“Gee!” exclaimed Tommy, and there was a queer little catch in his breath, because, you know, it was such a big idea. He stood still and slowly rubbed the bare toes of one foot up and down the other bare brown leg. “Gee!” he exclaimed again, and stared very hard at the wishing-stone. “’Twon’t do any harm to try it, anyway,” he added. So he walked over to the wishing-stone and sat down. With his chin in his hands and his elbows on his knees he stared over at the Green Forest and tried to imagine that it was the Great Woods, where the only human beings ever seen were hunters, or trappers, or lumbermen, and where bears, and deer, and moose, and wolves lived, and where beavers built their homes, and made their ponds, and lived their lives far from the homes of men. As he stared, the Green Forest seemed to change to the Great Woods. “I wish,” said he, slowly and dreamily, “I wish that I were a beaver.” He was no longer sitting on the wishing-stone. He was a young beaver with a waterproof fur coat, a broad flat tail and great chisel-like teeth in the front of his jaws, his tools. His home was in the heart of the Great Woods, where a broad, shallow brook sparkled and dimpled, and the sun, breaking through the tree-tops, kissed its ripples. In places it flowed swiftly, dancing and singing over stones and pebbles. Again it lingered in deep dark cool holes where the trout lay. Farther on, it loafed lazily through wild meadows where the deer delighted to come. But where Tommy was, it rested in little ponds, quiet, peaceful, in a dreamy stillness, where the very spirit of peace and happiness and contentment seemed to brood. On one side of one of these little ponds was the house, a great house of sticks bound together with mud and turf, the house in which Tommy lived with others of his family. It was quite the finest beaver-house in all that region. But Tommy didn’t think anything about that. It was summer now, the season of play, of having a good time without thought of work. It was the season of visiting and of exploration. In company with some of his relatives he made long journeys up and down the brook, and even across to other brooks on some of which were other beaver colonies and on some of which were no signs that beavers ever had worked there. But when summer began to wane, Tommy found that life was not all a lazy holiday and that he was expected to work. The home settlement was rather crowded. There was danger that the food supply would not be sufficient for so many hungry beavers.