NORTHERN GAME TRAILS 351 



and see how sorry you will be." We had no in- 

 tention, however, of doing him any harm, but he 

 looked very indignant when I snapped his pic- 

 ture. 



Further on, as we were passing a small pond 

 of perhaps one hundred yards in diameter, I 

 caught a transient glimpse of a beaver through 

 the thin blue ice, as he darted into the tunnel 

 which led to his house. This low-domed house 

 (which looked very much like the house our 

 musk-squash builds) was built of mud, turf and 

 sticks cleverly interwoven, and rising about three 

 or four feet above the surface of the ice. At 

 one end of the pond they had their customary 

 dam as well as a great store of food, to guard 

 against the winter's famine. At a point in the 

 dam they had deposited this food supply, which 

 consisted chiefly of willow branches cut into con- 

 venient lengths. At feeding time one slips out 

 of the house and swims down through the pale 

 amber water to the brush pile, selects a suitable 

 stick and returns to dine on its tender bark. And 

 so all through the long, savage winter, the little 

 chaps live, play and feed, all below the frozen 

 upper world. 



The beavers are not without their enemies, 

 however, and perhaps the most feared is that 



