The squirrel chief seated on the oak limb listened attentively and then nodding his head spoke thus to himself. “True, indeed, thieves are not far away. I think this sympathy betokens knaves.”
At night the chief hid in a branch that overhung the stump that the squirrel had pointed out.
When the sun had gone in his western door and darkness had obscured the earth, from a hole in the hillside a brown head cautiously emerged and after peering slyly around the woodchuck crept from his burrow, swung his tail jauntily and trotted down his path to the swamp. A green backed frog pushed his way from a high tufted hummock of grass through the black water of the swamp toward the hillside. But he made no froggish splash, no gurgling trill, no croak but swam in silence. Reaching the bank he sneaked his way up the path to the stump beneath the squirrel’s hemlock where a furry brown bulk was rummaging.
“Kwe!” exclaimed the frog in a startled note.
“Kwe!” came the hollow reply, and Tedo, the woodchuck, withdrew his head to see who had discovered him but finding it to be only Skoak, the frog, he resumed his work of pilfering the squirrel’s store.
“Iis kho, and you too,” he said in a muffled voice as with bulging cheeks he hurried back to his hole.
Now the frog in those days had sharp gnawing teeth like a beaver’s and when he entered the hollow stump he tested the nuts to find what variety he would choose. He had taken hickory nuts before but now chose to take chestnuts.
From the limb over the stump store house a shrill cry sounded.
“Thief found!” came the alarm, and the woodchuck and the frog buried their ears in their booty to shut out the sound.
On the following day the squirrel chief called a council of all the animals, for in those days the squirrel was a famous animal and mightier than a wolf.