o the edge of the pond swam Paddy. Then he stopped. In a few
minutes he began to swim again, but this time it was back in the
direction of his house, and he seemed to be carrying something. It was
one of the little food logs he had cut that day, and he was taking it
out to his storehouse. Then back he came for another. And so he kept on,
never once coming ashore. Old Man Coyote waited until Paddy had carried
the last log to his storehouse and then, with a loud whack on the water
with his broad tail, had dived and disappeared in his house.

Then Old Man Coyote arose and started elsewhere to look for his dinner,
and in his heart was bitter disappointment.

XVIII

OLD MAN COYOTE TRIES ANOTHER PLAN

For three nights Old Man Coyote had stolen up through the Green Forest
with the coming of the Black Shadows and had hidden among the
aspen-trees where Paddy the Beaver cut his food, and for three nights
Paddy had failed to come ashore. Each night he had seemed to have enough
food logs in the water to keep him busy without cutting more. Old Man
Coyote lay there, and the hungry look in his eyes changed to one of
doubt and then to suspicion. Could it be that Paddy the Beaver was
smarter than he thought? It began to look very much as if Paddy knew
perfectly well that he was hiding there each night. Yes, Sir, that's the
way it looked. For three nights Paddy hadn't cut a single tree, and yet
each night he had plenty of food logs ready to take to his storehouse in
the pond.

"That means that he comes ashore in the daytime and cuts his trees,"
thought Old Man Coyote as, tired and with black anger in his heart, he
trotted home the third night. "He couldn't have found out about me
himself; he isn't smart enough. It must be that some one has told him.
And nobody knows that I have been over there but Sammy Jay. It must be
he who has been the tattletale. I think I'll visit Paddy by daylight
to-morrow, and then we'll see!"

Now the trouble with some smart people is that they are never able to
believe that others may be as smart as they. Old Man Coyote didn't know
that the first time he had visited Paddy's pond he had left behind him a
footprint in a little patch of soft mud. If he had known it, he wouldn't
have believed that Paddy would be smart enough to guess what that
footprint meant. So Old Man Coyote laid all the blame at the door of
Sammy Jay, and that very morning, when Sammy came flying over the Green
Meadows, Old Man C