spite of
myself, a faint hope began to spring up inside me that this might mean
that I was not to be shot after all. Perhaps Toto at the eleventh hour
had explained everything.

And then footsteps sounded outside, and the hope died away. I shut my
eyes.

Somebody put his arms round my neck, and my nose touched a warm cheek.
I opened my eyes. It was not the man with the gun come to shoot me. It
was Peter. He was breathing very hard, and he had been crying.

'Quiet!' he whispered.

He began to untie the rope.

'You must keep quite quiet, or they will hear us, and then we shall be
stopped. I'm going to take you into the woods, and we'll walk and walk
until we come to the city I told you about that's all gold and
diamonds, and we'll live there for the rest of our lives, and no one
will be able to hurt us. But you must keep very quiet.'

He went to the stable-gate and looked out. Then he gave a little
whistle to me to come after him. And we started out to find the city.

The woods were a long way away, down a hill of long grass and across a
stream; and we went very carefully, keeping in the shadows and running
across the open spaces. And every now and then we would stop and look
back, but there was nobody to be seen. The sun was setting, and
everything was very cool and quiet.

Presently we came to the stream and crossed it by a little wooden
bridge, and then we were in the woods, where nobody could see us.

I had never been in the woods before, and everything was very new and
exciting to me. There were squirrels and rabbits and birds, more than I
had ever seen in my life, and little things that buzzed and flew and
tickled my ears. I wanted to rush about and look at everything, but
Peter called to me, and I came to heel. He knew where we were going,
and I didn't, so I let him lead.

We went very slowly. The wood got thicker and thicker the farther we
got into it. There were bushes that were difficult to push through, and
long branches, covered with thorns, that reached out at you and tore at
you when you tried to get away. And soon it was quite dark, so dark
that I could see nothing, not even Peter, though he was so close. We
went slower and slower, and the darkness was full of queer noises. From
time to time Peter would stop, and I would run to him and put my nose
in his hand. At first he patted me, but after a while he did not pat me
any more, but just gave me his hand to lick, as if it was too much for
him to