A LONELY LAKE. 
31 
boards, watching the fitful sky and listening to 
an occasional bird-note, when suddenly my eyes 
were drawn to the north shore of the lake by 
seeing a branch of green leaves swimming, ap¬ 
parently unaided, along the surface of the 
water. After progressing for forty or fifty feet 
it disappeared under the ripples. A mystery, 
truly. A few moments later a muskrat’s head 
rose above the water, and the creature swam 
back to the point from which the leaves had 
started. Leaving the lake cautiously, the rat 
crawled clumsily up the bank into the bushes. 
After a minute or two it came waddling out 
bearing a second branch of ash, and this, too, 
floated along the placid surface of the lake until 
abruptly drawn down into the rat’s burrow in 
the submerged bank. Later in the afternoon I 
noticed a Y-shaped ripple plowing across the 
lake from the southern shore. On it came, a 
small, dark object being at its point, parting 
the water steadily. As it drew near the raft I 
saw that the dark spot was the head of another 
muskrat, whose course was shaped straight for 
the hole into which his mate had been carrying 
ash branches. He passed quite close to me 
without alarm, and a minute or two later the 
ripple ceased as the rat sank below the water a 
few yards from the mouth of the hole. 
The same still, cloudy day, a brownish black 
