“I hate him! hate him! hate him!” exclaimed Peter fiercely, as he crawled under the very middle of a great pile of brush after the narrowest of narrow escapes.  He had been hopping along one of his favorite little paths without a thought of danger.  Presently he came to a little branch path.  There he hesitated.  He had intended to keep on along the main path, but suddenly he had a feeling that it would be better to take the branch path.  He knew no reason why he shouldn’t keep on as he had planned.  It was just a feeling that it would be better to take the other path, a feeling without any real reason.  So he hesitated and finally turned down the little branch path.  As he did so he caught a glimpse of a brown form moving stealthily from behind a log farther up the main little path.  It was moving swiftly in the direction of the little branch path.  That glimpse was enough for Peter.  That stealthy form could be but one person—­Yowler the Bob-cat.  He turned and darted back the way he had come and then off to one side to the great pile of brush under which he had crawled.

“Who is it you hate?” asked a voice.

For just a second Peter was startled, then he recognized the voice of Mrs. Grouse, one of his very best friends.  “Yowler the Bob-cat,” said he as fiercely as before.

“I don’t love him myself,” replied Mrs. Grouse.  “I suspected that he was somewhere about, and that is why I am here.  Did you see him?”

“Yes,” said Peter, “I saw him.  He was hiding beside my favorite little path, and it is a wonder I didn’t hop straight into his jaws.  That fellow doesn’t hunt fairly.  He doesn’t give us a chance.  He hasn’t any honor.”

“Honor!” exclaimed Mrs. Grouse.  “Honor!  Of course he hasn’t any honor.  There hasn’t been any honor in Yowler’s family since old Mr. Bob-cat, the first of all the Bob-cats, left his honor in Turkey Wood, way back in the days when the world was young, and failed to get it again.  Honor!  Of course Yowler hasn’t any.  What could you expect?”

At once Peter was all ears.  “I’ve never heard about that,” said he.  “Tell me about it, Mrs. Grouse.  We’ve got to stay right where we are for a long time to make sure that Yowler has given us up and gone away, so you will have plenty of time to tell me the story.  Where was Turkey Wood, and how did old Mr. Bob-cat happen to leave his honor there?”

“He didn’t happen to; he did it deliberately,” replied Mrs. Grouse.  “You see, it was like this:  In the beginning of things, when Old Mother Nature made the first little people and the first big people of the Green Forest and the Green Meadows, she was too busy to watch over them all the time, so for a while she put them on their honor not to harm one another or interfere with one another in any way, for she wanted them to live in peace and happiness and raise families to people the Great World.