The hunters, arriving at a small lake that lay about three miles to the
northwest of Rear Lake, crossed it, and turning up a winding creek,
followed the little river until they came to a beaver dam which caused
the stream to expand into another little lake that flooded far beyond
its old water-line. In it was to be seen three beaver lodges.

Oo-koo-hoo said the scene was somewhat altered since he had visited it
four years before, as the dam had been increased both in height and
length, and the pond, increasing, too, had reached out close to many a
tree that formerly stood some distance from the water. It was a
beautiful little mere containing a few spruce-crowned islands, and
surrounded by thickly wooded hills whose bases were well fringed with
poplars, birches, willows, and alders--an ideal home for beaver. Among
the little islands stood three snow-capped beaver lodges. Here and
there wide-spreading, wind-packed carpets of snow covered the ice,
while in between big stretches of clear, glassy ice, acting as
skylights, lit up the beavers' submarine gardens around their
ice-locked homes.

The hunters were accompanied by three of their dogs, and before they
had time to decide where they should first begin work, the dogs began
barking at a point between the west lodge and the bank; so they went
over to investigate. Evidently the dogs had spied a beaver, for now,
though none was in sight, the canines were rushing back and forth in
great excitement over a fairly deep submarine runway or clear
passageway, through the shallow, rush-matted water under the ice.

Chopping a hole through the ice with his axe, Oo-koo-hoo drove down a
couple of crossed poles to block the passageway, and Amik, finding