his own, left by his three perfect feet; but others were
+those of his friends and acquaintances, and it is quite possible that
+some of the tiniest and daintiest were made by his children.
+
+That beach is a delightful place for a promenade on a summer night, and
+besides the deer-tracks one can sometimes find there the trails of the
+waddling porcupines, the broad, heavy print left by a black bear as he
+goes shambling by, and the handwriting of many another of the
+woods-people. Strange and interesting scenes must often be enacted on
+the smooth, hard sand that lies between the woods and the water, and it
+is a pity that the show always comes to a sudden close if any would-be
+spectators appear, and that we never see anything but the foot-prints of
+the performers.
+
+With each recurring hunting season the Buck and the other deer that made
+their homes around the Glimmerglass were driven away for a time. A few
+stayed, or at least remained as near as they dared; but compared with
+summer the neighborhood was almost depopulated. And in his fourth year,
+in spite of all his efforts to keep out of harm's way, the Buck came
+very near losing his life at the hands of a man who had really learned
+how to hunt--not one of the farmers who went ramming about the woods,
+shooting at everything in sight, and making noise enough to startle even
+the porcupines.
+
+One afternoon, late in the autumn, the judge left his court-room in
+Detroit and started for his house. He bought an evening paper as he
+boarded the street-car; and, as Fate would have it, the first thing that
+met his eye as he unfolded it was the forecast for upper Michigan:
+"Colder; slight snow-fall; light northerly winds." The judge folded the
+paper again and put it in his pocket, and all the rest of the way home
+he was dreaming of things that he had seen before--of the white and
+silent woods, of deer-tracks in the inch-deep snow, of the long
+still-hunt under dripping branches and gray November skies, of a huge
+buck feeding unconcernedly beneath the beech-trees, of nutty venison
+steaks broiling on the coals, and, finally, of another pair of antlers
+for his dining-room. Court had adjourned for three days, and that night
+he took the train for the north. And while he travelled, the snow came
+down softly and silently, melting at first as fast as it fell, and then,
+as the cold grew sharper, clothing the woods in a thin, white robe, the
+first gift of the coming winter.
+
+Next day the Buck was lying behind a fallen tree, chewing his cud, when
+the breeze brought him a whiff of an unpleasant human odor. He jumped up
+and hurried away, and the judge heard him crash through the bushes, and
+searched until he had found his trail. An hour later, as the Buck was
+nosing for beechnuts in the snow, a rifle cracked and a bullet went
+zipping by and carried off the very tip of his left antler. He dropped
+his white flag and was off like a shot.
+
+Chase a wounded deer, and he will run for miles; leave him alone, and if
+he is badly hurt he will soon lie down. The chances are that he will
+never get up again. The judge knew that the Buck was hit, for he had
+seen his tail come down. But was he hit hard? There was no blood on the
+trail, and the judge decided to follow.
+
+The Buck hurried on, but before long his leaps began to grow shorter.
+After a mile or so he stopped, looked back, and listened. The woods were
+very, very still, and for all that he could see or hear there was not
+the least sign of danger. Yet he was afraid, and in a few minutes he
+pushed on again, though not as rapidly as before. As the short afternoon
+wore away he travelled still more slowly, and his stops were longer and
+more frequent. And at last, just before sunset, as he stood and watched
+for the enemy who might or might not be on his trail, he heard a twig
+snap, and saw a dark form slip behind a tree. This time he ran as he had
+never run before in all his life.
