Maple—­hard and soft. 
  Beach. 
  Elm—­swamp and slippery. 
  Ironwood. 
  Birch—­white and black. 
  Ash—­white and black. 
  Pine. 
  Cedar. 
  Balsam. 
  Hemlock and Cherry.

He had heard that the Indians knew the name and properties of every tree and plant in the woods, and that was what he wished to be able to say of himself.

One day by the bank of the river he noticed a pile of empty shells of the fresh-water Mussel, or Clam.  The shells were common enough, but why all together and marked in the same way?  Around the pile on the mud were curious tracks and marks.  There were so many that it was hard to find a perfect one, but when he did, remembering the Coon track, he drew a picture of it.  It was too small to be the mark of his old acquaintance.  He did not find any one to tell him what it was, but one day he saw a round, brown animal hunched up on the bank eating a clam.  It dived into the water at his approach, but it reappeared swimming farther on.  Then, when it dived again, Yan saw by its long thin tail that it was a Muskrat, like the stuffed one he had seen in the taxidermist’s window.

He soon learned that the more he studied those tracks the more different kinds he found.  Many were rather mysterious, so he could only draw them and put them aside, hoping some day for light.  One of the strangest and most puzzling turned out to be the trail of a Snapper, and another proved to be merely the track of a Common Crow that came to the water’s edge to drink.

The curios that he gathered and stored in his shanty increased in number and in interest.  The place became more and more part of himself.  Its concealment bettered as the foliage grew around it again, and he gloried in its wild seclusion and mystery, and wandered through the woods with his bow and arrows, aiming harmless, deadly blows at snickering Red-squirrels—­though doubtless he would have been as sorry as they had he really hit one.

Yan soon found out that he was not the only resident of the shanty.  One day as he sat inside wondering why he had not made a fireplace, so that he could sit at an indoor fire, he saw a silent little creature flit along between two logs in the back wall.  He remained still.  A beautiful little Woodmouse, for such it was, soon came out in plain view and sat up to look at Yan and wash its face.  Yan reached out for his bow and arrow, but the Mouse was gone in a flash.  He fitted a blunt arrow to the string, then waited, and when the Mouse returned he shot the arrow.  It missed the Mouse, struck the log and bounded back into Yan’s face, giving him a stinging blow on the cheek.  And as Yan rolled around grunting and rubbing his cheek, he thought, “This is what I tried to do to the Woodmouse.”  Thenceforth, Yan made no attempt to harm the Mouse; indeed, he was willing to share his meals with it.  In time they became well acquainted, and Yan found that not one, but a whole family, were sharing with him his shanty in the woods.