Already they had begun to make the big forest less lonely for him.

And then, close under him--not more than ten feet from where he lay--he saw something that almost gave voice to the puppyish longing for companionship that was in him.
Down there, on a clean strip of the shore that rose out of the soft mud of the pond, waddled fat little Umisk and three of his playmates.

Umisk was just about Baree's age, perhaps a week or two younger.

But he was fully as heavy, and almost as wide as he was long.

Nature can produce no four-footed creature that is more lovable than a baby beaver, unless it is a baby bear; and Umisk would have taken first prize at any beaver baby show in the world.