In another moment it seemed to Baree that the pond was alive with beavers.  Heads and bodies appeared and disappeared, rushing this way and that through the water in a manner that amazed and puzzled him.  It was the colony’s evening frolic.  Tails hit the water like flat boards.  Odd whistlings rose above the splashing—­and then as suddenly as it had begun, the play came to an end.  There were probably twenty beavers, not counting the young, and as if guided by a common signal—­something which Baree had not heard—­they became so quiet that hardly a sound could be heard in the pond.  A few of them sank under the water and disappeared entirely, but most of them Baree could watch as they drew themselves out on shore.

The beavers lost no time in getting at their labor, and Baree watched and listened without so much as rustling a blade of the grass in which he was concealed.  He was trying to understand.  He was striving to place these curious and comfortable-looking creatures in his knowledge of things.  They did not alarm him; he felt no uneasiness at their number or size.  His stillness was not the quiet of discretion, but rather of a strange and growing desire to get better acquainted with this curious four-legged brotherhood of the pond.  Already they had begun to make the big forest less lonely for him.  And then, close under him—­not more than ten feet from where he lay—­he saw something that almost gave voice to the puppyish longing for companionship that was in him.

Down there, on a clean strip of the shore that rose out of the soft mud of the pond, waddled fat little Umisk and three of his playmates.  Umisk was just about Baree’s age, perhaps a week or two younger.  But he was fully as heavy, and almost as wide as he was long.  Nature can produce no four-footed creature that is more lovable than a baby beaver, unless it is a baby bear; and Umisk would have taken first prize at any beaver baby show in the world.  His three companions were a bit smaller.  They came waddling from behind a low willow, making queer little chuckling noises, their little flat tails dragging like tiny sledges behind them.  They were fat and furry, and mighty friendly looking to Baree, and his heart beat a sudden swift-pit-a-pat of joy.

But Baree did not move.  He scarcely breathed.  And then, suddenly, Umisk turned on one of his playmates and bowled him over.  Instantly the other two were on Umisk, and the four little beavers rolled over and over, kicking with their short feet and spatting with their tails, and all the time emitting soft little squeaking cries.  Baree knew that it was not fight but frolic.  He rose up on his feet.  He forgot where he was—­forgot everything in the world but those playing, furry balls.  For the moment all the hard training nature had been giving him was lost.  He was no longer a fighter, no longer a hunter, no longer a seeker after food.  He was a puppy, and in him there rose a desire that was greater than hunger.  He wanted to go down there with Umisk and his little chums and roll and play.  He wanted to tell them, if such a thing were possible, that he had lost his mother and his home, and that he had been having a mighty hard time of it, and that he would like to stay with them and their mothers and fathers if they didn’t mind.