any way remarkable a hundred and fifty years 
earlier; then, beaver colonies had been both 
larger and more numerous than they are to¬ 
day. Now, however, such a gathering was an 
event so rare that probably even the oldest 
beaver on Patou had never before seen, at one 
time, so many of his kind. 
The fact of the matter was, that the colony 
had been increased, not only by the birth of 
young in three of its six lodges, but also by 
immigration. The immigrants, two in number, 
had come to the pond from another stream, one 
that lay beyond a series of ridges nearly thirty 
miles in extent. The newcomers to Patou had 
been routed from their former home by a series 
of misfortunes so severe and so long-continued 
that they had at last lost courage, and had 
determined to abandon their home. 
In the first place, all of the young born to 
their colony the previous year had been carried 
away, one at a time, by a pair of lynxes, which 
had haunted the shores of their home to lie in 
wait for the unwary. Then a fall freshet of 
great violence had so badly damaged their dam 
as to make it unlikely that so small a colony 
could ever put it in proper repair. To complete 
their trouble, two trappers, working in defiance 
of the law, had come into that region, and had 
taken a dozen pelts before being discovered 
and arrested by the outraged forest rangers. 
33 
