of t$ 



I am not mad, nor melancholy ; I am not after 

 copy. Nothing is the matter with me. I have come 

 out to the bend to watch the muskrats building, for 

 that small mound up the ditch is not an old haycock, 

 but a half-finished muskrat house. 



The moon climbs higher. The water on the meadow 

 shivers in the light. The wind bites through my 

 heavy coat and sends me back, but not until I have 

 seen one, two, three little figures scaling the walls of 

 the house with loads of mud-and-reed mortar. I am 

 driven back by the cold, but not until I know that 

 here in the desolate meadow is being rounded off a 

 lodge, thick-walled and warm, and proof against the 

 longest, bitterest of winters. 



This is near the end of November. My wood is in 

 the cellar ; I am about ready to put on the double 

 windows and storm doors ; and the muskrats' house 

 is all but finished. Winter is at hand : but we are 

 prepared, the muskrats even better prepared than 

 I, for theirs is an adequate house, planned per- 

 fectly. 



Throughout the summer they had no house, only 

 their tunnels into the sides of the ditch, their road- 

 ways out into the grass, and their beds under the 



