He crouched in the thicket and, all unsuspected by the industrious members of the colony, watched them a little while. He did not know just what building operation they intended, but it must be an after thought. The beaver was always industrious and full of foresight, and, if they were adding now to the construction of their town carried out earlier in the year, it must be due to a prevision that it was going to be a very cold, long and hard winter. Henry watched them at work quite a while, and they furnished him both amusement and interest. It was a sort of forest idyll. Their energy was marvelous, and they worked always with method. One huge, gray old fellow seemed to direct their movements, and Henry soon saw that he was an able master who tolerated neither impudence nor trifling. In his town everybody had not only to work, but to work when, where and how the leader directed. It gave the hidden forest runner keen pleasure to watch the village with its ordered life, industry and happiness. He felt once more his sense of kinship with the animals. He was a thoughtful youth, and it often occurred to him that the world might be made for them as well as for man. The beaver was an animal of uncommon intelligence and he could learn from him. The big gray fellow was a general of ability, perhaps with a touch of genius. All his soldiers were working according to his directions with uncommon skill and dispatch. Henry concentrated his attention upon him, and presently he had a feeling that the leader saw him, had known all the time that he was lying there in the thicket, and was not afraid of him, convinced that he would do no harm. It added to his pleasure to think that it was so. The old fellow looked directly at him at least a half dozen times, and presently Henry was compelled to laugh to himself. As sure as he was living that big old beaver had raised his head a little higher out of the water than usual, and glancing his way had winked at him. He forgot everything else in the play between himself and the beaver king, and a king he surely was, as he had time to direct, and to direct ably, all the activities of his village, and also to carry on a kind of wireless talk with the forest runner. Henry watched him to see if he would give him the wink again, and as sure as day was day he dived presently, came up at the near edge of the pool, wiped the dripping water from his head and face and winked gravely with his left eye, his expression being for the moment uncommonly like that of a human being.