scraggly brush stood out along his spine. But he did not bark, as he
had barked along the shore of the lake, and in the green opens. Twice
he looked back to the shimmer of sunshine that was growing more and
more indistinct. As long as he could see this, and knew that his
retreat was open, there still remained a bit of that courage which was
swiftly ebbing in the thickening darkness. But the third time he looked
back the light of the sun was utterly gone! For an instant the knot
rose up in his throat and choked him, and his eyes popped, and grew
like little balls of fire in his intense desire to see through the
gloom. Even the girl, who was afraid of only one thing in the world,
would have paused where Peter stood, with a little quickening of her
heart. For all the light of the day, it seemed to Peter, had suddenly
died out. Over his head the spruce and cedar and balsam tops grew so
thick they were like a canopy of night. Through them the snow never
came in winter, and under them the light of a blazing sun was only a
ghostly twilight.

And now, as he stood there, his whole soul burning with a desire to see
his way out, Peter began to hear strange sounds. Strangest of all, and
most fearsome, was a hissing that came and went, sometimes very near to
him, and always accompanied by a grating noise that curdled his blood.
Twice after that he saw the shadow of the great owl as it swooped over
him, and he flattened himself down, the knot in his throat growing
bigger and more choking. And then he heard the soft and uncanny
movement of huge feathered bodies in the thick shroud of boughs
overhead, and slowly and cautiously he wormed himself around,
determined to get back to sunshine and day as quickly as he could. It
was not until he had made this movement that the real chill of horror
gripped at his heart. Straight behind him, directly in the path he had
traveled, he saw two little green balls of flame!

It was instinct, and not reason or experience, which told Peter there
was menace and peril in these two tiny spots blazing in the gloom. He
did not know that his own eyes, popping half out of his head, were
equally terrifying in that pit of silence, nor that from him emanated a
still more terrifying thing--the scent of dog. He trembled on his
wobbly legs as the green eyes stared at him, and his back seemed to
break in the middle, so that he sank helplessly down upon the soft
spruce needles, waiting for his doom. In another flash