Brownie turned out to be what is called a bank beaver. In France all the beavers are bank beavers; in America they were all house beavers originally, but they have been so crowded and hunted from their native haunts by trappers and frontiersmen, that many of them have become bank beavers; probably because this mode of life is less conspicuous, and leaves them better protected from the attacks of man, but they are a more easy prey to their natural enemies, and to starvation in the winter.
Naturalists have quarreled and disputed as scientists will, as to whether the bank beaver in America is a separate specie, or merely the house beaver, who has adopted the methods and manners of the bank beaver.
I am inclined to the latter view, as birds, animals, and even plants will modify their mode of life to suit changing conditions.
At first Shaggycoat liked Brownie very much. He was so good natured and playful that he made a pleasant companion, on the return trip home, but, when work upon the dam began, and he was invited to put his strong muscles in play, he demurred. There was no need of building a dam he thought. Why not be content with a hole in the bank, and then there would be no need of cutting these great trees, and tugging and hauling on logs and stones. Small trees furnished just as good bark as large ones, and were much easier to cut. But Shaggycoat did not like this lazy manner of living, besides he did not think it safe. When day after day Brownie refused to help on the dam, he flew into a rage with so lazy a fellow, and gave Brownie such a severe trouncing that he never dared show himself about the lake afterward, so he went a mile or so down stream, and set up housekeeping for himself. But there was not much house about it, for his home was merely a deserted otter's den, although he considered it quite adequate.
One naturalist asserts that the bank beaver in America is a forlorn, sorrowful fellow, who has been disappointed in love, and has to go through life without a mate; while another avers that he is a drone who will not labor, and so is driven from the colony.
Brownie certainly was a drone, and perhaps he had left his little mud love token along the watercourse that autumn, and it had remained unopened, but certainly his was a lonely life.
He took up his abode about a mile below the dam, and although they sometimes saw him watching them from a distance, he never dared again trespass on the premises of these more ambitious beavers.
His burrow was located where the river was deep so that he might be well protected from the waterside. He could not lay up a large supply of wood for food as the house beaver did, but he managed to secure considerable under roots and stones along the shore. Some of this the current carried down stream, and his stock ran short before spring.
Perhaps he thought of his snugly housed cousins on cold winter days and nights, as he nestled alone in his comfortless burrow. In the beaver houses, the warmth of several bodies, and the breath from many nostrils, kept the temperature quite comfortable, but lonely Brownie had to be his own bedfellow, and what warmth there was came from his own body, and warming one's self with one's own heat is rather a forlorn task.
Also when his supply of bark ran low, and he had to gnaw upon tree roots to keep the breath of life in his body, he remembered the house beaver's generous supply of wood.