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house and stood there for some time. Com- 

 monly in the winter an inhabited beaver house 

 gives a scent to the small amount of air that 

 escapes from the top, and this tells of the pres- 

 ence of the living beaver inside. But I was un- 

 able to detect the slightest beaver scent in the 

 air. Apparently the water in the pond was 

 frozen from top to bottom; probably all the 

 beaver had perished, unless they had managed 

 to dig out, as they sometimes do, by tunneling 

 beneath the dam into the brook-channel below. 

 Many old beaver ponds have a subway in the 

 mud of the bottom. One opening is close to the 

 entrance of the house; the other at a point on 

 shore a few feet or several yards beyond the 

 edge of the pond. This offers a means of escape 

 from the pond in case it is frozen to the bottom 

 or if it be drained. A careful search failed to 

 reveal any tunnel, new or old, through which 

 these beaver might have escaped. 



I determined to know their fate and went to 

 my cabin for an axe and a shovel. A hole was 

 cut in the ice midway between the beaver house 

 and the food-pile, — a pile of green aspen cut- 



255 



