months; his ears were flappy and big, his tail was knotted, and his legs were ungainly and loose, with huge feet at the end of them—­so big and heavy that he stumbled frequently, and fell on his nose.  One pitied him at first—­and then loved him.  For Peter, in spite of his homeliness, had the two best bloods of all dog creation in his veins.  Yet in a way it was like mixing nitro-glycerin with olive oil, or dynamite and saltpeter with milk and honey.

Peter’s heart was thumping rapidly as he took a step toward the deeper shadows.  He swallowed hard, as if to clear a knot out of his scrawny throat.  But he had made up his mind.  Something was compelling him, and he would go in.  Slowly the gloom engulfed him, and once again the whimsical spirit of fatalism had chosen a trivial thing to work out its ends in the romance and tragedy of human lives.

Grim shadows began to surround Peter, and his ears shot up, and a 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!