rmer Brown's boy was disappointed. "Well, I'll get him to-morrow,
anyway," said he to himself. Then he went on to his next trap; it was
nowhere to be seen. When he pulled the chain he was so excited that he
trembled. The trap did not come up at once. He pulled and pulled, and
then suddenly up it came, all covered with mud. In it was one little
claw from Little Joe Otter. Very carefully Farmer Brown's boy set the
trap again. If he could have looked over in the bulrushes and have
seen Little Joe Otter and Billy Mink and Jerry Muskrat watching him and
tickling and laughing, he would not have been so sure that next time he
would catch Little Joe Otter.

All around the Smiling Pool and then up and down the Laughing Brook
Farmer Brown's boy tramped, and each trap he found sprung and buried in
the mud. He had stopped whistling by this time, and there was a puzzled
frown on his freckled face. What did it mean? Could some other boy have
found all his traps and played a trick by springing all of them? The
more he thought about it, the more puzzled he became. You see, he did
not know anything about the busy day the Minks and the Otters and the
Muskrats and the Coons had spent the day before.

Old Grandfather Frog, sitting on his big green lily-pad, smoothed down
his white and yellow waistcoat and winked up at jolly, round, red Mr.
Sun as Farmer Brown's boy tramped off across the Green Meadows.

"Chugarum!" said Grandfather Frog, as he snapped up a foolish green fly.
"Much good it will do you to set those traps again!"

Then Grandfather Frog called to Billy Mink and sent him to tell all the
other little people of the Smiling Pool and the Laughing Brook that they
must hurry and spring all the traps again as they had before.

This time it was easy, because they knew just where the traps were, so
all day long they dropped sticks and stones into the traps and once more
sprung them. Then they prepared for a grand feast of the good things to
eat which Farmer Brown's boy had left, scattered around the traps.

CHAPTER VII: Jerry Muskrat Makes A Discovery

The beautiful springtime had brought a great deal of happiness to the
Smiling Pool, as it had to the Green Meadows and to the Green Forest.
Great-Grandfather Frog, who had slept the long winter away in his own
special bed way down in the mud, had waked up with an appetite so great
that for a while it seemed as if he could think of nothing but his
stomach. Jerry Muskrat had felt