The wind, the rain, and the sun had all combined to bring about this marvelous change.
For three days "it had rained suds," as the country people say, and then a merry south wind had blown across the fog-covered snow-banks.
All the little streams hastening down the mountainside became raging torrents, and the larger stream emptying into Beaver Lake, fairly went mad.
In a single night it rose several feet, breaking up the ice, and tossing it about as a child might his toys.
In some places the great gleaming cakes were shouldered out upon the shore, and piled up in massive blockhouses. In other places they jammed, making a very good ice dam across the stream. Then the water would set back until it felt strong enough to cope with the ice, when it would sweep the dam away and go thundering down-stream tossing the ice about and sweeping all before it.
It was such a jam as this that dammed the water just above Beaver Lake, holding it until the stream foamed and raged like an infuriated monster. Then with a roar like thunder it burst through. Thousands of tons of ice accumulated and piled up mountains high. The ice in the lake was broken up like glass, and the mighty weight of all these contending forces, pressed continually upon the beaver's strong dam.
For a while the sturdy old pines which were the backbone of the structure held, but finally, creaking, groaning and snapping, they were wrenched from their places, and with a great rush the beaver dam went out. Then hundreds of grating, grinding, thundering cakes of ice followed after the rushing waters.
When the ice jam struck the upper end of the island where the lodges were, Shaggycoat knew that it was no place for him and his family, so led a precipitate flight for terra firma. They were fortunate enough to find an open place between the cakes of ice at the lower end of the island, and all escaped into the alder bushes along the shore.
But they did not feel safe out in the open, with no house to flee to, so as soon as the ice went out and the water fell, they went back to the burrows.
When the spring freshet had passed, even the entrances to these strongholds were left high and dry, and the broad area that had been their lake looked very much as it had the first time Shaggycoat saw it.