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 was n'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 had n'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 . So Reddy trotted through the swamp till he came to the edge of it . There his keen nose found the scent of the farmer .
It did n't take him two minutes to discover that the farmer had followed XXXXX the Hound to the edge of the swamp and then gone back .
Bowser Reddy Sir fellow first right scent something stump thinking