автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  The Wind in the Willows

Kenneth Grahame

I The River Bank

The Mole had been work­ing very hard all the morn­ing, spring-clean­ing his little home. First with brooms, then with dust­ers; then on lad­ders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of white­wash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of white­wash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was mov­ing in the air above and in the earth be­low and around him, pen­et­rat­ing even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of di­vine dis­con­tent and long­ing. It was small won­der, then, that he sud­denly flung down his brush on the floor, said, “Bother!” and “O blow!” and also “Hang spring-clean­ing!” and bolted out of the house without even wait­ing to put on his coat. So­mething up above was call­ing him im­per­i­ously, and he made for the steep little tun­nel which answered in his case to the grav­elled car­riage-drive owned by an­im­als whose res­id­ences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, work­ing busily with his little paws and mut­ter­ing to him­self, “Up we go! Up we go!” till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sun­light and he found him­self rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.

“This is fine!” he said to him­self. “This is bet­ter than white­wash­ing!” The sun­shine struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated brow, and after the se­clu­sion of the cel­lar­age he had lived in so long the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hear­ing al­most like a shout. Jump­ing off all his four legs at once, in the joy of liv­ing and the de­light of spring without its clean­ing, he pur­sued his way across the meadow till he reached the hedge on the fur­ther side.

“Hold up!” said an eld­erly rab­bit at the gap. “Six­pence for the priv­ilege of passing by the private road!” He was bowled over in an in­stant by the im­pa­tient and con­temp­tu­ous Mole, who trot­ted along the side of the hedge chaff­ing the other rab­bits as they peeped hur­riedly from their holes to see what the row was about. “Onion-sauce! Onion-sauce!” he re­marked jeer­ingly, and was gone be­fore they could think of a thor­oughly sat­is­fact­ory reply. Then they all star­ted grumbling at each other. “How stu­pid you are! Why didn’t you tell him—” “Well, why didn’t you say—” “You might have re­minded him—” and so on, in the usual way; but, of course, it was then much too late, as is al­ways the case.

It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and thither through the mead­ows he rambled busily, along the hedgerows, across the copses, find­ing every­where birds build­ing, flowers bud­ding, leaves thrust­ing—everything happy, and pro­gress­ive, and oc­cu­pied. And in­stead of hav­ing an un­easy con­science prick­ing him and whis­per­ing “white­wash!” he some­how could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy cit­izens. After all, the best part of a hol­i­day is per­haps not so much to be rest­ing your­self, as to see all the other fel­lows busy work­ing.

He thought his hap­pi­ness was com­plete when, as he me­andered aim­lessly along, sud­denly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river be­fore—this sleek, sinu­ous, full-bod­ied an­imal, chas­ing and chuck­ling, grip­ping things with a gurgle and leav­ing them with a laugh, to fling it­self on fresh play­mates that shook them­selves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver—glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chat­ter and bubble. The Mole was be­witched, en­tranced, fas­cin­ated. By the side of the river he trot­ted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell­bound by ex­cit­ing stor­ies; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a bab­bling pro­ces­sion of the best stor­ies in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the in­sa­ti­able sea.

As he sat on the grass and looked across the river, a dark hole in the bank op­pos­ite, just above the wa­ter’s edge, caught his eye, and dream­ily he fell to con­sid­er­ing what a nice, snug dwell­ing-place it would make for an an­imal with few wants and fond of a bi­jou river­side res­id­ence, above flood level and re­mote from noise and dust. As he gazed, some­thing bright and small seemed to twinkle down in the heart of it, van­ished, then twinkled once more like a tiny star. But it could hardly be a star in such an un­likely situ­ation; and it was too glit­ter­ing and small for a glow­worm. Then, as he looked, it winked at him, and so de­clared it­self to be an eye; and a small face began gradu­ally to grow up round it, like a frame round a pic­ture.

A brown little face, with whiskers.

A grave round face, with the same twinkle in its eye that had first at­trac­ted his no­tice.

Small neat ears and thick silky hair.

It was the Water Rat!

Then the two an­im­als stood and re­garded each other cau­tiously.

“Hullo, Mole!” said the Water Rat.

