For, of course, all the while, the trapper, who cannot afford to lose time, and hopes every day to catch the wolverine, keeps setting his marten-traps as before. At last he gives up what he has been trying, and determines to set a spring-gun—not in such a way as he might hope that an ordinary animal would get shot by it, but more cunningly than he has ever done it before. So not only does he lay the gun amidst bushes, so that it is quite concealed by them, but blockades the way to it, as it were, with a small pine-tree, so that it is neither to be seen nor got at. The bait—a nice juicy piece of meat—lies temptingly just on the top of a bank that rises from a little lake where the wolverine goes sometimes—when the trapper is not there—to drink. As he turns to walk up the bank, he is sure to see it, and likely this time—as the trapper would fain hope—to take it, too. So he arranges everything, obliterates his footmarks by trailing a bush over them, as he goes away, and comes again, a day or two afterwards. There lies the bait, just as it was, and close beside it are the tracks of the wolverine, where he has stood and looked at it. It was a sore temptation, doubtless, so near his nose, but he has resisted it, and gone away to get a meal that is safe, though hard earned. [Illustration: A MISCHIEVOUS BEAST. A wolverine, finding a backwoodsman’s house empty, will clear it of everything movable down to the gridiron.] Still the memory of such a lump of meat as that will be sure to linger, so next day the trapper comes again, hoping that the wolverine will have been there before him. And so he has been, but he has gone, again, with the bait, having first drawn the pine-tree out of the way, and then cut the string—which, if pulled, would have fired off the gun—only just behind the muzzle. His tracks lead down to the shores of the lake, at a part where it stretches out widely, so as to give a good view all round. There he has eaten the meat, and there the trapper finds his string, which he can use again if he likes. He does use it again two or three times, first tying it where it has been bitten through, and then arranging things in the same way. But each time it all happens over again, just as before, except that now the wolverine is careful to gnaw the string a little behind the knot, where it has, each time, been tied, as if it had thought that it might be as dangerous to be in front of this as in front of the muzzle of the gun. So the trapper, at last, thinking that there must be a human spirit in the body of the wolverine—and a very cunning and malicious one, too—gives it up, and goes into another part of the country, so far away that he is not likely to be followed.