62 THE FALL OF THE YEAR 



is a sharp turn here toward the swamp; and here at 

 the bend, behind a clump of black alders, I sit quietly 

 down and wait. 



I have come out to the bend to watch the mushrats 

 building; for that small mound up the ditch is not 

 an old haycock, but a half -finished muskrat house. 



As I wait, the moon climbs higher over the woods. 

 The water on the meadow shivers in the light. The 

 wind bites through my heavy coat and drives me 

 back, but not before I have seen one, two, three 

 little creatures scaling the walls of the house with 

 loads of mud-and-reed mortar. I am driven back by 

 the cold, but not before 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 fire-wood 

 is in the cellar ; I am about ready to put on the 

 double-windows and the storm-doors. The muskrats 

 are even now putting on theirs, for their house is 

 all but finished. Winter is at hand : but we are pre- 

 pared, the muskrats and I. 



Throughout the summer the muskrats had no 

 house, only their tunnels into the sides of the ditch, 

 their roadways out into the grass, and their beds 

 under the tussocks or among the roots of the old 

 stumps. All those months the water was low in the 

 ditch, and the beds among the tussocks were safe 

 and dry enough. 



