Dr. Cheadle, accompanied by an Indian boy, named Misquapasnayoo, started off for the woods, bent upon proving his superior acuteness to the wolverine. They found that the latter had renewed his visits along the line of traps, and broken all which had been reconstructed, devouring the animals found in them. Dr. Cheadle thereupon adopted a device which could not fail, he thought, to catch his enemy in his own toils. All the broken traps were repaired and set again, and poisoned baits substituted for the ordinary ones in the traps; not in every instance, but here and there along the line. The forest was here of great extent, and seemed to stretch away to the frozen North without let or hindrance, the mass of timber being broken only by numerous lakes and swamps, or clearances which had been caused by conflagrations. The traveller always seeks the lakes; not only because they enable him to travel more rapidly, and penetrate further into the less hunted regions, but also because the edges of the lakes, and the portages between them, are favourite haunts of the fox, the fisher, and the mink. On one of these lakes a curious circumstance was noted. The lake was about half a mile in length, and of nearly equal breadth, but of no great depth. The water had seemingly frozen to the bottom, except at one end, where a spring bubbled up, and a hole of about a yard in diameter existed in the ice-crust, which was there only a few inches thick. In this hole the water was crowded with myriads of small fish, most of them not much larger than a man’s finger, and so closely packed that they could not move freely. On thrusting in an arm, it seemed like plunging it into “a mass of thick stir-about.” All around the snow had been trodden down hard and level by the feet of the numerous animals attracted to this Lenten banquet; and tracks converged to it from every side. The footprints could be recognized of the cross or silver fox, delicately impressed in the snow as he trotted daintily along with light and airy tread; the rough marks of the clumsier fisher; the clear and sharply-defined track of the nimble mink; and the great cross trail of the ubiquitous glutton. On the trees around scores of crows were sleepily digesting their abundant meals.