g where he passed this rabbit close at hand, without suspecting
it, and caught that one by accident, and missed the partridge that
burst out of the snow under his very feet,--still Upweekis himself
remains only a shadow of the woods. Once, after a glorious long tramp
on his trail, I found the spot where he had been sleeping a moment
before. But beside that experience I must put fifty other trails that
I have followed, of which I never saw the end nor the beginning. And
whenever I have found out anything about Upweekis it has generally
come unexpectedly, as most good things do.

Once the chance came as I was watching a muskrat at his supper. It was
twilight in the woods. I had drifted in close to shore in my canoe to
see what Musquash was doing on top of a rock. All muskrats have
favorite eating places--a rock, a stranded log, a tree boll that leans
out over the water, and always a pretty spot--whither they bring food
from a distance, evidently for the purpose of eating it where they
feel most at home. This one had gathered a half dozen big fresh-water
clams onto his dining table, and sat down in the midst to enjoy the
feast. He would take a clam in his fore paws, whack it a few times on
the rock till the shell cracked, then open it with his teeth and
devour the morsel inside. He ate leisurely, tasting each clam
critically before swallowing, and sitting up often to wash his
whiskers or to look out over the lake. A hermit thrush sang
marvelously sweet above him; the twilight colors glowed deep and
deeper in the water below, where his shadow was clearly eating clams
also, in the midst of heaven's splendor.--Altogether a pretty scene,
and a moment of peace that I still love to remember. I quite forgot
that Musquash is a villain. But the tragedy was near, as it always is
in the wilderness. Suddenly a movement caught my eye on the bank
above. Something was waving nervously under the bushes. Before I could
make out what it was, there was a fearful rush, a gleam of wild yellow
eyes, a squeak from the muskrat. Then Upweekis, looking gaunt and dark
and strange in his summer coat, was crouched on the rock with Musquash
between his great paws, growling fiercely as he cracked the bones. He
bit his game all over, to make sure that it was quite dead, then took
it by the back of the neck, glided into the bushes with his stub tail
twitching, and became a shadow again.

Another time I was perched up in a lodged tree, some twenty feet fr