is a whopper."

"Sure as I live, but the beaver slept every night with the trapper,
and in the day time, if he left the tent, the beaver would fall to
work and make a dam across the floor of the tent, using the chist,
skins, arms and everything."

"Oh! Jones!"

"But, I tell you it is true. Tame a beaver once, and you'll find I'se
tellin' a plain statement as true as ever a Padre made."

"Padre! who'd believe a Mexican priest? Mr. Jones, that tame beaver
of your'n must have been born in the States, where he hadn't trees and
mud to build dams with, and had to resort to furnitur."

"That beaver," responded Jones, "was as near like a human bein' as any
man present."

"How do you make that out, Mr. Jones?"

"Why, one day his master died. Well, they tried all they could to
console the beaver, but it 'twant no use. He wouldn't be consoled.
All he did was to git an ole shoe belonging to his master, an' if he
didn't haul that ere shoe around day after day wherever he went. Well,
the beaver 'gan to grow thin, and one night they found he was a dyin',
jest from starvin' himself to death and a huggin' the ole shoe."

"Oh! Jones," said the greenhorn, "you don't expect I'll swallow all
that yarn?"

But Mr. Jones and all of the other trappers present preserved an
imperturbable dignity of mien, as if the very reference to the animal
mentioned demanded from them all due reverence.

"Well, but that was not doing as a human being would do. I never seen
a man carry an old shoe around till he died from starvin'."

"That is neither here nor there," continued Mr. Jones. "It was when
the trapper first made the beaver's acquaintance that he showed he
knew as much as a human critter. At that time he had one wife and
lived with her all alone in a hole, side o' the dam. They had two sons
and a darter. The darter the old beaver had married to a fine lookin'
young beaver who lived t'other side the dam."

The whistle which the neophyte here gave seemed to give great
dissatisfaction to all of the trappers present. One of them quietly
asked him--

"Is that the way, youngster, you'se bin eddicated in perliteniss of
manners? If it is, I know a beaver who kin larn you sumthin'. In the
fust place, if a young beaver ever kums inter the presence of the ole
uns, especially if she's, that is the ole uns, a female beaver, the
young un 'mediately fetches his right fore paw up to his forehead,
jest 'hind the right eyebrow, an' makes a reverintial