But Koskomenos has another side, though the world as yet has
found out little about it. One day in the wilderness I cheered
him quite involuntarily. It was late afternoon; the fishing was
over, and I sat in my canoe watching by a grassy point to see
what would happen next. Across the stream was a clay bank, near
the top of which a hole as wide as a tea-cup showed where a pair
of kingfishers had dug their long tunnel. "There is nothing for
them to stand on there; how did they begin that hole?" I wondered
lazily; "and how can they ever raise a brood, with an open door
like that for mink and weasel to enter?" Here were two new
problems to add to the many unsolved ones which meet you at every
turn on the woodland byways.
A movement under the shore stopped my wondering, and the long
lithe form of a hunting mink shot swiftly up stream. Under the
hole he stopped, raised himself with his fore paws against the
bank, twisting his head from side to side and sniffing nervously.
"Something good up there," he thought, and began to climb. But
the bank was sheer and soft; he slipped back half a dozen times
without rising two feet. Then he went down stream to a point
where some roots gave him a foothold, and ran lightly up till
under the dark eaves that threw their shadowy roots over the clay
bank.
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