“There, Judge,” said Cullen, as he lifted the animal into the boat, “is a kritter that isn’t often met with in these parts, and the wonder is, that he didn’t discover us as we floated down the stream.  He’s about the cunningest animal that travels the woods.  He’s got an eye that’s always open, a delicate ear, and a sharp nose, and he keeps ’em busy, as a general thing.  He never neglects their warnin’, but puts out about the quickest, whenever they notify him that there’s an enemy about.  I’ve had a good deal of trouble with them in my day, when I’ve been out trappin’ martin.  They’ll manage to spring the trap and carry off the bait.  When one of them chaps gets on a line of traps, there’s no use in talkin’.  The game’s up, and the trapper may make up his mind to get rid of the varmint in some way, or locate in another range of country.  He’ll find his traps sprung and his bait gone.  Or if a martin has been in ahead of the fox, he’ll find only the skull, the end of the tail, the feet, and a few of the larger bones, and they’ll be picked mighty clean at that.  You’ve seen a martin trap, or if you haven’t, I’ll try and describe one so that you’ll understand it.  It’s a very simple contrivance, and if a martin was not a good deal more stupid than a goose, he’d never be caught in one of them.  We drive down a couple of rows of little stakes, plantin’ the stakes close together, and leaving between the rows a space of six or eight inches.  The rows are may be a foot and a half long.  We then cut and trim a long saplin’, say five or six inches across at the butt, and leaving one end on the ground, set the other, may be two feet high, with a kind of figure four, so that when it falls, it will come down between the rows of stakes.  We fix the bait so that a martin in getting at it, will have to go in between the rows of stakes, and displace the trap sticks, when down comes the pole upon him and crushes him to death.  We talk about a line of traps, because we blaze a line of trees, sometimes for miles, and set a trap every twenty or thirty rods.  I’ve had a line of a dozen miles or more, in my day, in a circle around my campin’ ground.  In minding our traps, we follow the line of marked trees from one to the other, and so never miss a trap, nor get lost in the woods.

“I mind once, a good many years ago, Crop and I was over towards the St. Regis, on a cruise after martin and sable, and anything else in the way of game we could pick up.  I’d laid out my trappin’ arrangements on a pretty large scale, and was doin’ a little better than midlin’, when I found that my traps were sprung by some animal that helped himself to the bait, without leavin’ his hide as a consideration for settin’ of ’em.  After a few days, I found that whatever it was, understood the line as well as I did, for he took the range regular, and not only stole the bait, but ate up half a dozen martin, that had given me a claim on their hides by springin’ my traps.  This was a kind of medlin’ with