"I'm going to stay right here on this farm," Reddy Woodpecker declared. "I like this place."  
"Perhaps you expect to leave for the South before the beechnuts are ripe," Squirrel suggested hopefully.
 
"Not I!" replied Reddy Woodpecker. "If I leave, I shall wait until the last beechnut is eaten. And no doubt I shall not leave at all. This looks to me like a good place to spend the winter."
 
Now that Frisky Squirrel knew Reddy Woodpecker ate beechnuts he was more than ever to catch him. He had hunted Reddy before. Now he haunted him. He dogged Reddy Woodpecker's footsteps. He crept up behind him and jumped at him a dozen times a day.
 
Though Frisky didn't know it, he couldn't have captured Reddy Woodpecker in a thousand years. Reddy was too to be caught. He always after . And he always called mockingly, "Not this time, young fellow!"
 
All summer long the chase went on. Frisky Squirrel seemed to think that if only he hunted Reddy long enough there would come a time when he would catch him napping.
 
Now, every year as fall drew near it was Frisky's custom to go each day to the woods, to inspect the beechnuts. He went very slyly. It was a business of great importance. Of course he didn't care to have everybody know what he was doing.
 
Imagine his , then, on his first trip to the , to hear Reddy Woodpecker call out to him, "What do you think of 'em? Will they be ready to eat soon?"
 
Reddy was high up in a beech tree. And Frisky Squirrel was so angry that he could only look up at him and

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