+
+The judge spent the night at the nearest lumber-camp, and the next
+morning he was out again as soon as he could see, following his own
+trail back to where he had left that of the Buck. On the way he crossed
+the tracks of two other deer, but they had no temptations for him. He
+wanted to solve the mystery of that spreading hoof-print, and to make
+sure that his shot had not been a clean miss. And now began a day which
+was without precedent in the Buck's whole history. Those woods are not
+the best in the world for a deer who has to play hide-and-seek with a
+man, for there are few bare ridges or half-wooded slopes from which he
+can look back to see if anyone is following him. Even the glades and the
+open cranberry swamps are small and infrequent. An almost unbroken
+forest sweeps away in every direction, and everywhere there is cover for
+the still-hunter. And when the ground is carpeted with snow an inch and
+a half deep, as it was then, and at every step a deer must leave behind
+him a trail as plain as a turnpike road, then it is not strange if he
+feels that he has run up against a decidedly tough proposition. Eyes,
+ears, and nose are all on the alert, and all doing their level best, but
+what eye can penetrate the cedar swamp beyond a few yards; or what ear
+can always catch the tread of a moccasin on the moss and the snow before
+it comes within rifle range; or what nose, no matter how delicate, can
+detect anything but what happens to lie in its owner's path, or what the
+wind chooses to bring it? Many a foe had crossed the Buck's trail in the
+course of his life; but none had ever followed him like this--silently
+and relentlessly--slowly, but without a moment's pause. A few leaps were
+always enough to put the judge out of sight, and half an hour's run left
+him far behind; but in a little while he was there again, creeping
+cautiously through the undergrowth, and peering this way and that for a
+glimpse of a plump, round, blue-gray body. Once he fired before the deer
+knew that he was at hand, and if a hanging twig had not turned the
+bullet a trifle from its course, the still-hunt would have ended then
+and there.
+
+But late in the afternoon the Buck thought that he had really shaken his
+pursuer off, and the judge was beginning to think so, too. They had not
+seen each other for two or three hours, the day was nearly over, and
+there were signs of a change in the weather. If the Buck could hold out
+till nightfall, and then the snow should melt before morning, he would
+be comparatively safe.
+
+In his fear of the enemy lurking in the rear, he had forgotten all other
+dangers; and without quite realizing what he was doing he had come back
+to the Glimmerglass, and was tramping once more up and down the old
+familiar runways. Presently he came upon a huge maple, lying prostrate
+on the ground. He walked around its great bushy head and down toward its
+foot; and there he found a broad, saucer-shaped hollow, left when the
+tree was torn up by the roots in some wild gale. On one side rose a mass
+of earth, straight as a stone wall and four or five feet in height; and
+against its foot lay one of the most tempting beds of dead leaves that
+he had ever seen, free from snow, dry as a whistle, soft and downy. The
+sight of it was too much for him. He was very weary, his limbs fairly
+ached with fatigue, and for the last hour his spread hoof had given him
+a good deal of pain. His enemy was nowhere in sight, and in spite of his
+misgivings he sank down on the couch with a sigh of comfort, and began
+to chew his cud.
+
+The judge was about ready to give up for the night when he, too, came
+upon that fallen maple. He saw the wall of earth and twisted roots, with
+the deer-tracks leading toward it; and slowly, softly, silently, he
+crept down toward the Buck's shelter.
+
+There was no wind that evening, and the woods seemed perfectly still;
+but now, unnoticed by the judge, a faint, faint puff came wandering
+among the trees, as if on purpose to warn the deer of his danger.
+Suddenly he started, sniffed the air, and was up and away like a
+race-horse--not leaping nor bounding now, but running low, with his head
+down, and his antlers laid back on his neck. If he had been in the cedar
+swamp he would have escaped unhurt, but up in the hardwood the trees do
+not stand so close, and one can see a little farther. The judge fired
+before he could get out of sight, and he dropped with three ribs broken
+and a bullet lodged behind his right shoulder. He was up again in an
+instant, but there were blood-stains on the snow where he had lain, and
+this time the judge did not follow. Instead of giving chase he went
+straight back to the lumber-camp, feeling almost as sure of that new
+pair of antlers as if he had carried them with him.
+
+The Buck ran a little way, with his flag lowered and the blood spurting,
+and then he lay down to rest, just as the judge knew he would. The
+bleeding soon stopped, but it left him very weak and tired, and that
+night was the most miserable he had ever known. The darkness settled
+down thick and black over the woods, the wind began to blow, and by and
+by the rain commenced to fall--first a drizzle, and then a steady pour.
+Cold and wet, wounded and tired and hungry, the Buck was about as
+wretched as it is possible for a mortal to be. And yet that rain was the
+one and only thing that could save him. Under its melting touch the snow
+began to disappear, and before morning the ground was bare again. Even
+the blood-stains were washed away. It would take a better nose than the
+judge's to track him now.
