midnight
It was a lynx , and for a space Peter paused , and then sped soft-footed past the moon-lit spot where the stiletto-clawed menace of the woods had passed . Now that he was alone , and no longer accompanied by a human presence whose footsteps and scent held the wild things aloof and still , Peter felt nearer and nearer to him the beat and stir of life . Powerful beaks , instead of remaining closed and without sound , snapped and hissed at him as the big gray owls watched his passing . He heard the rustling of brush , soft as the stir of a woman 's dress , where living things were secretly moving , and he heard the louder crash of clumsy and piggish feet , and caught the strong scent of a porcupine as it waddled to its midnight lunch of poplar bark . Then the trail ended , and Jolly Roger 's scent led into the pathless forest , with its shifting streams and pools of moonlight , its shadows and black pits of darkness . And here -- now -- Peter began his trespass into the strongholds of the People of the Night . He heard a wolf howl , a cry filled with loneliness , yet with a shivering death-note in it ; he caught the musky , skunkish odor of a fox that was stalking prey in the face of a whispering breath of wind ; once , in a moment of dead stillness , he listened to the snap of teeth and the crackle of bones in one of the dark pits , where a fisher-cat -- with eyes that gleamed like coals of fire -- was devouring the warm and bleeding carcass of a mother partridge .