ground was crisp with frost. The foliage which still clung to
the deciduous trees exhibited the most gorgeous colours, the brightest
red, pink, yellow, and purple tints contrasting with the sombre hues of
the pines covering the lower slopes of the hills.

"It's time to look to the traps, Laurence," said the old man, arousing
his young companion, who was still asleep by the side of the smouldering
embers of their fire.

The boy sat up, and passed his hand across his eyes. There was a weary
expression in his intelligent and not unpleasing countenance.

"Yes, father, I am ready," he answered. "But I did not think the night
was over; it seems but just now I lay down to sleep."

"You have had some hard work lately, and are tired; but the season will
soon be over, and we will bend our steps to Fort Elton, where you can
remain till the winter cold has passed away. If I myself were to spend
but a few days shut up within the narrow limits of such a place, I
should soon tire of idleness, and wish to be off again among the forests
and streams, where I have passed so many years."

"Oh, do not leave me among strangers, father," exclaimed the boy,
starting to his feet. "I am rested now, and am ready."

They set out, proceeding along the side of the stream, stopping every
now and then to search beneath the overhanging bushes, or in the hollows
of the bank, where their traps had been concealed. From the first the
old trapper drew forth an animal about three feet in length, of a deep
chestnut colour, with fine smooth glossy hair, and a broad flat tail
nearly a foot long, covered with scales. Its hind feet were webbed, its
small fore-paws armed with claws, and it had large, hard, sharp teeth in
its somewhat blunted head. Hanging up the beaver, for such it was, to a
tree, they continued the examination of their snares.

"Who would have thought creatures so easily caught could make such a
work as this?" observed the old man, as they were passing over a narrow
causeway which formed a dam across a smaller stream falling into the
main river, and had created a back water or shallow lake of some size.
The dam was composed of innumerable small branches and trunks of trees,
laid horizontally across the stream, mixed with mud and stones. Several
willows and small poplars were sprouting up out of it.

"What! have the beavers made this?" asked Laurence.

"Ay, every bit of it, boy; each stem and branch has been cut down by the
creat