Quite certain in his own mind that there was no danger, Reddy lightly leaped up on the old stump and peeped into the hollow in the top.  Then he blinked his eyes very fast indeed.  If ever there has been a surprised Fox in all the Great World that one was Reddy.  There was no fat hen in that hollow!  Reddy couldn’t believe it.  He wouldn’t believe it.  That fat hen just had to be there.  He blinked his eyes some more and looked again.  All he saw in that hollow stump was a feather.  The fat hen had vanished.  All Reddy’s dreams of a good dinner vanished too.  A great rage took their place.  Somebody had stolen his fat hen!

Reddy looked about him hurriedly and anxiously.  There wasn’t a sign of anybody about, or that anybody had been there.  Reddy’s anger began to give place to wonder and then to something very like fear.  How could anybody have taken that fat hen and left no trace?  And how could a fat hen with a broken neck disappear of its own accord?  It gave Reddy a creepy feeling.

CHAPTER XL

WHERE WAS REDDY’S DINNER?

    Often it is better to look for a new trail than to waste time
    hunting for an old one.

    Bowser the Hound.

Reddy Fox is used to all sorts of queer happenings.  Yes, Sir, he is used to all sorts of queer happenings, and as a rule Reddy is seldom puzzled for long.  You see he is such a clever fellow himself that any one clever enough to fool him for long must be very clever indeed.  This time, however, all the cleverness of his sharp wits did him no good.  The fat hen he had hidden in a hollow stump had disappeared without leaving trace.

Reddy’s first thought was that probably the farmer from whom he had stolen the fat hen had found it and taken it away.  At once he began to use that wonderful nose of his searching for the scent of that farmer.  Very carefully he sniffed all about the top of that old stump and inside the hollow.  There wasn’t the faintest scent of anybody there.  Then he jumped down, and with his nose to the ground, ran all around the stump, sniffing, sniffing, sniffing.  The only thing he discovered was the scent of Bowser the Hound, and he knew that Bowser had not taken that fat hen, because, as you remember, Bowser had kept right on chasing him.

Reddy began to feel afraid of that old stump.  People usually are afraid of mysterious things, and it certainly was very mysterious that a fat hen with a broken neck should disappear without leaving any trace at all.  Reddy sat down at a little distance and did a lot of hard thinking.  He looked every which way even up in the tree tops, but all his looking was in vain.  It was so mysterious that if he hadn’t known positively that he was awake he would have thought it was all a dream.

But Reddy is something of a philosopher.  That fat hen was gone, and there was no use in wasting time puzzling over it.  There were other fat hens where that one came from, and he would just have to catch another.