e asked.

"Yes," replied Paddy, crawling up on the side of his house to rest.
"Yes, this is my food supply. Isn't it splendid?"

"I guess it is," replied Jerry, trying to be polite, "though I like
lily-roots and clams better. But what are you going to do with it? Where
is your storehouse?"

"This pond is my storehouse," replied Paddy. "I will make a great pile
right here close to my house, and the water will keep it nice and fresh
all winter. When the pond is frozen over, all I will have to do is to
slip out of one of my doorways down there on the bottom, swim over here
and get a stick, and fill my stomach. Isn't it handy?"

[Illustration]

XIV

A FOOTPRINT IN THE MUD

Very early one morning Paddy the Beaver heard Sammy Jay making a
terrible fuss over in the aspen-trees on the edge of the pond Paddy
had made in the Green Forest. Paddy couldn't see because he was inside
his house, and it has no window, but he could hear. He wrinkled up his
brows thoughtfully.

"Seems to me that Sammy is very much excited this morning," said he,
talking to himself, a way he has because he is so much alone. "When he
screams like that, Sammy is usually trying to do two things at
once--make trouble for somebody and keep somebody else out of trouble;
and when you come to think of it, that's rather a funny way of doing. It
shows that he isn't all bad, and at the same time he is a long way from
being all good. Now, I should say from the sounds that Sammy has
discovered Reddy Fox trying to steal up on some one over where my
aspen-trees are growing. Reddy is afraid of me, but I suspect that he
knows that Peter Rabbit has been hanging around here a lot lately,
watching me work, and he thinks perhaps he can catch Peter. I shall have
to whisper in one of Peter's long ears and tell him to watch out."

After a while he heard Sammy Jay's voice growing fainter and fainter in
the Green Forest. Finally he couldn't hear it at all. "Whoever was there
has gone away, and Sammy has followed just to torment them," thought
Paddy. He was very busy making a bed. He is very particular about his
bed, is Paddy the Beaver. He makes it of fine splinters of wood which he
splits off with those wonderful great cutting teeth of his. This makes
the driest kind of a bed. It requires a great deal of patience and work,
but patience is one of the first things a little Beaver learns, and
honest work well done is one of the greatest pleasures in the world, as