The woman, seeing how much he looked like her lost boy with the gun and the clothes, had a good cry when left to herself; but Darry did not know this.
As he approached his first trap he found himself fairly tingling with eagerness.
This was not because of the value involved in the skin of a muskrat, though it seemed as though each year the price was soaring as furs became more scarce; but he wanted to feel that he had learned his lesson well, and followed out the instructions given in Joe's little handbook.
The trap was gone!
He saw this with the first glance he cast over the low bank.
Did it have a victim in its jaws or had some marauder stolen it?
With a stick he groped in the deeper water, and catching something in the crotch he presently drew ashore the trap.
He had caught his first prize.
Of course he understood that when compared with the mink and the fox, a muskrat is an ignorant little beast at best, and easily captured; but for a beginning it was worth feeling proud over.
Setting the trap again in the hope that there might be others in the burrow, one of which would set his foot in trouble on the succeeding night, Darry went on.