that she was near her burrow, and, with a wonderfully quick movement
for so clumsy a creature, and with a peculiar rustling of all her
quills, Pero crept quickly into her hole, leaving the man perfectly
astonished.

For some time she lay there with her babies, quivering and shaking
with fright--for the man was trying to get in. The light was getting
broader and brighter, and at last, in sheer terror, Pero began to
burrow further into the mound.

She went at it with nose and head and paws, as hard as she could go,
scraping quickly with her sharp-clawed little feet, throwing the earth
behind till she nearly smothered her babies, and pushing her snout-
like nose into the earth as hard and fast as she could.

How long she would have gone on with this can never be known, but one
of the babies, nearly suffocated with the earth, set up a little,
whimpering cry, and Pero's motherly heart responded at once.

She knew it was a cry of pain--of distress--and so she suddenly gave
up the burrowing and turned back to her little one.

It was a good thing she did so, for she had to do some more burrowing
work in order to get the babies out of the earth which she had thrown
over them. But by the time she had done this she realized that the man
had stopped trying to get in, and so she was able to lie down.

Her tired little body was quivering with excitement; her nostrils
opening and shutting convulsively, and her little heart beating like a
trip-hammer. She gathered her babies to her and gave them their