an animal before, but I knew somehow that it was
an otter, and I drew back into better hiding with the hope of seeing the
rare creature again. Presently another otter appeared, coming up stream
and disappearing in exactly the same way as the first. But though I
stayed all the afternoon I saw nothing more.

After that I haunted the spot every time I could get away, creeping
down to the river bank and lying in hiding hours long at a stretch; for
I knew now that the otters lived there, and they gave me many glimpses
of a life I had never seen before.

Soon I found their den. It was in a bank opposite my hiding place, and
the entrance was among the roots of a great tree, under water, where no
one could have possibly found it if the otters had not themselves shown
the way. In their approach they always dived while yet well out in the
stream, and so entered their door unseen. When they came out they were
quite as careful, always swimming some distance under water before
coming to the surface. It was several days before my eye could trace
surely the faint undulation of the water above them, and so follow their
course to their doorway. Had not the water been shallow I should never
have found it; for they are the most wonderful of swimmers, making no
ripple on the surface, and not half the disturbance below it that a fish
of the same weight makes.

Those were among the happiest watching hours that I have ever spent in
the woods. The game was so large, so utterly unexpected; and I had the
wonderful discovery all to myself. Not one of the half dozen boys and
men who occasionally, when the fever seized them, trapped muskrat in
the big meadow, a mile below, or the rare mink that hunted frogs in the
brook, had any suspicion that such splendid fur was to be had for the
hunting.

Sometimes a whole afternoon would go slowly by, filled with the sounds
and sweet smells of the woods, and not a ripple would break the dimples
of the stream before me. But when, one late afternoon, just as the pines
across the stream began to darken against the western light, a string
of silver bubbles shot across the stream and a big otter rose to the
surface with a pickerel in his mouth, all the watching that had not well
repaid itself was swept out of the reckoning. He came swiftly towards
me, put his fore paws against the bank, gave a wriggling jump,--and
there he was, not twenty feet away, holding the pickerel down with his
fore paws, his back arched