s, strange murmurings of chortling voices, and the nasty snapping
of beaks that held in them the power to rend Peter's skinny body into
a hundred bits. From deeper in the thicket came the sudden crash of
a heavy body, and with it the chuckling notes of a porcupine, and a
HOO-HOO-HOO-EE of startled inquiry that at first Peter took for a human
voice. And again he lay shivering close to the foot-deep carpet of
needles under him, while his heart thumped against his ribs, and his
whiskers stood out in mortal fear. There followed a weird and appalling
silence, and in that stillness Peter quested vainly for the sunlight he
had lost. And then, indistinctly, but bringing with it a new thrill,
he heard another sound. It was a soft and distant rippling of running
water. He knew that sound. It was friendly. He had played among the
rocks and pebbles and sand where it was made. His courage came back, and
he rose up on his legs, and made his way toward it. Something inside
him told him to go quietly, but his feet were big and clumsy, and half a
dozen times in the next two minutes he stumbled on his nose. At last he
came to the stream, scarcely wider than a man might have reached across,
rippling and plashing its way through the naked roots of trees. And
ahead of him Peter saw light. He quickened his pace, until at the last
he was running when he came out into the edge of the meadowy plain,
with its sweetness of flowers and green grass and song of birds, and its
glory of blue sky and sun.

If he had ever been afraid, Peter forgot it now. The choking went out of
his throat, his heart fell back in its place, and the fierce conviction
that he had vanquished everything in the world possessed him. He peered
back into the dark cavern of evergreen out of which the streamlet
gurgled, and then trotted straight away from it, growling back his
defiance as he ran. At a safe distance he stopped, and faced about.
Nothing was following him, and the importance of his achievements grew
upon him. He began to swell; his fore-legs he planted pugnaciously, he
hollowed his back, and began to bark with all the puppyish ferocity that
was in him. And though he continued to yelp, and pounded the earth
with his paws, and tore up the green grass with his sharp little
teeth, nothing dared to come out of the black forest in answer to his
challenge!

His head was high and his ears cocked jauntily as he trotted up the
slope, and for the first time in his three month