"Come away," she cried quickly to Phil; "at the next gust of wind that tree will fall, and only foolish creatures run knowingly into danger. I should be crushed beneath it if I drew out another splinter. Some of our family have already met their deaths that way; they were too impulsive, and did not stop to think."
The Night Wind came singing through the forest, and the branches of the big tree quivered; with a low groan it crashed to earth, and Phil found that it took all his new strength to drag the heavy mass down to the bank.
"I s'pose you'll all take a rest now," he said persuasively, for he was longing to hear about Father Beaver's encounter with the Otter, and thought that he would not mind trying some of that maple syrup himself. But the Beavers were only just getting into their work, as they told him gaily, though he, of course, might take a nap.
They were still at it when he awoke next morning.
"We shall go on until not a tree on this spot is left standing,"
Mother Beaver declared, cheerfully; and he quite believed her.
By the afternoon his arms began to ache, and the Beavers had found him so useful that one of the elders of the colony had remarked that he should have nothing to say against it if he wished to stay with them altogether. Phil thought this very kind of him; but, much as he liked the Beavers, there were many other animals that he wanted to meet. Perhaps Mother Beaver guessed something of this, for she told him pleasantly to go off to the woods.
"You'll work all the better to-morrow," she said; and Father Beaver flapped his tail by way of dismissal.
As neither she nor their father would hear of the young Beavers taking a holiday too, Phil wandered off by himself into the depths of the forest, where the beautiful golden sunlight, which had much ado to force its way through the thick leaves, was making long ladders on the moss. Some small red berries, quite sweet and tasting like strawberry cream, drew him further and further in; a Squirrel threw him a nut and turned aside, as if too lazy to play, and a drowsy Bee mistook his yellow head for honey, much to her own dismay. Phil felt uncommonly drowsy himself, in spite of his long night's rest, and was thinking of taking forty winks when a gentle rustle in the branches made him look up quickly. It was the Wolverene.
For a moment Phil thought that he must be mistaken; surely that benign looking animal, so very like his own brown bear, could not be the Beaver's voracious enemy? He was patting the boughs as a playful kitten might have done, and rolling himself over with surprising ease. His small brown eyes gazed at Phil good-naturedly, as if to read his thoughts.
"I don't look such a desperate character, do I?" he asked complacently. "My wife—I must really introduce you to her—thinks I am quite a fine fellow, and my two young sons adore me. I'll take you home to supper, and you shall see them. They are barely ten days old."