+
+Yet the danger was not over, by any means. The judge knew very nearly
+where to look for him, and could probably find him if he did not get up
+and move on. And to move on, or even to rise to his feet, seemed utterly
+impossible. The least motion sent the most exquisite pain shooting
+through his whole body, and I believe he would have died where he lay,
+either at the hands of the judge or from exhaustion, if another man
+hadn't come along. The judge would have advanced slowly and quietly, and
+the deer might never have known he was coming till a rifle bullet hit
+him; but this man's errand must have been a different one, for he came
+striding noisily through the trees and bushes and over the dead leaves,
+whistling "I Want Yer, Ma Honey," at the top of his whistle. If you are
+obliged to be out in the woods during the hunting season, and don't care
+to kill anything, it is always best to make as much noise as you can.
+There is less danger that some other fool will take you for a deer and
+shoot you dead. The Buck heard him, of course, and tried to rise, only
+to sink back with a groan. He couldn't do it, or at least he thought he
+couldn't. But when the man came around a little balsam only two rods
+away, then his panic got the better of his pain, and he jumped up and
+made off at a clumsy, limping run. Every joint seemed on fire, and he
+ached from the top of his head to the toes of that poor left hind-foot.
+But after the first plunge it was not quite so bad. The motion took some
+of the stiffness out of his limbs, and by the time the judge arrived he
+was a mile away and was thinking about breakfast.
+
+We must do the sportsman the justice of saying that his remorse was very
+keen when he stepped aboard the train that night, bound for Detroit. He
+had wounded a deer and had let it get away from him, to suffer, and
+probably to die a painful, lingering death. The whole day--the last of
+the hunting season and of his court recess--had been spent in an
+unavailing search; not merely because he wanted some venison and a pair
+of antlers to carry home with him, but because he wanted to put the Buck
+out of his misery. He had failed everywhere, and he felt sorry and
+ashamed, and wished he had stayed at home. But, as it happened, the Buck
+did not want to be put out of his misery. Just as the judge took the
+train he was lying down for the night. He would be stiff when he rose
+again, but not as stiff as he had been that morning. He would be weak
+and tired, but he would still be able to travel and find food. He would
+lose his plumpness and roundness, no doubt, and lose them very rapidly.
+The winter would probably be a hard one, with such a misfortune as this
+at its very beginning. But no matter, it would pass. He wasn't the first
+Buck who had had his ribs smashed by an injection of lead and had lived
+to tell the tale.
+
+The next year it was his antlers that got him into trouble--his antlers
+and his quarrelsomeness. Two round, black, velvet-covered knobs had
+appeared in spring on the top of his head, and had pushed up higher and
+higher till they formed cylindrical columns, each one leaning outward
+and a little backward. They were hot as fever with the blood that was
+rushing through them, building up the living masonry; and at the upper
+ends, where the work was newest, they were soft and spongy, and very
+sensitive, so that the least touch was enough to give pain. Longer and
+longer they grew, and harder and harder; by and by curving forward and
+inward; and one after another the tines appeared. And at last, in the
+early autumn, the tall towers of bone were complete, the blood ceased to
+course through them, and the Buck rubbed them against the tree-trunks
+until the velvety skin was all worn off, and they were left smooth and
+brown and polished. They were a handsome pair, spreading and branching
+very gracefully over his forehead, and bearing four tines to each beam.
+It is a mistake to suppose, as so many people do, that the number of
+tines on each antler invariably corresponds to the number of years that
+its owner has lived; but it very often does, especially before he has
+passed the prime of life.
+
+No sooner were the antlers finished than the Buck began to grow fat. He
+had been eating heartily for months, but he hadn't been able to put much
+flesh on his ribs as long as he had that big, bony growth to feed. Bucks
+and does are alike in this, that for both of them the summer is a season
+of plenty, but not of growing plump and round and strong. The
+difference between them is that the does give their strength and
+vitality to the children they are nursing, while the bucks pile theirs
+up on their own foreheads.
