cade. As he scrambled up over the rocks, I noticed 

 that he had but two fingers on his right hand. 

 He was followed, in single file, by four others ; 

 one of these was minus a finger on the left hand. 

 The next morning I read that five immigrants 

 had arrived in the Moraine Colony. They had 

 registered their footprints in the muddy margin 

 of the lower pond. Had an agent been sent to 

 invite these colonists, or had they come out of 

 their own adventurous spirit? The day following 

 their arrival I trailed them backward in the hope 

 of learning whence they came and why they had 

 moved. They had traveled in the water most of 

 the time; but in places they had come out on the 

 bank to go round a waterfall or to avoid an 

 obstruction. Here and there I saw their tracks in 

 the mud and traced them to a beaver settlement 

 in which the houses and dams had been recently 

 wrecked. A near-by rancher told me that he had 

 been " making it hot " for all beavers in his meadow. 

 During the next two years I occasionally saw this 

 patriarchal beaver or his tracks thereabout. 



It is the custom among old male beavers to 

 idle away two or three months of each summer 



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