The Lay of the Land 
I am not mad, nor melancholy; I am not after 
copy. Nothing is the matter with me. I have come 
out to the bend to watch the muskrats building, for 
that small mound up the ditch is not an old haycock, 
but a half-finished muskrat house. 
The moon climbs higher. The water on the meadow 
shivers in the light. The wind bites through my 
heavy coat and sends me back, but not until I have 
seen one, two, three little figures scaling the walls of 
the house with loads of mud-and-reed mortar. I am 
driven back by the cold, but not until I know that 
here in the desolate meadow is being rounded off a 
lodge, thick-walled and warm, and proof against the 
longest, bitterest of winters. 
This is near the end of November. My wood is in 
the cellar; I am about ready to put on the double 
windows and storm doors; and the muskrats’ house 
is all but finished. Winter is at hand: but we are 
prepared, the muskrats even better prepared than 
I, for theirs is an adequate house, planned per- 
fectly. 
Throughout the summer they had no house, only 
their tunnels into the sides of the ditch, their road- 
ways out into the grass, and their beds under the 
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