Danger comes when least expected;    'T is often near when not expected.
     —Old Granny Fox.
The long hard winter had passed, and Spring had come. Prickly Porky the Porcupine came down from a tall poplar-tree and slowly stretched himself. He was tired of eating. He was tired of swinging in the tree-top.
 
“I believe I'll have a sun-bath,” said Prickly Porky, and lazily walked toward the edge of the Green Forest in search of a place where the sun lay warm and bright.
 
Now Prickly Porky's stomach was very, very full. He was fat and naturally lazy, so when he came to the doorstep of an old house just on the edge of the Green Forest he sat down to rest. It was sunny and warm there, and the longer he sat the less like moving he felt. He looked about him with his dull eyes and grunted to himself.
 
“It's a deserted house. Nobody lives here, and I guess nobody'll care if I take a nap right here on the doorstep,” said Prickly Porky to himself. “And I don't care if they do,” he added, for Prickly Porky the Porcupine was afraid of nobody and nothing.
 
So Prickly Porky made himself as comfortable as possible, yawned once or twice, tried to wink at jolly, round, red Mr. Sun, who was winking and smiling down at him and then fell fast asleep right on the doorstep of the old house.
 
Now the old house had been deserted. No one had lived in it for a long, long time, a very long time indeed. But it happened that, the night before, old Granny Fox and Reddy Fox had had to move out of their nice home on the edge of the Green Meadows because Farmer Brown's boy had found it. Reddy was very stiff and sore, for he had been shot by a hunter. ............