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 whinipering 
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- 
