The Chatterer was ever a coward, and greater always than any anger he ever worked up was his caution.

He was afraid to follow me out amongst the leaves and twigs.

For that matter, his greater weight would have crashed him through the foliage before he could have got to me.
But it was not necessary for him to reach me, and well he knew it, the scoundrel! With a malevolent expression on his face, his beady eyes gleaming with cruel intelligence, he began teetering.

Teetering!--and with me out on the very edge of the bough, clutching at the twigs that broke continually with my weight.

Twenty feet beneath me was the earth.
Wildly and more--wildly he teetered, grinning at me his gloating hatred.
Then came the end.