weight, but he
was storing up strength and strenuousness for the work that lay before
him. It would take much muscle to force those long yellow teeth of his
through the hard, tough flesh of the maple or the birch or the poplar.
It would take vigor and push and enterprise to roll the heavy billets
of wood over the grass-tufts to the edge of the water. And, most of all,
it would take strength and nerve and determination to tear himself away
from a steel trap and leave a foot behind. So it was well for the
youngster that for a time he had nothing to do but grow.

Spring came at last, and many of the male beavers prepared to leave home
for a while. The ladies seemed to prefer not to be bothered by the
presence of men-folk during the earliest infancy of the children; so the
men, probably nothing loath, took advantage of the opportunity to see
something of the world, wandering by night up and down the streams, and
hiding by day in burrows under the banks. For a time they enjoyed it,
but as the summer dragged by they came straggling home one after
another. The new babies who had arrived in their absence had passed the
most troublesome age, and it was time to begin work again. The dam and
the lodges needed repairs, and there was much food to be gathered and
laid up for the coming winter.

Now, on a dark autumn night, behold the young Beaver toiling with might
and main. His parents have felled a tree, and it is his business to help
them cut up the best portions and carry them home. He gnaws off a small
branch, seizes the butt end between his teeth, swings it over his
shoulder, and makes for the water, keeping his head twisted around to
the right or left so that the end of the branch may trail on the ground
behind him. Sometimes he even rises on his hind legs, and walks almost
upright, with his broad, strong tail for a prop to keep him from tipping
over backward if his load happens to catch on something. Arrived at the
canal or at the edge of the pond, he jumps in and swims for town, still
carrying the branch over his shoulder, and finally leaves it on the
growing pile in front of his father's lodge. Or perhaps the stick is too
large and too heavy to be carried in such a way. In that case it must be
cut into short billets and rolled, as a cant-hook man rolls a log down a
skidway. Only the Beaver has no cant-hook to help him, and no skidway,
either. All he can do is to push with all his might, and there are so
many, many grass-tu