Now he propped it open with a single platform, so set that the coon must walk on it once he was inside, and so release the door.
The trappers thought they would hear in the night when the door closed, but they were sleepy; they knew nothing until next morning.

Then they found that the self-shutter had shut, and inside, crouched in one of the nesting boxes, was a tough, old fighting coon.

Strange to tell, he had not touched a second hen.

As soon as he found himself a prisoner he had experienced a change of heart, and presently his skin was nailed on the end of the barn and his meat was hanging in the larder.
"Is this a marten," asked little Annette.

And when told not, her disappointment elicited the information that old Warren, the storekeeper, had promised her a blue cotton dress for a marten skin.
"You shall have the first one I catch," said Rolf.
Life in Van Trumper's was not unpleasant.