x always
knows what he is doing."

So Reddy wandered about all the long night. It seemed as if it never
would pass, and yet he wished it would last forever. The more he
thought about it, the more afraid he grew. At last he saw the first
beams from jolly, round, red Mr. Sun creeping through the Green
Forest. The time had come, and he must choose between making his boast
good or being called a coward by everybody. Very, very slowly, Reddy
Fox began to walk towards the hill where Prickly Porky lives.

XII

WHAT REDDY FOX SAW AND DID

Who guards his tongue as he would keep
A treasure rich and rare,
Will keep himself from trouble free,
And dodge both fear and care.

The trouble with a great many people is that they remember this too
late. Reddy Fox is one of these. Reddy is smart and sly and clever in
some ways, but he hasn't learned yet to guard his tongue, and half the
trouble he gets into is because of that unruly member. You see it is a
boastful tongue and an untruthful tongue and that is the worst
combination for making trouble that I know of. It has landed him in
all kinds of scrapes in the past, and here he was in another, all on
account of that tongue.

Jolly, round, red Mr. Sun had kicked his rosy blankets off and was
smiling down on the Great World as he began his daily climb up in the
blue, blue sky. The Jolly Little Sunbeams were already dancing through
the Green Forest, chasing out the Black Shadows, and Reddy knew that
it was high time for him to be over by the hill where Prickly Porky
the Porcupine lives. With lagging steps he sneaked along from tree to
tree, peering out from behind each anxiously, afraid to go on, and
still more afraid not to, for fear that he would be called a coward.

He had almost reached the foot of the hill without seeing anything out
of the usual and without any signs of Unc' Billy Possum. He was just
beginning to hope that Unc' Billy wasn't there, as he had said he
would be, when a voice right over his head said:

"Ah cert'nly am glad to see that yo' are as good as your word, Brer
Fox, fo' we need some one brave like yo' to find out what this strange
creature is that has been chasing we-uns."

Reddy looked up with a sickly grin. There sat Unc' Billy Possum in a
pine tree right over his head. He knew now that there was no backing
out; he had got to go on. He tried to swagger and look very bold and
brave.

"I told you I'm not afraid. If there's