One spring morning when the air was warm and balmy and birds had begun to sing in the tree-tops along the bank, Shaggycoat went for a swim in a deep pool. It was not his custom to be abroad in the daylight, for beavers as a rule love the dark and do most of their work in inky darkness, but the two-year-old felt restless. He must be stirring. His grandfather was too old and stupid for him, so he went.
He had a delightful play and a good breakfast upon some alders that grew in a little cove. He stayed much longer than usual, so that when he returned the sun was low in the west.
He found his grandfather stretched out much as he had left him, but there was something peculiar about him. He was so still. He was not sleeping, for there was no motion of the chest and no steam from the nostrils. Shaggycoat went up to him and put his nose to his, but it was quite cold. Then he poked him gently with his paw, but he did not stir. Then he nipped his ear as the older beaver had so frequently done to him, but there was no response.
He would wait; perhaps this was a new kind of sleep. He would probably wake in the morning, but a strange uneasiness filled Shaggycoat. He was almost afraid of his grandfather, for he was so quiet and his nose was so cold.
He waited an hour or two and then tried to waken him again, but with no better success. This time to touch the icy nose of the old beaver sent a chill through Shaggycoat's every nerve, and a sudden terror of the lifeless silent thing before him seized him.
Then a sense of loss, coupled with a great fear, came over him and he fled from the burrow like a hunted creature. He must put as many miles as possible between himself and that sleep from which there was no waking.
The river had never seemed so dark and uninviting before, nor held so many terrors. His grandfather had always led the way and he had merely to follow. Now he was to lead. But where? He did not know the way, but that silence and the terror of that stiff form with the cold nose haunted him and he fled on.
Morning found him many miles from the shelving bank, where the old beaver had been left behind.
Shaggycoat feared the river and all it contained. The world too was strange to him, but most of all he feared that silent form under the dark bank.
From that day he became a wanderer in the great world. He went by river courses and through mountain lakes, always keeping out of danger as well as he could.