112 ROMANCE OF THE BEAVER 



no terror for them. Their house answered their 

 every purpose, while outside, enclosed securely 

 beneath the ever thickening ice, was their harvest 

 of wood : maple and birch and ash and poplar, and 

 many other kinds, forming altogether a diet suffi- 

 ciently varied to satisfy the most fastidious of 

 beavers. Here in their well-planned home we may 

 leave them for the long winter, during which time 

 they grow fat and live a lazy life. With the 

 coming of spring, the father beaver was once more 

 requested to leave his home for a new family was 

 expected. He took up his quarters in the burrow 

 where they had all lived during part of the summer. 

 On coming into the lodge one day toward the end 

 of April, he was welcomed by the tiny whimpering 

 of four newly-arrived kittens, exact duplicates of 

 those that had come just a year before. The 

 founding of the new colony seemed well assured 

 now that instead of two there would be nine to do 

 the various works. Of course it meant an increased 

 drain on the food resources of the neighbourhood, 

 which was none too abundant in the immediate 

 vicinity of the pond. During the weeks following 

 the arrival of the new family, the father beaver 

 spent much time wandering about as though making 

 plans for the future. Perhaps he realised that the 

 food trees were becoming somewhat scarcer near 

 the water, and that harvesting for the coming 

 autumn would involve a lot of very hard work. 

 This would seem to have been his course of reason- 



