Now it is too late!"

He then took the puppet under the arms and placed him on the floor to
teach him to walk.

Pinocchio's legs were stiff and he could not move, but Geppetto led him
by the hand and showed him how to put one foot before the other.

When his legs became limber Pinocchio began to walk by himself and to
run about the room, until, having gone out of the house door, he jumped
into the street and escaped.

Poor Geppetto rushed after him but was not able to overtake him, for
that rascal Pinocchio leaped in front of him like a hare and knocking
his wooden feet together against the pavement made as much clatter as
twenty pairs of peasants' clogs.

"Stop him! stop him!" shouted Geppetto; but the people in the street,
seeing a wooden puppet running like a race-horse, stood still in
astonishment to look at it, and laughed and laughed.

At last, as good luck would have it, a soldier arrived who, hearing the
uproar, imagined that a colt had escaped from his master. Planting
himself courageously with his legs apart in the middle of the road, he
waited with the determined purpose of stopping him and thus preventing
the chance of worse disasters.

When Pinocchio, still at some distance, saw the soldier barricading the
whole street, he endeavored to take him by surprise and to pass between
his legs. But he failed entirely.