urrent, then swollen to an unusual height. His eyes, roving on
either hand, were now and then rewarded with the sight of a small brown
bunch of fur, resting on a bit of lodged drift. Then followed a quick
puff of smoke, and the echoing report from the shotgun. The troubles of
the furry little chap were at an end. The kinks would straighten out of
its small humped back, and, as a deft turn of the oars brought the boat
alongside, the hunter's hand would reach over the edge, grasp the long,
slim tail, and fling the body of the sleek little _musquash_ into the
boat.

Twice during the afternoon a flock of geese had ventured low down over
the drifting boatman, and each time one of the flock had fallen a
victim. The others had hurried away in noisy confusion. He had hardly
expected to find beaver, yet as the night drew on without a sight of
one, he felt a little disappointed. True, he had secured a profitable
lot of game: two geese, a mink, and more than a dozen muskrats.

But he wanted to show a beaver with the rest of his bag, and he had
about given up his hopes of it when, just as the sun was setting and
while he was passing down the mid channel between two long lines of
clustering willow thickets, he espied the very object of his desires
directly ahead and within easy range.

The animal was rolled up in a rusty brown ball, lying in a snug nest
amid the bushy sprouts from an elm stub which projected three or four
feet above the water. The tree had been broken off, and leaned out from
the summer banks of the river. It had grown, as elm stumps often do, a
dense fringe of short, tangled brush about the end of the trunk. Among
these sprouts the beaver had fashioned a nest, and was lying curled up,
asleep, when Mortimer, drifting silently down within short range, raised
his gun and shot at it.

But the beaver is a "hard-lived" animal, and, even when shot at such
close quarters, will quite frequently flop off its perch into the water,
and, clutching with teeth and claws into roots or grass at the bottom,
remain there. In that case, the hunter's ammunition is simply wasted.

This had happened more than once in Mortimer's experience, and, fearing
that it might happen again, for he saw the beaver floundering heavily in
its nest, he brought the boat about in great haste, circled around the
stump, and jammed the bow into the sprouts. He then dropped the oars,
and sprang forward to secure the game.

His haste was unfortunate; for