“Hullo, Rat!” said the Mole.

“Would you like to come over?” en­quired the Rat presently.

“Oh, it’s all very well to talk,” said the Mole rather pet­tishly, he be­ing new to a river and river­side life and its ways.

The Rat said noth­ing, but stooped and un­fastened a rope and hauled on it; then lightly stepped into a little boat which the Mole had not ob­served. It was painted blue out­side and white within, and was just the size for two an­im­als; and the Mole’s whole heart went out to it at once, even though he did not yet fully un­der­stand its uses.

The Rat sculled smartly across and made fast. Then he held up his fore­paw as the Mole stepped gingerly down. “Lean on that!” he said. “Now then, step lively!” and the Mole to his sur­prise and rap­ture found him­self ac­tu­ally seated in the stern of a real boat.

“This has been a won­der­ful day!” said he, as the Rat shoved off and took to the sculls again. “Do you know, I’ve never been in a boat be­fore in all my life.”

“What?” cried the Rat, open-mouthed: “Never been in a—you never—well I—what have you been do­ing, then?”

“Is it so nice as all that?” asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite pre­pared to be­lieve it as he leant back in his seat and sur­veyed the cush­ions, the oars, the row­locks, and all the fas­cin­at­ing fit­tings, and felt the boat sway lightly un­der him.

“Nice? It’s the only thing,” said the Water Rat sol­emnly as he leant for­ward for his stroke. “Be­lieve me, my young friend, there is noth­ing—ab­so­lute noth­ing—half so much worth do­ing as simply mess­ing about in boats. Sim­ply mess­ing,” he went on dream­ily: “mess­ing—about—in—boats; mess­ing—”

“Look ahead, Rat!” cried the Mole sud­denly.

It was too late. The boat struck the bank full tilt. The dreamer, the joy­ous oars­man, lay on his back at the bot­tom of the boat, his heels in the air.

“—about in boats—or with boats,” the Rat went on com­posedly, pick­ing him­self up with a pleas­ant laugh. “In or out of ’em, it doesn’t mat­ter. Noth­ing seems really to mat­ter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you ar­rive at your des­tin­a­tion or whether you reach some­where else, or whether you never get any­where at all, you’re al­ways busy, and you never do any­thing in par­tic­u­lar; and when you’ve done it there’s al­ways some­thing else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much bet­ter not. Look here! If you’ve really noth­ing else on hand this morn­ing, sup­pos­ing we drop down the river to­gether, and have a long day of it?”

The Mole waggled his toes from sheer hap­pi­ness, spread his chest with a sigh of full con­tent­ment, and leant back bliss­fully into the soft cush­ions. “What a day I’m hav­ing!” he said. “Let us start at once!”

“Hold hard a minute, then!” said the Rat. He looped the painter through a ring in his land­ing-stage, climbed up into his hole above, and after a short in­ter­val re­appeared stag­ger­ing un­der a fat wicker lunch­eon-bas­ket.

“Shove that un­der your feet,” he ob­served to the Mole, as he passed it down into the boat. Then he un­tied the painter and took the sculls again.

“What’s in­side it?” asked the Mole, wrig­gling with curi­os­ity.

“There’s cold chicken in­side it,” replied the Rat briefly: “coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwichespottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater—”

“O stop, stop!” cried the Mole in ec­stas­ies. “This is too much!”

“Do you really think so?” en­quired the Rat ser­i­ously. “It’s only what I al­ways take on these little ex­cur­sions; and the other an­im­als are al­ways telling me that I’m a mean beast and cut it very fine!”

The Mole never heard a word he was say­ing. Ab­sorbed in the new life he was en­ter­ing upon, in­tox­ic­ated with the sparkle, the ripple, the scents and the sounds and the sun­light, he trailed a paw in the wa­ter and dreamed long wak­ing dreams. The Water Rat, like the good little fel­low he was, sculled stead­ily on and for­bore to dis­turb him.

“I like your clothes aw­fully, old chap,” he re­marked after some half an hour or so had passed. “I’m go­ing to get a black vel­vet smoking-suit my­self some day, as soon as I can af­ford it.”

