At last, when he was prowling along an old forest road and hoping to meet a tender young Wood-Mouse, he saw a couple of light-colored animals ahead of him. They looked to him very much like Kittens, but he remembered how the Skunk had snubbed him when taken for a Cat, and he kept still. He ran to overtake them and see more clearly, and just as he reached them they all came to a turn in the road.
Before he could speak or they could notice that he was there, the wind roared through the branches above, and just ahead two terrible great eyes glared at them out of an old log. They all stopped with their back-fur bristling and their tails arched stiffly. Not a sound did one of them make. They lifted first one foot and then another and backed slowly and silently away. When they had gone far enough, they turned quickly and ran down the old road as fast as their twelve feet could carry them. They never stopped until they were in the road for home and could look back in the starlight and be sure that nobody was following them. Then they stared at each other--the Yellow Kitten, the White Kitten, and the Brown Kitten.
"Did you run away to live in the forest?" asked the sisters.
"Well then, we did run away, and met each other just before you came. We meant to live in the forest."
"So did I," said he. "And I couldn't find any hollow tree."
"Did you meet that dreadful bird?" said they,--"the one who never hears your answers and keeps asking you over and over?"
"Ha-ha!" screamed a laughing little Screech-Owl, who had seen what had happened in the old forest road and flapped along noiselessly behind them.
"Three big Kittens afraid of fox-fire! O-ho! O-ho!"
Now all of them had heard about fox-fire and knew it was the light which shines from some kinds of rotten wood in the dark, but they held up their heads and answered, "We're not afraid of fox-fire."
"Ha-ha!" screamed the Screech-Owl again. "Thought you saw big eyes glaring at you. Only fox-fire. Dare you to come back if you are not afraid."
"We don't want to go back," answered the Brown Kitten. "We haven't time."
"Ha-ha!" screamed the Screech-Owl. "Haven't time! Where are you going?"
"Going home, of course," answered the Brown Kitten. And then he whispered to his sisters, "Let's!"