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beaver selected a tree, and after some trouble in 

 getting comfortably seated, or squatted, also began 

 cutting. The fourth beaver disappeared and I 

 did not see him again. While I was looking for 

 this one the huge, aged beaver whose venerable 

 appearance had impressed me the first evening 

 appeared on the scene. He came out of a hole 

 beneath some spruces about a hundred feet dis- 

 tant. He looked neither to right nor to left, nor 

 up nor down, as he ambled toward the aspen 

 growth. When about halfway there he wheeled 

 suddenly and took an uneasy survey of the open he 

 had traversed, as though he had heard an enemy 

 behind. Then with apparently stolid indifference 

 he went on leisurely, and for a time paused 

 among the cutters, which did nothing to indicate 

 that they realized his presence. He ate some bark 

 from a green limb on the ground, moved on, and 

 went into the hole beneath me. He appeared so 

 large that I afterward measured the distance be- 

 tween the two aspens where he paused. He was 

 not less than three and a half feet long and prob- 

 ably weighed fifty pounds. He had all his toes; 

 there was no white spot on his body ; in fact, there 



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