At last he could bear it no longer, and one night, when the ducks and hens were asleep, he stole away through an open door, and scrambled on by the bank of the canal, till he reached a wide grassy moor, full of soft marshy places where the reeds grew. But he soon found himself in the middle of a hunting and the gun shots scared him very much. He met a huge creature on four legs, which he afterwards knew to be a dog, who stood and gazed at him with a long red tongue hanging out of his mouth. The duckling grew cold with terror, and tried to hide his head beneath his little wings; but the dog snuffed at him and passed on.
'I am too ugly even for a dog to eat,' said he to himself. 'Well, that is a great mercy.' And he curled himself up in the soft grass till the shots died away in the distance.
