Tommy was happy. Never had he been more happy. There was something wonderfully satisfying in just looking at the results of their labor and in feeling that he had had a part in it all. Yet his life was not all labor without excitement. Indeed, it was far from it. Had Tommy the Beaver been able to remember what as Tommy the Boy he had read, he would have felt that he was just like those hardy pioneers who built their homes in the wilderness. Always, in that great still wilderness, death with padded feet and cruel teeth and hungry eyes sought to steal upon the beavers. So always as they worked, especially when on the land, they were prepared to rush for safety at the first warning. Never for a minute did they cease to keep guard, testing every breath of air with wonderfully sensitive noses, and listening with hardly less wonderful ears. On nose and ears the safety of a beaver almost wholly depends, his eyes being rather weak. Once Tommy stopped in his labor of cutting a big tree so that he might rest for a minute or two. On the very edge of the little clearing they had made, the moonlight fell on an old weather-gray log. Tommy stared at it a moment, then resumed his work. A few minutes later he chanced to look at it again. Somehow it seemed nearer than before. He stared long and hard, but it lay as motionless as a log should. Once more he resumed his work, but hardly had he done so when there was the warning thud of a neighbor’s tail. Instantly Tommy scrambled for the water; and even as he did so, he caught a glimpse of that gray old log coming to life and leaping toward him. The instant he reached the water, he dived. “What was it?” he whispered tremulously when, in the safety of the house, he touched noses with one of his neighbors. “Tufty the Lynx,” was the reply. “I smelled him and gave the warning. I guess it was lucky for you that I did.” “I guess it was,” returned Tommy, with a shiver. Another time, a huge black form sprang from the blacker shadows and caught one of the workers. It was a bear. Sometimes there would be three or four alarms in a night. So Tommy learned that the harvesting of the food supply was the most dangerous labor of all, for it took him farthest from the safety of the water. At last this work was completed, and Tommy wondered if now they were to rest and idle away their time. But he did not have to wonder long. The old leader was not yet content, but must have the pond deepened all along the foot of the dam and around the entrances to the house. So now they once more turned to digging, this time under water, bringing the mud up to put on the dam or the house, some working on one and some on the other.