“I beg your par­don,” said the Mole, pulling him­self to­gether with an ef­fort. “You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me. So—this—is—a—River!”

“The River,” cor­rec­ted the Rat.

“And you really live by the river? What a jolly life!”

“By it and with it and on it and in it,” said the Rat. “It’s brother and sis­ter to me, and aunts, and com­pany, and food and drink, and (nat­ur­ally) wash­ing. It’s my world, and I don’t want any other. What it hasn’t got is not worth hav­ing, and what it doesn’t know is not worth know­ing. Lord! the times we’ve had to­gether! Whether in winter or sum­mer, spring or au­tumn, it’s al­ways got its fun and its ex­cite­ments. When the floods are on in Febru­ary, and my cel­lars and base­ment are brim­ming with drink that’s no good to me, and the brown wa­ter runs by my best bed­room win­dow; or again when it all drops away and shows patches of mud that smells like plum-cake, and the rushes and weed clog the chan­nels, and I can pot­ter about dry shod over most of the bed of it and find fresh food to eat, and things care­less people have dropped out of boats!”

“But isn’t it a bit dull at times?” the Mole ven­tured to ask. “Just you and the river, and no one else to pass a word with?”

“No one else to—well, I mustn’t be hard on you,” said the Rat with for­bear­ance. “You’re new to it, and of course you don’t know. The bank is so crowded nowadays that many people are mov­ing away al­to­gether. O no, it isn’t what it used to be, at all. Ot­ters, king­fish­ers, dabchicks, moorhens, all of them about all day long and al­ways want­ing you to do some­thing—as if a fel­low had no busi­ness of his own to at­tend to!”

“What lies over there?” asked the Mole, wav­ing a paw to­wards a back­ground of wood­land that darkly framed the wa­ter-mead­ows on one side of the river.

“That? O, that’s just the Wild Wood,” said the Rat shortly. “We don’t go there very much, we river-bankers.”

“Aren’t they—aren’t they very nice people in there?” said the Mole a trifle nervously.

“W-e-ll,” replied the Rat, “let me see. The squir­rels are all right. And the rab­bits—some of ’em, but rab­bits are a mixed lot. And then there’s Badger, of course. He lives right in the heart of it; wouldn’t live any­where else, either, if you paid him to do it. Dear old Badger! Nobody in­ter­feres with him. They’d bet­ter not,” he ad­ded sig­ni­fic­antly.

“Why, who should in­ter­fere with him?” asked the Mole.

“Well, of course—there—are oth­ers,” ex­plained the Rat in a hes­it­at­ing sort of way. “Weasels—and stoats—and foxes—and so on. They’re all right in a way—I’m very good friends with them—pass the time of day when we meet, and all that—but they break out some­times, there’s no deny­ing it, and then—well, you can’t really trust them, and that’s the fact.”

The Mole knew well that it is quite against an­imal-etiquette to dwell on pos­sible trouble ahead, or even to al­lude to it; so he dropped the sub­ject.

“And bey­ond the Wild Wood again?” he asked; “where it’s all blue and dim, and one sees what may be hills or per­haps they mayn’t, and some­thing like the smoke of towns, or is it only cloud-drift?”

“Bey­ond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,” said the Rat. “And that’s some­thing that doesn’t mat­ter, either to you or me. I’ve never been there, and I’m never go­ing, nor you either, if you’ve got any sense at all. Don’t ever refer to it again, please. Now then! Here’s our back­wa­ter at last, where we’re go­ing to lunch.”

Leav­ing the main stream, they now passed into what seemed at first sight like a little land­locked lake. Green turf sloped down to either edge, brown snaky tree-roots gleamed be­low the sur­face of the quiet wa­ter, while ahead of them the sil­very shoulder and foamy tumble of a weir, arm-in-arm with a rest­less drip­ping mill-wheel, that held up in its turn a grey-gabled mill-house, filled the air with a sooth­ing mur­mur of sound, dull and smoth­ery, yet with little clear voices speak­ing up cheer­fully out of it at in­ter­vals. It was so very beau­ti­ful that the Mole could only hold up both fore­paws and gasp: “O my! O my! O my!”

