We were all tired at the end of that day.
Walking back to the school grounds from the railroad station in the descending darkness we
overtook a lone figure sliding along the snow-covered edge of the street
“Will you look at Lepellier,” began Brinker irritably. “Who does he think he is, the Abominable
Snowman?”
“He’s just been out skiing around,” I said quickly. I didn’t want to see today’s strained tempers
exploding on Leper. Then as we came up beside him, “Did you find the dam, Leper?”
He turned his head slowly, without breaking his forward movement of alternately planted poles
and thrust skis, rhythmically but feebly continuous like a homemade piston engine’s. “You know
what? I did find it,” his smile was wide and unfocused, as though not for me alone but for
anyone and anything which wished to share this pleasure with him, “and it was really interesting
to see. I took some pictures of it, and if they come out I’ll bring them over and show you.”
“What dam is that?” Brinker asked me.
“It’s a ... well a little dam up the river he knows about,” I said.
“I don’t know of any dam up the river.”
“Well, it’s not in the Devon itself, it’s in one of the ... tributaries.”
“Tributaries! To the Devon?”
“You know, a little creek or something.”
He knit his brows in mystification. “What kind of a dam is this, anyway?”
“Well,” he couldn’t be put off with half a story, “it’s a beaver dam.”
Brinker’s shoulders fell under the weight of this news. “That’s the kind of a place I’m in with a
world war going on. A school for photographers of beaver dams.”
“The beaver never appeared himself,” Leper offered.
Brinker turned elaborately toward him. “Didn’t he really?”
“No. But I guess I was pretty clumsy getting close to it, so he might have heard me and been
frightened.”
“Well.” Brinker’s expansive, dazed tone suggested that here was one of life’s giant ironies,
“There you are!”