Now Paddy the Beaver can see at night just as Reddy Fox and Peter Rabbit and Bobby Coon can, and he likes the night best, because he feels safest then. But he can see in the daytime too, and when he feels that he is perfectly safe and no one is watching, he works then too. Of course, the first thing to do was to build a dam across the Laughing Brook to make the pond he so much needed. He chose a low, open place deep in the Green Forest, around the edge of which grew many young aspen trees, the bark of which is his favorite food. Through the middle of this open place flowed the Laughing Brook. At the lower edge was just the place for a dam. It would not have to be very long, and when it was finished and the water was stopped in the Laughing Brook, it would just have to flow over the low, open place and make a pond there. Paddy's eyes twinkled when he first saw it. It was right then that he made up his mind to stay in the Green Forest. So now that he was ready to begin his dam he went up the Laughing Brook to a place where alders and willows grew, and there he began work; that work was the cutting of a great number of trees by means of his big front teeth which were given him for just this purpose. And as he worked, Paddy was happy, for one can never be truly happy who does no work. CHAPTER II Paddy Plans a Pond. Paddy the Beaver was busy cutting down trees for the dam he had planned to build. Up in the woods of the North from which he had come to the Green Forest, he had learned all about tree-cutting and dam-building and canal-digging and house-building. Paddy's father and mother had been very wise in the Beaver world, and Paddy had been quick to learn. So now he knew just what to do and the best way of doing it. You know, a great many people waste time and labor doing things the wrong way, so that they have to be done over again. They forget to be sure they are right, and so they go ahead until they find they are wrong, and all their work goes for nothing. But Paddy the Beaver isn't this kind. Paddy would never have leaped into the spring with the steep sides without looking, as Grandfather Frog did. So now he carefully picked out the trees to cut. He could not afford to waste time cutting down a tree that wasn't going to be just what he wanted when it was down. When he was sure that the tree was right, he looked up at the top to find out whether, when he had cut it, it would fall clear of other trees. He had learned to do that when he was quite young and heedless. He remembered just how he had felt when, after working hard, oh, so hard, to cut a big tree, he had warned all his friends to get out of the way so that they would not be hurt when it fell, and then it hadn't fallen at all because the top had caught in another tree. He was so mortified that he didn't get over it for a long time.