+
+[Illustration: "_The buck was nearing the prime of life._"]
+
+And there was another change which came with the autumn. Through the
+summer he had been quiet and gentle, and had attended very strictly to
+his own affairs; but now the life and vigor and vitality which for weeks
+and months had been pouring into that tall, beautiful structure on his
+forehead were all surging like a tide through his whole body; and he
+became very passionate and excitable, and spent much time in rushing
+about the woods in search of other deer, fighting those of his own sex,
+and making love to the does. The year was at its high-water mark, and
+the Buck was nearing his prime. Food was plenty; everywhere the
+beechnuts were dropping on the dry leaves; the autumn sunshine was warm
+and mellow; the woods were gay with scarlet and gold and brown, and the
+very taste of the air was enough to make one happy. Was it any wonder if
+he sometimes felt as if he would like to fight every other buck in
+Michigan, and all of them at once?
+
+One afternoon in October he fought a battle with another buck who was
+very nearly his match in size and strength--a battle that came near
+being the end of both of them. There was a doe just vanishing among the
+bushes when the fuss began, and the question at issue was which should
+follow her and which shouldn't. It would be easy enough to find her,
+for, metaphorically speaking, "her feet had touched the meadows, and
+left the daisies rosy." Wherever she went, a faint, faint fragrance
+clung to the dead leaves, far too delicate for a human nose to detect,
+yet quite strong enough for a buck to follow. But the trail wasn't broad
+enough for two, and the first thing to be done was to have a scrap and
+see which was the better and more deserving deer. And, as it turned out,
+the scent grew cold again, and the doe never heard that eager patter of
+hoofs hurrying down the runway behind her.
+
+The bucks came together like two battering-rams, with a great clatter
+and clash of antlers, but after the first shock the fight seemed little
+more than a pushing-match. Each one was constantly trying to catch the
+other off his guard and thrust a point into his flesh, but they never
+succeeded. A pair of widely branching antlers is as useful in warding
+off blows as in delivering them. Such a perfect shield does it make,
+when properly handled, that at the end of half an hour neither of the
+bucks was suffering from anything but fatigue, and the issue was as far
+as ever from being settled. There was foam on their lips, and sweat on
+their sides; their mouths were open, and their breath came in gasps;
+every muscle was working its hardest, pushing and shoving and guarding;
+and they drove each other backward and forward through the bushes, and
+ploughed up the ground, and scattered the dry leaves in their struggles;
+and yet there was not a scratch on either shapely body.
+
+Finally, they backed off and rushed together again with such violence
+that our Buck's antlers were forced apart just a trifle, and his enemy's
+slipped in between them. There was a little snap as they sprang back
+into position, and the mischief was done. The two foes were locked
+together in an embrace which death itself could not loosen.
+
+The next few weeks were worse than a nightmare. If one went forward, the
+other had to go backward; and neither could go anywhere or do anything
+without getting the consent of the other or else carrying him along by
+main force. Many things could not be done at all--not even when both
+were willing and anxious to do them. They could not run or leap. They
+could not see, except out of the corners of their eyes. They would never
+again toss those beautiful antlers in the air, for they had come
+together with their heads held low, and in that position they must
+remain. They could not even lie down without twisting their necks till
+they ached as if they were breaking. With their noses to the ground, and
+with anger and misery in their hearts, they pushed and hauled each other
+this way and that through the woods. And wherever they went, they were
+always struggling and fighting and striving for every mouthful of food
+that came within reach. It was little enough that they found at the
+best, and it would have been better for both of them if they could have
+agreed to divide it evenly, but of course that would have been asking
+too much of deer nature. Each took all he could get, and at first they
+were so evenly matched that each secured somewhere near his fair share.
+They spied a beechnut on the ground, or a bit of lichen, or a tender
+twig; and together they made a dive for it. Two noses were thrust
+forward--no, not forward, sidewise--and two mouths were open to grasp
+the precious morsel which would enable its possessor to keep up the
+fight a little longer. Sometimes one got it, and sometimes the other;
+but from the very beginning our Buck was a shade the stronger, and his
+superiority grew with every mouthful that he managed to wrest from his
+fellow-prisoner. Both of them were losing flesh rapidly, but he kept his
+longer than the other. And at last they reached the point where, by
+reason of his greater strength, he got everything and the other nothing,
+and then the end was near. It would have come long before if both had
+not been in prime condition on the day of the battle.
