but something was growing swiftly in Peter's shrewd little head,
and he sensed impending danger whenever he heard the sound of the
axe. For always there was associated with that sound the cat-like,
thin-faced man with the red bristle on his upper lip, and the one
eye that never opened but was always closed. And Peter had come to
fear this one eyed man more than he feared any of the ghostly
monsters hidden in the black pit of the forest he had braved that
day.

But the owls, and the porcupine, and the fiery-eyed fox that had
run away from him, had put into Peter something which was not in
him yesterday, and he did not slink on his belly when he came to
the edge of the cup between the broken ridge, but stood up boldly
on his crooked legs and looked ahead of him. At the far edge of
the cup, under the western shoulder of the ridge, was a thick
scattering of tall cedars and green poplars and white birch, and
in the shelter of these was a cabin built of logs. A lovelier spot
could not have been chosen for the home of man. The hollow, from
where Peter stood, was a velvety carpet of green, thickly strewn
with flowers and ferns, sweet with the scent of violets and wild
honey-suckle, and filled with the song of birds. Through the
middle of it purled a tiny creek which disappeared between the
ragged shoulders of rock, and close to this creek stood the cabin,
its log walls smothered under a luxuriant growth of wood-vine. But
Peter's quizzical little eyes were not measuring the beauty of the
place, nor were his ears listening to the singing of birds, or the
chattering of a red-squirrel on a stub a few yards away. He was
looking beyond the cabin, to a chalk-white mass of rock that rose
like a giant mushroom in the edge of the trees--and he was
listening to the ringing of the axe, and straining his ears to