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 the twin balls of green fire were gone. In
a moment they appeared again, a little farther away. Then a second
time they were gone, and a third time they flashed back at him--so
distant they appeared like needle-points in the darkness.
Something stupendous rose up in Peter. It was the soul of his