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"I think," says Grey Owl owlishly, "we would all be considerably better off if we could emulate the poise, unconcern, and dignified composure that permitted her to retain her peace of mind." As soon as the lake froze over Grey Owl let the beaver under the ice. Jelly Roll reappeared with great loads of mud, tried to plaster a crack under the cabin door. Working hard all night, she would pile so much mud against it that in the morning Grey Owl had to open the door with a shovel. Spring brought no relief, for as the kittens disappeared, and one beaver started a dam, another began the construction of a comfortable lodge inside Grey Owl's cabin, rushing in with mud from the bottom of the lake at the rate of twelve loads an hour.
Grey Owl's account of his life with the beavers takes up about one-third of Tales of an Empty Cabin. The remainder is stories of the North woods, Indian legends, personal reminiscences, a tribute to the remote Mississauga River of Ontario, descriptions of wilderness heroism, appeals for the preservation of wild life. In part an amateurish piece of work, it is nevertheless lighted with many passages of extremely keen observation and made engaging by Grey Owl's sincerity and humor. Grey Owl did not intend to be a writer and when he started did not know what he was letting himself in for. Now, with his fourth book, he says, "I fully realize that all this while I have been sauntering around on holy ground, improperly dressed and with my boots on." Haunted by memories of his dying race and of the disappearing wilderness, Grey Owl has taken to staying up all night in the woods, finding that he can observe wild life more clearly at dawn and that his imagination works better in the dark. Once a passionate hunter, he has lately developed an almost mystical sense of kinship with animals, sits motionless for hours on a raft near the beaver dam while his personal menagerie, consisting of a moose, beaver, muskrat, deer and squirrels, circulates around him.