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BEAVERS—THEIR WAYS. 47 
enforced captivity, that—to borrow a judicial expres- 
sion—made his ‘‘contempt of court.” 
Of the after career of Nibs but little is known—and 
that little for the most part guess work. Evidence was 
noted of ‘‘beaver work’’ at Painted Woods Lake some 
weeks after his escape from his celler prison, although 
no sign of these animals had been noted there for many 
years previous. A well known poaching hunter had 
met a small beaver near where the lake empties its 
waters into the Missiouri, and ‘‘regretted’’ that he did 
not have his gun with him. 
Two years later a small family of beavers appeared 
in the lake and erected a house the first of its kind built 
there in twenty years. What part Nibs played as an 
- emigration agent it is not for us to know—but certain 
jt is he could have called the lake and its environs a 
beaver’s earthly paradise and told the truth. 
Having an illustrated chapter especially devoted to 
the colony in another part of this work, we pass to an 
incident related to us by Frank Johnson a resident of 
Painted Woods Lake neighborhood, and a gentleman 
who professed considerable interest in this latter day 
beaver colony. A poaching trapper had been making 
camp about the lake in the spring of 1903, but his dam- 
age to the hunted colony was unknown to Mr. Johnson 
when, on taking a sundown stroll along the lake below 
where its feeders come in from the prairies, where he 
_espied two beavers swimming breast and breast coming 
his way. He kept alittle back from the shore and sat 
down to watch them. They came about opposite him 
and went ashore across the narrow shute. The beavers 
after casting their eyes about them selected a young 
