Big game, he knows, comes out to drink at
sunrise and sunset; and nearly all the small game frequents the banks of
streams either to fish or to prey on the fisher.

Each night he sleeps in the open with his dog on guard; or else puts up
the cotton tepee, the dog curling outside the tent flap, one ear awake.
And each night a net is set for the white-fish that are to supply
breakfast, feed the dog, and provide heads for the traps placed among
rocks in mid-stream, or along banks where dainty footprints were in the
morning's hoar-frost. Brook trout can still be got in the pools below
waterfalls; but the trapper seldom takes time now to use the line,
depending on his gun and fish-net.

During the Indian's white-fish month--the white man's November--the
weather has become colder and colder; but the trapper never indulges in
the big log fire that delights the heart of the amateur hunter. That
would drive game a week's tracking from his course. Unless he wants to
frighten away nocturnal prowlers, a little, chip fire, such as the
fishermen of the Banks use in their dories, is all the trapper allows
himself.

First snow silences the rustling leaves. First frost quiets the flow of
waters. Except for the occasional splitting of a sap-frozen tree, or the
far howl of a wolf-pack, there is the stillness of death. And of all
quiet things in the quiet forest, the trapper is the quietest.

As winter closes in the ice-skim of the large lakes cuts the bark canoe
like a knife. The canoe is abandoned for snow-shoes and the cotton tepee
for more substantial shelter.

If the trapper is a white man he now builds a lodge near the best
hunting-ground he has found. Around this he sets a wide circle of traps
at such distances their circuit requires an entire day, and leads the
trapper out in one direction and back in another, without retracing the
way. Sometimes such lodges run from valley to valley. Each cabin is
stocked; and the hunter sleeps where night overtakes him. But this plan
needs two men; for if the traps are not closely watched, the wolverine
will rifle away a priceless fox as readily as he eats a worthless
musk-rat. The stone fire-place stands at one end. Moss, clay, and snow
chink up the logs. Parchment across a hole serves as window. Poles and
brush make the roof, or perhaps the remains of the cotton tent stretched
at a steep angle to slide off the accumulating weight of snow.

But if the trapper is an Indian, or the white man