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"Little Marten was a pretty child; he was very fair, and had beautiful blue eyes and red lips, and his dark brown hair curled all over his head; but he had always been very tender in his health; and the kickings and thumpings and beatings he got amongst the boys, instead of making him hardy, made him the more sickly and drooping.

It had been a year of misfortune for the Grays. The previous winter when Bob's father started out upon his trapping trail a wolverine persistently and systematically followed him, destroying almost every fox and marten that he had caught.

Blake had a large fortune and no family, they were willing to take little Marten at her death and provide for him as their own. This was a very great and kind offer, and most people would have accepted it with joy; but the pious mother recollected that Mr. Blake was one who declared himself to be without religion; and she could not think of leaving her little boy to such a man.

Her dress was trimmed with what we simply mistook for scalps, and supposed it was in honor of the nation; but we blushed at our ignorance on discovering that it was a gorgeous trimming of marten tips. Would that some eminent furrier had been there to wonder and admire!"

These words, rendered into English, are, 'Welcome chief, welcome chief, welcome chief, welcome! We feasted on boiled salmon, and rice, and sugar, and molasses, after which the chief presented me with five marten skins and a large salmon.

While his general shape is that of Shadow the Weasel, his body is much heavier in proportion to his size. "Chatterer, you and your Cousin Happy Jack may well be thankful that Spite the Marten doesn't live about here, for he is very fond of Squirrels and delights to hunt them.

From the picture he drew vehemently in bad French-Canadian language it would appear that the otter and the beaver fought together for mere breathing places in the streams, that the sable and the marten and the ermine were household pets, and that as for the foxes, blue and silver gray, they were so numerous that the spruce grouse had learned to build their nests in trees!

By the plan now adopted, also, each of these three hunting parties, after they had reached their respective destinations and built their camps, were to explore the rivers ten or fifteen miles upward through the forest, and to some suitable and convenient terminus of their proposed trapping and hunting range; there build a camp, in which to lodge on their outward jaunts; and mark off, on their return, by blazing the trees, lines for setting log-traps for sable, marten, stoat, or ermine, for, whatever may be said to the contrary, the noted ermine of Europe is a native of our northern forests.

Fresh marten tracks were noticed in the snow. A little farther on, two timber-wolves were seen slinking along like shadows among the distant trees as they paralleled our trail on the right. The dogs noticed them, too, but they, like their masters, were too busy to pay much attention.

To case skin an animal such as ermine, fox, fisher, lynx, marten, mink, otter, muskrat, rabbit, or skunk, the skin is cut down the inner side of each hind leg until the two cuts meet just under the tail, and then the pelt is peeled off by turning it inside out.