and cruel
place. Funny how differently things look when your stomach is full from
the way those same things look when it is empty. Best of all they knew
they could play the same sharp trick again and steal another dinner
from Bowser if need be. It is a comforting feeling, a very comforting
feeling, to know for a certainty where you can get another meal. It is
a feeling that Granny and Reddy Fox and many other little people of the
Green Meadows and the Green Forest seldom have in winter. As a rule,
when they have eaten one meal, they haven't the least idea where the
next one is coming from. How would you like to live that way?

The very next day Granny and Reddy went up to Farmer Brown's at Bowser's
dinner hour. But this time Farmer Brown's boy was at work near the barn,
and Bowser was not chained. Granny and Reddy stole away as silently as
they had come. On the day following they found Bowser chained and stole
another dinner from him; then they went away laughing until their sides
ached as they heard Bowser's whines of surprise and disappointment when
he discovered that his dinner had vanished. They knew by the sound of
his voice that he hadn't the least idea what had become of that dinner.

Now there was some one else roaming over the snow-covered meadows and
through the Green Forest and the Old Pasture these days with a stomach
so lean and empty that he couldn't think of anything else. It was
Old Man Coyote. You know he is very clever, is Old Man Coyote, and he
managed to find enough food of one kind and another to keep him alive,
but never enough to give him that comfortable feeling of a full stomach.
While he wasn't actually starving, he was always hungry. So he spent all
the time when he wasn't sleeping in hunting for something to eat.

Of course he often ran across the tracks of Granny and Reddy Fox, and
once in a while he would meet them. It struck Old Man Coyote that they
didn't seem as thin as he was. That set him to thinking. Neither of
them was a smarter hunter than he. In fact, he prided himself on being
smarter than either of them. Yet when he met them, they seemed to be in
the best of spirits and not at all worried because food was so scarce.
Why? There must be a reason. They must be getting food of which he knew
nothing.

"I'll just keep an eye on them," muttered Old Man Coyote.

So very slyly and cleverly Old Man Coyote followed Granny and Reddy Fox,
taking the greatest care that they should not sus