+
+[Illustration: "_Wherever they went they were always struggling and
+fighting._"]
+
+One dark, stormy night the two deer were stumbling and floundering over
+roots and bushes, trying to find their way down to the beach for a
+drink. Both of them were pretty well used up; and one was so weak that
+he could hardly stand, and could only walk by leaning heavily on the
+head and antlers of the other, who supported him because he was obliged
+to, and not out of friendliness. They were within a few rods of the
+beach when he whose strength was least stepped into a hole and fell, and
+his leg-bone snapped like a dry twig. He struggled and tried to rise;
+but his story was told, and before morning he was dead. For once our
+Buck's instinct of self-preservation had carried him too far. He had
+taken all the food for himself, and had starved his enemy; and now he
+was bound face to face to a corpse.
+
+Well, we won't talk about that. He stayed there twenty-four hours, and
+there would soon have been two dead bucks instead of one if something
+had not happened which he did not in the least expect--something which
+seemed like a blessed miracle, yet which was really the simplest and
+most natural thing in the world. A buck has no fixed time for the
+casting of his antlers. It usually occurs during the first half of the
+winter, but it has been known to take place as early as November and as
+late as April. The second night passed, and as it began to grow light
+again our friend lifted himself on his knees and his hind-legs, and
+wrestled mightily with his horrible bed-fellow; and suddenly his left
+antler came loose from his head. The right one was still fast, but it
+was easily disengaged from the tangle of branching horns, and in a
+moment he stood erect. The blood was running down his face from the
+pedicel where the antler had stood, and he was so weak and dizzy that
+his legs could hardly carry him, and so thin and wasted that he seemed
+the mere shadow of his former self. But he was free, and that long,
+horrible dream was over at last.
+
+He tried to walk toward the lake, but fell before he had taken
+half-a-dozen steps; and for an hour he lay still and rested. It was like
+a taste of heaven, just to be able to hold his neck straight. The sun
+had risen by the time he was ready to try it again, and through the
+trees he saw the shimmer and sparkle of the Glimmerglass. He heard the
+wind talking to itself in the branches overhead, and the splashing of
+the ripples on the beach; and he staggered down to the margin and drank
+long and deep.
+
+That December was a mild one. The first light snow had already come and
+gone, and the next two weeks were bright and sunshiny. The Buck ate as
+he had never eaten before, and it was astonishing to see how rapidly he
+picked up, and how much he gained before Christmas. His good luck seemed
+to follow him month after month, for the winter was comparatively open,
+the snow was not as deep as usual, and the spring came early. By that
+time the ill effects of his terrible experience had almost entirely
+disappeared, and he was in nearly as good condition as is usual with the
+deer at that season of the year--which, of course, isn't really saying
+very much.
+
+Again, Nature's table was spread with good things, and again he set to
+work to build a pair of antlers--a pair that should be larger and
+handsomer than any that had gone before. But as the summer lengthened it
+became evident that there was something wrong with those antlers, or at
+least with one of them. One seemed to be quite perfect. It was
+considerably longer than those of last year, its curve was just right,
+and it had five tines, which was the correct number and all that he
+could have asked. But the other, the left, was nothing but a straight,
+pointed spike, perhaps eight inches in length, shaped almost exactly
+like those of his first pair. The Buck never knew the reason for this
+deformity, and I'm not at all certain about it myself, though I have a
+theory. One stormy day in the early summer, a falling branch, torn from
+a tree-top by the wind, had struck squarely on that growing antler, then
+only a few inches long. It hurt him so that for a moment he was fairly
+blind and dizzy, and it is quite possible that the soft, half-formed
+bone was so injured that it could never reach its full development.
+Anyhow, it made him a rather queer-looking buck, with one perfect antler
+and one spike. But in everything else--except his spread hoof--he was
+without spot or blemish. He had well fulfilled the promise of his youth,
+and he was big and strong and beautiful. Something he had lost, no
+doubt, of the grace and daintiness of his baby days; but he had also
+gained much--gained in stateliness and dignity, as well as in size and
+weight and strength. And even that spike antler was not without its
+advantages, as he learned a little later.
