ching had
evidently been done in the meantime; for all fear of the river was gone.
They toddled out as before, at the same hour in the afternoon, and went
straight to the bank. There the mother lay down, and the little ones,
as if enjoying the frolic, clambered up to her back. Whereupon she slid
into the stream and swam slowly about with the little Keeonekhs clinging
to her desperately, as if humpty-dumpty had been played on them before,
and might be repeated any moment.

I understood their air of anxious expectation a moment later, when
Mother Otter dived like a flash from under them, leaving them to make
their own way in the water. They began to swim naturally enough, but the
fear of the new element was still upon them. The moment old Mother Otter
appeared they made for her whimpering, but she dived again and again, or
moved slowly away, and so kept them swimming. After a little they seemed
to tire and lose courage. Her eyes saw it quicker than mine, and she
glided between them. Both little ones turned in at the same instant and
found a resting place on her back. So she brought them carefully to
land again, and in a few moments they were all rolling about in the dry
leaves like so many puppies.

I must confess here that, besides the boy's wonder in watching the
wild things, another interest brought me to the river bank and kept me
studying Keeonekh's ways. Father Otter was a big fellow,--enormous he
seemed to me, thinking of my mink skins,--and occasionally, when his
rich coat glinted in the sunshine, I was thinking what a famous cap it
would make for the winter woods, or for coasting on moonshiny nights.
More often I was thinking what famous things a boy could buy for the
fourteen dollars, at least, which his pelt would bring in the open
market.

The first Saturday after I saw him I prepared a board, ten times bigger
than a mink-stretcher, and tapered one end to a round point, and split
it, and made a wedge, and smoothed it all down, and hid it away--to
stretch the big otter's skin upon when I should catch him.

When November came, and fur was prime, I carried down a half-bushel
basket of heads and stuff from the fish market, and piled them up
temptingly on the bank, above a little water path, in a lonely spot by
the river. At the lower end of the path, where it came out of the
water, I set a trap, my biggest one, with a famous grip for skunks and
woodchucks. But the fish rotted away, as did also another basketfu