Two-Legs slept restlessly that night.
He tossed about on his bed of skins and, when at last he fell asleep, Trust began to bark so loudly that Two-Legs had to get up and see what was happening. He had closed up the hole through which Trust used to get out, because the goose had lately escaped that way and fallen a prey to the fox.
“What is it, Trust?” he asked.
The dog kept on barking and leaping up against him. Two-Legs opened a little shutter and looked out and listened. But there was nothing to see. Then he told the dog to lie down and went back to bed. But now he heard the horse kicking in the stable and the ox began to low and the poultry to cackle. There was no hearing a word for the noise. He had to go out again and found all the animals shaking, as though greatly frightened. The horse stood in a violent sweat and the hens and the ducks and geese fluttered anxiously round and round their roost.
“What can it be?” he said.
He opened the door and stepped out into the night, unarmed and naked, as he had risen from his bed. At that moment, there was a rustling in the bushes. The lion leapt forward, but Two-Legs just had time to spring back into the house and bolt the door behind him.
He stood for a moment in great alarm and did not know what to do.
Through a little hole in the door, he saw the lion lying outside in the bushes, with his eyes fixed on the door, ready to leap again. The yellow eyes glittered with rage. Two-Legs understood that the fight was now to come that had been so long delayed.
He thought first of waking his sons, slipping out through the other door and attacking the lion in the rear. But they slept in different parts of the house; and the day was already breaking in the east; and, while he was gone to fetch them, one of the family might easily go out and fall a prey to the king of the forest.
While he stood and reflected, his fear left him.