cunning--a cunning which grows keener and keener in the
neighborhood of civilization--the mother-otter filled up the land
entrance among the roots with earth and driftweed, using only the
doorway under water until it was time for the cubs to come out
into the world again.

Of all the creatures of the wilderness Keeonekh is the most
richly gifted, and his ways, could we but search them out, would
furnish a most interesting chapter. Every journey he takes,
whether by land or water, is full of unknown traits and tricks;
but unfortunately no one ever sees him doing things, and most of
his ways are yet to be found out. You see a head holding swiftly
across a wilderness lake, or coming to meet your canoe on the
streams; then, as you follow eagerly, a swirl and he is gone.
When he comes up again he will watch you so much more keenly than
you can possibly watch him that you learn little about him,
except how shy he is. Even the trappers who make a business of
catching him, and with whom I have often talked, know almost
nothing of Keeonekh, except where to set their traps for him
living and how to care for his skin when he is dead.
Once I saw him fishing in a curious way. It was winter, on a
wilderness stream flowing into the Dugarvon. There had been a
fall of dry snow that still lay deep and powdery over all the
woods, too light to settle or crust. At every step one had to
lift a shovelful of the stuff on the point of his snowshoe; and I
was tired out, following some caribou that wandered like plover
in the rain.

Just below me was a deep open pool surrounded by double fringes
of ice. Early in the winter, while the stream was higher, the