The village near one end of Pleasant Valley where
Farmer Green often went to sell butter and eggs was
not the only village to be seen from Blue Mountain.
There was another which Farmer Green seldom visited,
because it lay beyond the mountain and was a long distance
from his house. Though he owned the land where
it stood, those that lived there thought they had
every right to stay there as long as they pleased,
without being disturbed.
It was in this village that Brownie Beaver and his
neighbors lived. It was a different sort of town,
too, from the one where Farmer Green went each week.
Over beyond Blue Mountain all the houses were built
in a pond. And all their doors were under water.
But nobody minded that because—like Brownie
Beaver—everybody that dwelt there was a
fine swimmer.
Years and years before Brownie’s time his forefathers
had come there, and finding that there were many trees
in the neighborhood with the sort of bark they liked
to eat—such as poplars, willows and box
elders—they had decided that it was a good
place to live. There was a small stream, too,
which was really the beginning of Swift River.
And by damming it those old settlers made a pond in
which they could build their houses.
They had ideas of their own as to what a house should
be like—and very good ideas they were—though
you, perhaps, might not care for them at all.
They wanted their houses to be surrounded by water,
because they thought they were safer when built in
that manner. And they always insisted that a
door leading into a house should be far beneath the
surface of the water, for they believed that that made
a house safer too.
To you such an idea may seem very strange. But
if you were chased by an enemy you might be glad to
be able to swim under water, down to the bottom of
a pond, and slip inside a door which led to a winding
hall, which in its turn led upwards into your house.
Of course, your enemy might be able to swim as well
as you. But maybe he would think twice—or
even three times—before he went prowling
through your crooked hall. For if you had enormous,
strong, sharp teeth—with which you could
gnaw right through a tree—he would not
care to have you seize him as he poked his head around
a corner in a dark passage of a strange house.
It was in a house of that kind that Brownie Beaver
lived. And he built it himself, because he said
he would rather have a neat, new house than one of
the big, old dwellings that had been built many years
before, when his great-great-grandfather had helped
throw the dam across the stream.
The dam was there still. It was so old that trees
were growing on it. And there was an odd thing
about it: it was never finished. Though
Brownie Beaver was a young chap, he worked on the dam
sometimes, like all his neighbors. You see, the
villagers kept making the dam wider. And since
it was built of sticks and mud, the water sometimes
washed bits of it away: so it had to be kept
in repair.
