spent in the woods. The game was so large, so utterly unexpected;
and I had the wonderful discovery all to myself. Not one of the
half dozen boys and men who occasionally, when the fever seized
them, trapped muskrat in the big meadow, a mile below, or the
rare mink that hunted frogs in the brook, had any suspicion that
such splendid fur was to be had for the hunting.

Sometimes a whole afternoon would go slowly by, filled with the
sounds and sweet smells of the woods, and not a ripple would
break the dimples of the stream before me. But when, one late
afternoon, just as the pines across the stream began to darken
against the western light, a string of silver bubbles shot across
the stream and a big otter rose to the surface with a pickerel in
his mouth, all the watching that had not well repaid itself was
swept out of the reckoning. He came swiftly towards me, put his
fore paws against the bank, gave a wriggling jump,--and there he
was, not twenty feet away, holding the pickerel down with his
fore paws, his back arched like a frightened cat, and a
tiny stream of water trickling down from the tip of his heavy
pointed tail, as he ate his fish with immense relish.

Years afterward, hundreds of miles away on the Dungarvon, in the
heart of the wilderness, every detail of the scene came back to
me again. I was standing on snowshoes, looking out over the
frozen river, when Keeonekh appeared in an open pool with a trout
in his mouth. He broke his way, with a clattering tinkle of
winter bells, through the thin edge of ice, put his paws against
the heavy snow ice, threw himself out with the same wriggling
jump, and ate with his back arched--just as I had seen him years
before.