a rolling-pin?" gasped Jay.
"Something the Cook throws at your head when you're trying to steal his dinner," interjected Carcajou.
Lynx laughed maliciously at this thrust. "Isn't Wolverine a witty chap?" he said, fawningly, to Blue Wolf.
"I know what that cunning little end is for," declared Muskrat; "I'll tell you what Beaver does with the sticks under water, and then you'll understand."
Black King yawned as though all this bored him. "He doesn't like to hear his rival praised," sneered Whisky-Jack; "it makes him sleepy."
"Well," continued Wuchusk, "Beaver floats the Poplar down to his pond, to a little place just up stream from his lodge, with a nice, soft bottom. There he dives swiftly with each piece, and the small round end you speak of, Mooswa, sticks in the mud, see? Oh, it is clever; I wish I could do it, – but I can't. I have to rummage around all Winter for my dinner. All the sticks stand there close together on end; the ice forms on top of the water, and nobody can see them. When Umisk wants his dinner, he swims up the pond, selects a nice, fat, juicy Poplar, pulls it out of the mud, floats it in the front door of his pretty, round-roofed lodge, strips off the rough covering, and eats the white, mealy inner-bark. It's delicious! No wonder Beaver is fat."
"I should think it would be indigestible," said Lynx. "But isn't Umisk kind to his family-dear little Chap!"
"Must be hard on the teeth," remarked Mink. "I find fishbones tough enough."
"Oh, it's just lovely!" sighed Beaver. "I like it."
"What do you do with the logs after you've eaten the crust?" asked Black King, pretending to be interested.
"Float them down against the dam," answered Beaver. "They come in handy for repairing breaks."
"What breaks the dam?" mumbled Blue Wolf, gruffly.
"I know," screamed Jay; "the Trappers. I saw François knock a hole in one last Winter. That's how he caught your cousins, Umisk, when they rushed to fix the break."
"How do you know when it's damaged, Beaver?" queried Mooswa. "Supposing it was done when you were asleep-you don't make your bed in the water, I suppose."
"No, we have a nice, dry shelf all around on the inside of the lodge, just above-we call it the second-story; but we keep our tails in the water always, so as soon as it commences to lower we feel it, you know."
"That is wise," gravely assented Mooswa. "Have I not said that Umisk is almost as clever as our King?"
"He may be," chirruped Jay; "but François never caught the Black King, and he catches many Beaver. Last winter he took out a Pack of their thick, brown coats, and I heard him say there were fifty pelts in it."
"That's just it," concurred Carcajou. "I admire Umisk as much as anybody. He's an honest, hard-working little chap, and looks after his family and relations better than any of us; but if there was any trouble on we couldn't consult him, for at the first crack of a Firestick, or bark of a Train Dog, he's down under the water, and either hidden away in his lodge, or in one of the many hiding-holes he has dug in the banks for just such emergencies. We must have some one who can get about and warn us all."
"I object to him because he's got Fleas," declared Jay, solemnly.
"Fleas!" a chorus of voices exclaimed in indignant protest.
The Coyote, who had been digging viciously at the back of his ear with a sharp-clawed foot, dropped his leg, got up, and stretched himself, with a yawn, hoping that nobody had observed his petulant scratching.
"That's silly!" declared Mooswa. "A chap that lives under the water have Fleas?"
"Is it?" piped Whisky-Jack. "What's his thick fur coat, with the strong, black guard-hairs for? Do you suppose that doesn't keep his hide dry? If one of you land-dwellers were out in a stiff shower you'd be wet to the skin; but he won't, though he stay under water a month. If he hasn't got Fleas, what is that double nail on his left hind-foot for?"
"Perhaps he hasn't got a split-nail," ventured Fisher-"I haven't."
"Nor I!" declared Mink.
"My nails are all single!" asserted Muskrat.
"Look for yourselves if you don't believe me," commanded Jack. "If he hasn't got it, I'll take back what I said, and you can make him King if you wish."
This made Black Fox nervous. "Will you show our Comrades your toes, please?" he commanded Beaver, with great politeness.
Umisk held up his foot deprecatingly. There sure enough, on the second toe, was a long, black, double claw, like a tiny pincers. "What did I tell you?" shrieked Jack. "He can pin a Flea with that as easily as Mink seizes a wriggling Trout. He's got half-a-dozen different kinds of Fleas, has Umisk. I won't have a King who is little better than a bug-nursery. A King must be above that sort of thing."
"This is all nonsense," exclaimed Carcajou angrily, for he had fleas himself; "it's got nothing to do with the matter. Umisk has to live under the ice nearly all Winter, and would be of no more service to us than Muskwa-that's the real objection."
"My!" cried Beaver, patting the ground irritably with his trowel-tail, "one really never knows just how vile he is till he gets running for office. Besides, I don't want to be King-I'm too busy. Perhaps sometime when I was here governing the Council, François, or another enemy, would break my dam and murder the whole family; besides, it's too dusty out here-I like the nice, clean water. My feet get sore walking on the land."
"Oh, he doesn't want to be King!" declared Jay, ironically. "Next! next! Who else is there, Frog-legged Carcajou?"
"Well, there's Muskrat," suggested Lynx; "I like him."
"Yes, to eat!" interrupted Whisky-Jack. "If Wuchusk were King, we'd come home some day and find that he'd been eaten by one of his own subjects-by the sneaking Lynx-'Slink' it should be."
"You shouldn't say that," declared Black Fox; "because you're our Mail Carrier you shouldn't take so many liberties."
"I'm only telling the truth. It has always been the custom at these meetings for each one to speak just what he thought, and no hard feelings afterward."
Carcajou pulled his long, curved claws through his whiskers reflectively. "What's the use of wrangling like this-we're as silly as a lot of Men. Last Winter when I was down at Grand Rapids I sat up on the roof of a Shack listening to those two-legged creatures squabbling. They were all arguing fiercely about the different ways of getting to Heaven. According to each one he was on the right road, and the rest were all wrong. Fresh Meat! but it was stupid; for I gathered from what they said that the one way to get there was to be good; only each had a different way."
"What place did you say?" queried the Jay.
"Grand Rapids."
"No, no! the place they all wanted to go to."
"Heaven."
"Where's that?"
"I don't know, and you needn't bother; for the Men said it was a place for the good, only."
Beaver's fat sides fairly shook as he chuckled delightedly over the snub Carcajou had given Jack.
"Ha, ha!" roared Bear; "Sweet Berries! but Humpback is too many for you, Birdie," and the woods
