Coyote has a crafty brain;
His wits are sharp his ends to gain.

There is nothing in the world more true than that. Old Man Coyote
has the craftiest brain of all the little people of the Green
Forest or the Green Meadows. Sharp as are the wits of old Granny
Fox, they are not quite so sharp as the wits of Old Man Coyote.
If you want to fool him, you will have to get up very early in
the morning, and then it is more than likely that you will be the
one fooled, not he. There is very little going on around him that
he doesn't know about. But once in a while something escapes him.
The coming of Paddy the Beaver to the Green Forest was one of
these things. He didn't know a thing about Paddy until Paddy had
finished his dam and his house, and was cutting his supply of
food for the winter.

You see, it was this way: When the Merry Little Breezes of Old
Mother West Wind first heard what was going on in the Green Forest
and hurried around over the Green Meadows and through the Green
Forest to spread the news, as is their way, they took the
greatest pains not to even hint it to Old Man Coyote because they
were afraid that he would make trouble and perhaps drive Paddy
away. The place that Paddy had chosen to build his dam was so
deep in the Green Forest that Old Man Coyote seldom went that
way. So it was that he knew nothing about Paddy, and Paddy knew
nothing about him for some time.

But after awhile Old Man Coyote noticed that the little people of
the Green Meadows were not about as much as usual. They seemed to
have a secret of some kind. He mentioned the matter to his