+
+As the autumn came round he was just as excitable and passionate, just
+as ready for fighting or love-making, as ever, and not one whit subdued
+by the disaster of the year before. And so one day he had another battle
+with another buck, while another doe--or perhaps the same one--made off
+through the trees and left a fragrant trail behind her. He and his
+adversary went at each other in the usual way, and for some time it
+seemed unlikely that either of them could ever do anything more than
+tire the other out by hard pushing. There was little danger that their
+antlers would get locked this time, with one pair so badly mismated; and
+it bade fair to be a very ordinary, every-day sort of a fight. But by
+and by our Buck saw his opportunity. The enemy exposed his left side, in
+an unguarded moment, and before he could recover himself that deformed
+antler had dealt him a terrible thrust. If the force of the blow had
+been divided among five tines it would probably have had but little
+effect, but the single straight spike was as good as a sword or a
+bayonet, and it won the day. The deer with the perfect antlers was not
+only vanquished, but killed; and the victor was off on the trail of the
+doe.
+
+And so our friend became the champion of the Glimmerglass, and in all
+the woods there was not a buck that could stand against him.
+
+But his brother deer were not his only enemies. With the opening of the
+hunting season those farmers from lower Michigan came again, and day
+after day they beat the woods in search of game. This time, however, the
+Buck did not leave, or at least he did not go very far. For the last
+month he had been fighting everyone who would fight back, and perhaps
+his many easy victories had made him reckless. At any rate he was bolder
+than usual, and all through the season he stayed within a few miles of
+the Glimmerglass.
+
+The farmers had decidedly poor luck, and after hunting for two or three
+weeks without a single taste of venison they began to feel desperate.
+Finally, they secured the help of a trapper who owned a big English
+foxhound. Hunting with dogs was against the law, and at home they
+claimed to be very law-abiding citizens, but they had to have a deer, no
+matter what happened.
+
+The morning after the hound's arrival he got onto the trail of a doe and
+followed it for hours, until, as a last resort, she made for the
+Glimmerglass, jumped into the water, and started to swim across to the
+farther shore. The dog's work was done, and he stood on the bank and
+watched her go. For a few minutes she thought that she was out of
+danger, and that the friendly Glimmerglass had saved her; but presently
+she heard a sound of oars, and turning half-way round she lifted her
+head and shoulders out of the water, and saw a row-boat and three men
+bearing down upon her. A look of horror came into her face as she sank
+back, and her heart almost broke with despair; but she was game, and she
+struck out with all her might. Her legs tore the water frantically, the
+straining muscles stood out like ropes on her sides and flanks and
+shoulders, and she almost threw herself from the water. But it was no
+use, the row-boat was gaining.
+
+The farmers fired at her again and again, but they were too wildly
+excited to hit anything until finally the trapper pulled up alongside
+her and threw a noose over her head. And then, while she lay on her side
+in the water, with the rope around her neck, kicking and struggling in
+a blind agony of despair, one of the farmers shot her dead at a range of
+something less than ten feet. When he went home he bragged that he was
+the only one of the party who had killed a deer, but he never told just
+how the thing was done.
+
+That is the kind of fate that you are very likely to meet if you are a
+deer. But vengeance came on the morrow, for that day it was the Buck's
+turn to be chased by that horrible fog-horn on four legs. Hour after
+hour he heard the hound's dreadful baying behind him as he raced through
+the woods, and at last he, too, started for the water, just as the doe
+had done. But he never reached it, or at least not on that trip. He was
+within a few rods of the beach when his spread hoof caught on a root and
+threw him, and the hound was so close behind that they both went down in
+a heap. They sprang to their feet at the same instant, and stood for a
+second glaring at each other. The dog had not meant to fight, only to
+drive the other into the water, where the hunters would take care of
+him; but he was game, and he made a spring at the deer's throat. The
+Buck drew back his forefoot, with its sharp, pointed hoof, and met the
+enemy with a thrust like that of a Roman soldier's short-sword; and the
+hound went down with his shoulder broken and a great gash in his side.
+And then, with a sudden twist and turn of his head, the Buck caught him
+on the point of that terrible spike antler, ripped his body open, and
+tossed him in the air.
