OTHER LITTLE ANIMALS 291 



the log and takes up the trail through the rushes. But here mus- 

 quash has dived off into the water for the express purpose of throw- 

 ing a possible pursuer off the scent. But the tracks betrayed which 

 way musquash was travelling ; so the trapper goes on, knowing if 

 he does not find the little haycock houses on this side, he can cross 

 to the other. 



Presently, he almost stumbles over what sent the muskrat 

 diving just at this place. It is the wreck of a wolverine's ravage 

 — a little wattled dome-shaped house exposed to that arch-destroyer 

 by the shrinking of the swamp. So shallow has the water become, 

 that a wolverine has easily waded and leaped clear across to the 

 roof of the muskrat's house. A beaver-dam two feet thick cannot 

 resist the onslaught of the wolverine's claws ; how much less will 

 this round nest of reeds and grass and mosses cemented together 

 with soft clay ! The roof has been torn from the domed house, 

 leaving the inside bare and showing plainly the domestic economy 

 of the muskrat home, smooth round walls inside, a floor or gallery 

 of sticks and grasses, where the family had lived in an air chamber 

 above the water, rough walls below the water-line and two or 

 three little openings that must have been safely under water before 

 the swamp receded. Perhaps a mussel or lily bulb has been left 

 in the deserted larder. From the oozy slime below the mid-floor 

 to the topmost wall will not measure more than two or three feet. 

 If the swamp had not dried here, the stupid little muskrats that 

 escaped the ravager's claws would probably have come back to 

 the wrecked house, built up the torn roof, and gone on living in 

 danger till another wolverine came. But a water doorway the 

 muskrat must have. That he has learned by countless assaults 

 on his house-top, so when the marsh retreated the muskrats aban- 

 doned their house. 



All about the deserted house are runways, tiny channels across 

 oozy peninsulas and islands of the muskrat's diminutive world 

 such as a very small beaver might make. The trapper jumps 

 across to a dry patch or mound in the midst of the slimy bottom and 



