When the days grow cold and the nights are clear,
There stalks abroad the spirit of fear.
--Lightfoot the Deer.
It is sad but true. Autumn is often called the sad time of the
year, and it is the sad time. But it shouldn't be. Old Mother
Nature never intended that it should be. She meant it to be the
GLAD time. It is the time when all the little people of the
Green Forest and the Green Meadows have got over the cares and
worries of bringing up families and teaching their children how
to look out for themselves. It is the season when food is
plentiful, and every one is fat and is, or ought to be, care
free. It is the season when Old Mother Nature intended all her
little people to be happy, to have nothing to worry them for the
little time before the coming of cold weather and the hard times
which cold weather always brings.
But instead of this, a grim, dark figure goes stalking over the
Green Meadows and through the Green Forest, and it is called the
Spirit of Fear. It peers into every hiding-place and wherever it
finds one of the little people it sends little cold chills over
him, little chills which jolly, round, bright Mr. Sun cannot
chase away, though he shine his brightest. All night as well as
all day the Spirit of Fear searches out the little people of the
Green Meadows and the Green Forest. It will not let them sleep.
It will not let them eat in peace. It drives them to seek
new hiding-places and then drives them out of those. It keeps
them ever ready to fly or run at the slightest sound.
Peter Rabbit was thinking of this as he sat at the edge of the
dear Old Briar-patch, looking over to the Green Forest. The Green
Forest was no longer just green; it was of many colors, for Old
Mother Nature had set Jack Frost to painting the leaves of the
maple-trees and the beech-trees, and the birch-trees and the
poplar-trees and the chestnut-trees, and he had done his work well.
Very, very lovely were the reds and yellows and browns against
the dark green of the pines and the spruces and the hemlocks.
The Purple Hills were more softly purple than at any other season
of the year. It was all very, very beautiful.
But Peter had no thought for the beauty of it all, for the Spirit
of Fear had visited even the dear Old Briar-patch, and Peter was
afraid. It wasn't fear of Reddy Fox, or Redtail the Hawk, or
Hooty the Owl, or Old Man Coyote. They were forever trying to
catch him, but they did not strike terror to his heart because he
felt quite smart enough to keep out of their clutches. To be
sure, they gave him sudden frights sometimes, when they happened
to surprise him, but these frights lasted only until he reached
the nearest bramble-tangle or hollow log where they could not get
at him. But the fear that chilled his heart now never left him
even for a moment.
And Peter knew that this same fear was clutching at the hearts of
Bob White, hiding in the brown stubble; of Mrs. Grouse, squatting
in the thickest bramble-tangle in the Green Forest; of Uncle
Billy Possum and Bobby Coon in their hollow trees; of Jerry
Muskrat in the Smiling Pool; of Happy Jack Squirrel, hiding in
the tree tops; of Lightfoot the Deer, lying in the closest
thicket he could find. It was even clutching at the hearts of
Granny and Reddy Fox and of great, big Buster Bear. It seemed to
Peter that no one was so big or so small that this terrible
Spirit of Fear had not searched him out.
Far in the distance sounded a sudden bang. Peter jumped and
shivered. He knew that every one else who had heard that bang
had jumped and shivered just as he had. It was the season of
hunters with terrible guns. It was man who had sent this
terrible Spirit of Fear to chill the hearts of the little meadow
and forest people at this very time when Old Mother Nature had
made all things so beautiful and had intended that they should
be happiest and most free from care and worry. It was man who
had made the autumn a sad time instead of a glad time, the very
saddest time of all the year, when Old Mother Nature had done
her best to make it the most beautiful.
"I don't understand these men creatures," said Peter to little
Mrs. Peter, as they stared fearfully out from the dear Old
Briar-patch. "They seem to find pleasure, actually find pleasure,
in trying to kill us. I don't understand them at all. They
haven't any hearts. That must be the reason; they haven't any
hearts."