Don’t scoff at one who runs away;

He’ll live to scoff at you some day.

-Billy Mink.

After visiting the Smiling Pool and warning Little Joe Otter and Jerry Muskrat to watch out for traps, Bobby Coon decided that the Laughing Brook was altogether too dangerous a place for him, so he turned back into the Green Forest, firmly resolved to keep away from the Laughing Brook. Billy Mink and Little Joe Otter talked things over.

“I found three traps,” said Billy Mink. “There may be some I have not found. Anyway, it is certain that when that trapper finds that I know about those traps, he will set some more. I don’t believe he is smart enough to hide a trap so that we cannot find it. But you know, accidents will happen. He knows that you and I live along the Laughing Brook and he will simply make life miserable for us by continuing to set traps. Do you know what I believe I’ll do?”

“What?” asked Little Joe Otter.

“I believe I’ll go away for a visit,” replied Billy Mink. “I’ve been feeling rather restless for some time, anyway, and there isn’t any better time of year to go visiting than right now, before the snow and ice come. There’s a certain brook some distance from here that for a long time I’ve been thinking of visiting. I believe I’ll start to-night and I’ll stay long enough for this trapper to get tired of setting traps and catching nothing.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Little Joe Otter. “I believe I’ll go visiting myself. I always did like to travel. There is no sense in taking foolish risks, and that is just what we would be doing by staying here. I think I’ll go down to the Big River and stay awhile. The fishing here isn’t as good as it might be, anyway. I wonder if Jerry Muskrat will go visiting too. Let’s tell him what we are going to do and see if he wants to go along with one of us.”

“He can’t go with me,” declared Billy Mink, in a most decided tone. “He travels too slowly. I don’t believe he would want to go with me anyway, because, between you and me, I suspect Jerry is a little afraid of me.”

Little Joe Otter grinned. “I guess he has reason to be,” said he. “I’ve been told that the Mink family has a liking for Muskrat meat. I hardly think he’ll want to go along with me either, because he is such a home-loving body. But anyway, we’ll tell him what we’re going to do and then he can do as he pleases.”

So Billy Mink and Little Joe Otter hunted up Jerry Muskrat and told him how they were going to fool the trapper by going visiting. They urged him to do the same thing.