+
+The worst enemy was disposed of. But that wasn't all. The man who killed
+the doe was waiting on the beach and had heard the scuffle, and now he
+came creeping quietly through the bushes to see what was going on. The
+Buck was still trampling the body of the dog, and noticed nothing till a
+rifle bullet grazed his right flank, inflicting just enough of a wound
+to make him still more furious. He faced around and stood for a moment
+staring at this new enemy; and then he did something which very few wild
+deer have ever done. Probably he would not have done it himself if he
+had not been half crazy with rage and excitement, and much emboldened by
+his easy victory over the hound. He put his head down and his antlers
+forward, and charged on a man!
+
+The farmer was jerking frantically at the lever of his repeating rifle,
+but a cartridge had stuck in the magazine, and he couldn't make it work.
+The hound's fate had shown him what that spike antler could do; and
+when he saw it bearing down on him at full tilt he dropped his gun and
+ran for his life to his dug-out canoe. He reached it just in time. I
+almost wish he hadn't.
+
+One more adventure the Buck had that fall. Providence, or Fate, or
+someone took a hand in affairs, and rid the Glimmerglass of all hunters,
+not for that season alone, but for many years to come. One night, down
+beside a spring in the cedar swamp, the Buck found a half-decayed log on
+which a bag of salt had been emptied. He stayed there for an hour or
+two, alternately licking the salt and drinking the cold water, and it
+was as good as an ice-cream soda. The next night he returned for another
+debauch; but in the meantime two other visitors had been there, and both
+had seen his tracks and knew that he would come again. As he neared the
+spring, treading noiselessly on the soft moss, he heard two little
+clicks, and stopped short to see what they meant. Both were quick and
+sharp, and both had come at exactly the same instant; yet they were not
+quite alike, for one had come from the shutter of a camera, and one from
+the lock of a rifle. Across the salt-lick a photographer and a hunter
+were facing each other in the darkness, and each saw the gleam of the
+other's eyes and took him for a deer. So close together were the two
+clicks that neither man heard the sound of the other's weapon, and both
+were ready to fire--each in his own way.
+
+The Buck stood and watched, and suddenly there came two bursts of
+flame--one of them so big and bright that it lit the woods like
+sheet-lightning. Two triggers had been touched at the same instant, and
+each did its work well. The flash-light printed on the sensitive plate a
+picture of a hunter in the act of firing, and the rifle sent a bullet
+straight through the photographer's forehead. The Buck saw it all as in
+a dream--the white flame of the magnesium powder; the rifle, belching
+out its fire and smoke; the camera, silent and harmless, but working
+just as surely; the two men, each straining his eyes for a sight of his
+game; the water gleaming in the fierce light, and the dark ranks of the
+cedars all around. And then, in the tenth of a second, it was all over,
+and the Buck was bumping against trees, and stumbling and floundering
+over roots, in his dazed haste to get away from this terrifying mystery.
+He heard one horrified shout from the hunter, but nothing from the
+photographer--and the woods were silent again.
+
+That was the end of the hunting season at the Glimmerglass. With the
+hunter's trial for manslaughter, we and the Buck are not concerned; and
+there is nothing more to tell except that the next year the owners of
+the lands around the lake gave warning that all trespassers would be
+prosecuted. They wanted no more such tragedies on their property.
+
+And so the Buck and his sweethearts and his rivals lived in peace,
+except that the rivals still quarrelled among themselves, as Nature
+meant them to. The Buck had reached his prime, but you are not to
+suppose that he began to age immediately afterward. It was long before
+his eye was dimmed or his natural force abated; and as the years went
+by, with their summers of lily-pads and tender young browse, and their
+autumns of beechnuts and fighting and love-making, the broad cloven
+track of his split foot was often to be found in the hard, smooth sand
+of the beach. Perhaps it is there now. I wish I could go and see.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Duplicate titles were removed.
+
+Page 51, "weasles" changed to "weasels" (frogs, and weasels)
+
+Page 156, "fore-paws" changed to "forepaws" to match rest of usage
+(forepaws. He also)
+
+Page 165, "blottod" changed to "blotted" (were all blotted out)
+
+Page 229, "where-ever" changed to "wherever" It was orginally split over
+two lines. (woods. And wherever)
+
+
+
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