CHAPTER I 

 THE TAKING OF THE BEAVER 



All summer long he had hung about the fur company trading- 

 posts waiting for the signs. 



And now the signs had come. 



Foliage crimson to the touch of night-frosts. Crisp autumn days, 

 spicy with the smell of nuts and dead leaves. Birds flying away 

 southward, leaving the woods silent as the snow-padded surface of 

 a frozen pond. Hoar-frost heavier every morning ; and thin 

 ice edged round stagnant pools like layers of mica. 



Then he knew it was time to go. And through the Northern 

 forests moved a new presence — the trapper. 



Of the tawdry, flash clothing in which popular fancy is wont to 

 dress him he has none. Bright colors would be a danger-signal 

 to game. If his costume has any color, it is a waist-belt or neck- 

 scarf, a toque or bright handkerchief round his head to keep dis- 

 tant hunters from mistaking him for a moose. For the rest, his 

 clothes are as ragged as any old, weather-worn garments. Sleeping 

 on balsam boughs or cooking over a smoky fire will reduce the new- 

 ness of blanket coat and buckskin jacket to the dun shades of the 

 grizzled forest. A few days in the open and the trapper has the 

 complexion of a bronzed tree-trunk. 



Like other wild creatures, this foster-child of the forest gradually 

 takes on the appearance and habits of woodland life. Nature pro- 

 tects the ermine by turning his russet coat of the grass season to 

 spotless white for midwinter — except the jet tail-tip left to lure 

 hungry enemies and thus, perhaps, to prevent the little stoat 

 degenerating into a sloth. And the forest looks after her foster- 



