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 on 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
treetops, 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!
Someone 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 foot print 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