174 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
room and nursery combined, the house was found 
to be snug and cosy, with sanded floors (as well 
as sanded walls and ceiling). In short, it was a 
roomy and well made otter den, in a bank of a 
clear, rather deep brook which flowed through 
sandy flats, overhung with alders and willows, 
with wild cucumber and clematis, on its way to 
the near-by Housatonic. 
Nobody knew the den was there—nobody, that 
is, on the ground above, though the muskrats 
which passed up and down the brook were aware 
of it, and hurried by, and the fishes, perhaps, 
knew it, though they are silly things sometimes 
and don’t always pay attention to such matters. 
Brownie’s father and mother were comparative 
strangers in these parts themselves, having spent , 
the previous winter under the ice in Goose Pond, 
twenty miles away, and only came here with the 
breaking up of the ice, to rear their family on a 
waterway which gave them ready and safe access 
both to the river and to a large, well-stocked pond 
which the brook drained. In the fields and woods 
above, hunters pursued foxes, boys chased wood- 
chucks, the deer, the grouse, the pheasants, the 
