round a cascade. 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 

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