Could it be that Paddy the Beaver was
smarter than he thought? It began to look very much as if Paddy knew
perfectly well that he was hiding there each night. Yes, Sir, that's the
way it looked. For three nights Paddy hadn't cut a single tree, and yet
each night he had plenty of food logs ready to take to his storehouse in
the pond.
"That means that he comes ashore in the daytime and cuts his trees,"
thought Old Man Coyote as, tired and with black anger in his heart, he
trotted home the third night. "He couldn't have found out about me
himself; he isn't smart enough. It must be that some one has told him.
And nobody knows that I have been over there but Sammy Jay. It must be
he who has been the tattletale. I think I'll visit Paddy by daylight
to-morrow, and then we'll see!"
Now the trouble with some smart people is that they are never able to
believe that others may be as smart as they. Old Man Coyote didn't know
that the first time he had visited Paddy's pond he had left behind him a
footprint in a little patch of soft mud. If he had known it, he wouldn't
have believed that Paddy would be smart enough to guess what that
footprint meant.
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