e had got. I thought he was going to escape
us, but at that moment I heard the crack of a rifle from behind; and the
wolf tumbled over, howling like a shot hound. On turning around, I saw
Harry with my rifle, which Mary had brought down during the encounter,
and which she had intrusted to Harry as a better marksman than herself.
The wolf was still only wounded, kicking furiously about upon the ice;
but Cudjo now ran out, and, after a short struggle, finished the
business with his spear.

"That was a day of great excitement in our little community. Frank, who
was the hero of the day, although he said nothing, was not a little
proud of his skating feat. And well might be, as, but for his
manoeuvres, poor Harry would undoubtedly have fallen a prey to the
fierce wolves."

CHAPTER FORTY THREE.

TAMING THE GREAT ELK.

"In the third year our beavers had increased to such numbers, that we
saw it was time to thin them off, and commence laying up our store of
furs. They had grown so tame that they would take food from our hands.
We had no difficulty, therefore, in capturing those we intended to kill,
without giving alarm to the others. For this purpose we constructed a
sort of penn, or bye-pool, with raised mud banks, near the edge of the
lake, and a sluice-gate leading into it. Here we were accustomed to
feed the animals; and whenever a quantity of roots of the swamp
sassafras was thrown into the pool, a large number of the beavers
crowded into it--so that we had nothing else to do but shut down the
sluice-gate, and catch them at our leisure. We accomplished all this
very quietly; and as none that we trapped were ever allowed to go back
and `tell the tale,' and as at all other seasons the trap was open and
free, of course the surviving beavers, with all their sagacity, never
knew what became of their companions, and did not even appear to suspect
us of foul play, but remained tame as ever.

"In our first crop of skins we laid by, at least 450 pounds worth, with
more than 50 pounds worth of `castoreum.' In our second year we were
enabled to do still better; and the produce of that season we estimate
at 1000 pounds. Wanting a place to dry and store our furs, we built a
new log-cabin, which is the one we are now living in. The old one
became our store-house.

"The third year of our trapping was quite as productive as the second;
and so with the fourth and fifth. Each of them yielded, at least, 1000
pounds wo