en. There was a small rivulet at the foot of the ridge--some two
hundred paces distant--and Basil and Francois had gone down to it to get
water. One of them took the axe to break the ice with, while the other
carried a vessel. On arriving near the bank of the rivulet, the
attention of the boys was attracted to a singular appearance upon the
snow. A fresh shower had fallen that morning, and the surface was still
soft, and very smooth. Upon this they observed double lines of little
dots, running in different directions, which, upon close inspection,
appeared to be the tracks of some animal.

At first, Basil and Francois could hardly believe them to be such, the
tracks were so very small. They had never seen so small ones
before--those of a mouse being quite double the size. But when they
looked more closely at them, the boys could distinguish the marks of
five little toes with claws upon them, which left no doubt upon their
minds that some living creature, and that a very diminutive one, must
have passed over the spot. Indeed, had the snow not been both
fine-grained and soft, the feet of such a creature could not have made
any impression upon it.

The boys stopped and looked around, thinking they might see the animal
itself. There was a wide circle of snow around them, and its surface
was smooth and level; but not a speck upon it betrayed the presence of
any creature.

"Perhaps it was a bird," said Francois, "and has taken flight."

"I think not," rejoined Basil. "They are not the tracks of a bird. It is
some animal that has gone under the snow, I fancy."

"But I see no hole," said Francois, "where even a beetle could have gone
down. Let us look for one."

At Francois' suggestion, they walked on following one of the dotted
lines. Presently they came to a place, where a stalk of long grass stood
up through the snow--its seedless panicle just appearing above the
surface. Round this stalk a little hole had been formed--partly by the
melting of the snow, and partly by the action of the wind upon the
panicle--and into this hole the tracks led. It was evident that the
animal, whatever it was, must have gone down the culm of the grass in
making its descent from the surface of the snow!

They now observed another track going _from_ the hole in an opposite
direction, which showed that the creature had climbed up in the same
way. Curious to know what it might have been, the boys hailed Lucien and
Norman, telling them to com