other little people of the Green Meadows and the Green Forest seldom
have in winter. As a rule, when they have eaten one meal, they
haven't the least idea where the next one is coming from. How would
you like to live that way?

The very next day Granny and Reddy went up to Farmer Brown's at
Bowser's dinner hour. But this time Farmer Brown's boy was at work
near the barn, and Bowser was not chained. Granny and Reddy stole
away as silently as they had come. On the day following they found
Bowser chained and stole another dinner from him; then they went
away laughing until their sides ached as they heard Bowser's whines
of surprise and disappointment when he discovered that his dinner
had vanished. They knew by the sound of his voice that he hadn't
the least idea what had become of that dinner.

Now there was some one else roaming over the snow-covered meadows
and through the Green Forest and the Old Pasture these days with a
stomach so lean and empty that he couldn't think of anything else.
It was Old Man Coyote. You know he is very clever, is Old Man
Coyote, and he managed to find enough food of one kind and another
to keep him alive, but never enough to give him that comfortable
feeling of a full stomach. While he wasn't actually starving, he
was always hungry. So he spent all the time when he wasn't sleeping
in hunting for something to eat.

Of course he often ran across the tracks of Granny and Reddy Fox,
and once in a while he would meet them. It struck Old Man Coyote
that they didn't seem as thin as he was. That set him to thinking.
Neither of them was a smarter hunter than he. In fact, he prided
himself on being smarter than either of them. Yet when he met them,