126 ROMANCE OF THE BEAVER 
bedding gathered, the dams thoroughly overhauled, 
and the outdoor store-house a credit to the fore- 
sight of the little caterers. 
The winter passed without excitement. During 
January, a few days of unusually mild weather 
produced a great thaw, so that the ice, weighted 
down by the melting snow, broke away from the 
shores. The beavers took advantage of this, and 
came out to bask in the cold sunshine. Some 
climbed on the lodges, while others more adven- 
turous in spirit went ashore, their broad, deep trails 
marking their short journeys to the woods. Besides 
this little holiday no other event broke the monotony 
of the long imprisonment. At last came the wel- 
come death of winter, and the gradual arrival of 
spring which saw the colony increased by no less 
than twelve new arrivals. The founders. of the 
colony boasted of a fine family of five new kittens. 
In the lodge next to them there were three, while 
the pair in the upper pond had four, and all these 
families were born within a period of two weeks. 
The colony might now be said to bein a flourishing 
condition, with a population of twenty-five, where 
less than five years before there had been but two. 
Unfortunately, such prosperity was not destined 
to continue, or we might have seen the colony 
double itself by the following spring. That would 
have meant the facing of new problems in the way 
of expansion, for even after allowing the departure 
of two or three pairs, which would certainly have 
