270 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



white within a few days. They told of the youngest 

 and smallest and strongest ermine with the softest and 

 whitest coats. That disposed of the senility theory. 

 All the trapper knows is that the whitest ermine is 

 taken when the cold is most intense and most contin 

 uous, that just as the cold slackens the ermine coat 

 assumes the sulphur tinges, deepening to russet and 

 brown, and that the whitest ermine instead of showing 

 senility, always displays the most active and courage 

 ous sort of deviltry. 



Summer or winter, the Northern trapper is con 

 stantly surrounded by ermine and signs of ermine. 

 There are the tiny claw-tracks almost like frost 

 tracery across the snow. There is the rifled nest of a 

 poor grouse eggs sucked, or chickens murdered, the 

 nest fouled so that it emits the stench of a skunk, or 

 the mother hen lying dead from a wound in her throat. 

 There is the frightened rabbit loping across the fields 

 in the wildest, wobbliest, most woe-begone leaps, try 

 ing to shake something off that is clinging to his 

 throat till over he tumbles the prey of a hunter that 

 is barely the size of rabbit s paw. There is the water- 

 rat flitting across the rocks in blind terror, regardless 

 of the watching trapper, caring only to reach safety 

 water water! Behind comes the pursuer this is no 

 still hunt but a straight open chase a little creature 

 about the length of a man s hand, with a tail almost as 

 long, a body scarcely the thickness of two fingers, a 

 mouth the size of a bird s beak, and claws as small as 

 a sparrow s. It gallops in lithe bounds with its long 

 neck straight up and its beady eyes fastened on the 

 flying water-rat. Splash dive into the water goes 

 the rat! Splash dive into the water goes the 



