Umisk would work an hour at a time on this play dam as industriously as his father and mother were working on the big dam, and Baree would lie flat on his belly a few feet away, watching him and wondering mightily.  And through this half-dry mud Umisk would also dig his miniature canals, just as a small boy might have dug his Mississippi River and pirate-infested oceans in the outflow of some back-lot spring.  With his sharp little teeth he cut down his big timber—­willow sprouts never more than an inch in diameter; and when one of these four or five-foot sprouts toppled down, he undoubtedly felt as great a satisfaction as Beaver Tooth felt when he sent a seventy-foot birch crashing into the edge of the pond.  Baree could not understand the fun of all this.  He could see some reason for nibbling at sticks—­he liked to sharpen his teeth on sticks himself; but it puzzled him to explain why Umisk so painstakingly stripped the bark from the sticks and swallowed it.

Another method of play still further discouraged Baree’s advances.  A short distance from the spot where he had first seen Umisk there was a shelving bank that rose ten or twelve feet from the water, and this bank was used by the young beavers as a slide.  It was worn smooth and hard.  Umisk would climb up the bank at a point where it was not so steep.  At the top of the slide he would put his tail out flat behind him and give himself a shove, shooting down the toboggan and landing in the water with a big splash.  At times there were from six to ten young beavers engaged in this sport, and now and then one of the older beavers would waddle to the top of the slide and take a turn with the youngsters.

One afternoon, when the toboggan was particularly wet and slippery from recent use, Baree went up the beaver path to the top of the bank, and began investigating.  Nowhere had he found the beaver smell so strong as on the slide.  He began sniffing and incautiously went too far.  In an instant his feet shot out from under him, and with a single wild yelp he went shooting down the toboggan.  For the second time in his life he found himself struggling under water, and when a minute or two later he dragged himself up through the soft mud to the firmer footing of the shore, he had at last a very well-defined opinion of beaver play.

It may be that Umisk saw him.  It may be that very soon the story of his adventure was known by all the inhabitants of Beaver Town.  For when Baree came upon Umisk eating his supper of alder bark that evening, Umisk stood his ground to the last inch, and for the first time they smelled noses.  At least Baree sniffed audibly, and plucky little Umisk sat like a rolled-up sphinx.  That was the final cementing of their friendship—­on Baree’s part.  He capered about extravagantly for a few moments, telling Umisk how much he liked him, and that they’d be great chums.  Umisk didn’t talk.  He didn’t make a move until he resumed his supper.  But he was a companionable-looking little fellow, for all that, and Baree was happier than he had been since the day he left the old windfall.