They were very cautious, these Night People, for unlike the creatures of the dawn, waking to greet the sun with song and happiness, most of them were sharp-fanged and long-clawed-rovers and pirates of the great wilderness, ready to kill.
And this, too, Peter sensed through the generations of northland dog that was in him.

He heard a wolf howl, coming faintly through the night from miles away, and something told him it was not a dog.

From nearer came the call of a moose, and that same sense told him he had heard a monster bear which his eyes had never seen.

He did not know of the soft-footed, night-eyed creatures of prey--the fox, the lynx, the fisher-cat, the mink and the ermine, nor of the round-eyed, feathered murderers in the tree-tops--yet that same something told him they were out there among the shadows, under the luring glow of the moon.

And a thing happened, all at once, to stab the truth home to him.