Paddy long ago found out for himself. So he kept at work on his bed for
some time after all was still outside.

At last Paddy decided that he would go over to his aspen-trees and look
them over to decide which ones he would cut the next night. He slid down
one of his long halls, out the doorway at the bottom of the pond, and
then swam up to the surface, where he floated for a few minutes with
just his head out of water. And all the time his eyes and nose and ears
were busy looking, smelling, and listening for any sign of danger.
Everything was still. Sure that he was quite safe, Paddy swam across to
the place where the aspen-trees grew, and waddled out on the shore.

Paddy looked this way and looked that way. He looked up in the tree
tops, and he looked off up the hill, but most of all he looked at the
ground. Yes, Sir, Paddy just studied the ground. You see, he hadn't
forgotten the fuss Sammy Jay had been making there, and he was trying to
find out what it was all about. At first he didn't see anything unusual,
but by and by he happened to notice a little wet place, and right in the
middle of it was something that made Paddy's eyes open wide. It was a
footprint! Some one had carelessly stepped in the mud.

"Ha!" exclaimed Paddy, and the hair on his back lifted ever so little,
and for a minute he had a prickly feeling all over. The footprint was
very much like that of Reddy Fox, only it was larger.

"Ha!" said Paddy again, "that certainly is the footprint of Old Man
Coyote! I see I have got to watch out more sharply than I had thought
for. All right, Mr. Coyote; now that I know you are about, you'll have
to be smarter than I think you are to catch me. You certainly will be
back here to-night looking for me, so I think I'll do my cutting right
now in the daytime."

XV

SAMMY JAY MAKES PADDY A CALL

Paddy the Beaver was hard at work. He had just cut down a good-sized
aspen-tree and now he was gnawing it into short lengths to put in his
food pile in the pond. As he worked, Paddy was doing a lot of thinking
about the footprint of Old Man Coyote in a little patch of mud, for he
knew that meant that Old Man Coyote had discovered his pond, and would
be hanging around, hoping to catch Paddy off his guard. Paddy knew it
just as well as if Old Man Coyote had told him so. That was why he was
at work cutting his food supply in the daytime. Usually he works at
night, and he knew that Old Man Coyote knew it.

"He'll