e.

And so the citizens labored, and their labor brought its rich reward,
and everybody was busy and contented, and life was decidedly worth
living.

But one black November night our hero's father, the wisest old beaver in
all the town, went out to his work and never came home again. A trapper
had found the rebuilt city--a scientific trapper who had studied his
profession for years, and who knew just how to go to work. He kept away
from the lodges as long as he could, so as not to frighten anyone; and
before he set a single trap he looked the ground over very carefully,
located the different trails that ran back from the water's edge toward
the timber, visited the stumps of the felled trees, and paid particular
attention to the tooth-marks on the chips. No two beavers leave marks
that are exactly alike. The teeth of one are flatter or rounder than
those of another, while a third has large or small nicks in the edges of
his yellow chisels; and each tooth leaves its own peculiar signature
behind it. By noting all these things the trapper concluded that a
particular runway in the wet, grassy margin of the pond was the one by
which a certain old beaver always left the water in going to his night's
labor. That beaver, he decided, would best be the first one taken, for
he was probably the head of a family, and an elderly person of much
wisdom and experience; and if one of his children should be caught first
he might become alarmed, and take the lead in a general exodus.

So the trapper set a heavy double-spring trap in the edge of the water
at the foot of the runway, and covered it with a thin sheet of moss.
And that night, as the old beaver came swimming up to the shore, he put
his foot down where he shouldn't, and two steel jaws flew up and clasped
him around the thigh. He had felt that grip before. Was not half of his
right hand gone, and three toes from his left hind foot? But this was a
far more serious matter than either of those adventures. It was not a
hand that was caught this time, nor yet a toe, or toes. It was his right
hind leg, well up toward his body, and the strongest beaver that ever
lived could not have pulled himself free. Now when a beaver is
frightened, he of course makes for deep water. There, he thinks, no
enemy can follow him; and, what is more, it is the highway to his lodge,
and to the burrow that he has hollowed in the bank for a refuge in case
his house should be attacked. So this beaver turned a