The Rat brought the boat along­side the bank, made her fast, helped the still awk­ward Mole safely ashore, and swung out the lunch­eon-bas­ket. The Mole begged as a fa­vour to be al­lowed to un­pack it all by him­self; and the Rat was very pleased to in­dulge him, and to sprawl at full length on the grass and rest, while his ex­cited friend shook out the table­cloth and spread it, took out all the mys­ter­i­ous pack­ets one by one and ar­ranged their con­tents in due or­der, still gasp­ing: “O my! O my!” at each fresh rev­el­a­tion. When all was ready, the Rat said, “Now, pitch in, old fel­low!” and the Mole was in­deed very glad to obey, for he had star­ted his spring-clean­ing at a very early hour that morn­ing, as people will do, and had not paused for bite or sup; and he had been through a very great deal since that dis­tant time which now seemed so many days ago.

“What are you look­ing at?” said the Rat presently, when the edge of their hun­ger was some­what dulled, and the Mole’s eyes were able to wander off the table­cloth a little.

“I am look­ing,” said the Mole, “at a streak of bubbles that I see trav­el­ling along the sur­face of the wa­ter. That is a thing that strikes me as funny.”

“Bubbles? Oho!” said the Rat, and chir­ruped cheer­ily in an in­vit­ing sort of way.

A broad glisten­ing muzzle showed it­self above the edge of the bank, and the Ot­ter hauled him­self out and shook the wa­ter from his coat.

“Greedy beg­gars!” he ob­served, mak­ing for the provender. “Why didn’t you in­vite me, Ratty?”

“This was an im­promptu af­fair,” ex­plained the Rat. “By the way—my friend Mr. Mole.”

“Proud, I’m sure,” said the Ot­ter, and the two an­im­als were friends forth­with.

“Such a rum­pus every­where!” con­tin­ued the Ot­ter. “All the world seems out on the river today. I came up this back­wa­ter to try and get a mo­ment’s peace, and then stumble upon you fel­lows!—At least—I beg par­don—I don’t ex­actly mean that, you know.”

There was a rustle be­hind them, pro­ceed­ing from a hedge wherein last year’s leaves still clung thick, and a stripy head, with high shoulders be­hind it, peered forth on them.

“Come on, old Badger!” shouted the Rat.

The Badger trot­ted for­ward a pace or two, then grunted, “H’m! Com­pany,” and turned his back and dis­ap­peared from view.

“That’s just the sort of fel­low he is!” ob­served the dis­ap­poin­ted Rat. “Sim­ply hates So­ci­ety! Now we shan’t see any more of him today. Well, tell us, who’s out on the river?”

“Toad’s out, for one,” replied the Ot­ter. “In his brand-new wager-boat; new togs, new everything!”

The two an­im­als looked at each other and laughed.

“Once, it was noth­ing but sail­ing,” said the Rat. “Then he tired of that and took to punt­ing. Noth­ing would please him but to punt all day and every day, and a nice mess he made of it. Last year it was house­boat­ing, and we all had to go and stay with him in his house­boat, and pre­tend we liked it. He was go­ing to spend the rest of his life in a house­boat. It’s all the same, whatever he takes up; he gets tired of it, and starts on some­thing fresh.”

“Such a good fel­low, too,” re­marked the Ot­ter re­flect­ively; “but no sta­bil­ity—es­pe­cially in a boat!”

From where they sat they could get a glimpse of the main stream across the is­land that sep­ar­ated them; and just then a wager-boat flashed into view, the rower—a short, stout fig­ure—splash­ing badly and rolling a good deal, but work­ing his hard­est. The Rat stood up and hailed him, but Toad—for it was he—shook his head and settled sternly to his work.

“He’ll be out of the boat in a minute if he rolls like that,” said the Rat, sit­ting down again.

“Of course he will,” chuckled the Ot­ter. “Did I ever tell you that good story about Toad and the lock-keeper? It happened this way. Toad. …”

An er­rant May­fly swerved un­stead­ily athwart the cur­rent in the in­tox­ic­ated fash­ion af­fected by young bloods of May­flies see­ing life. A swirl of wa­ter and a “cloop!” and the May­fly was vis­ible no more.

Neither was the Ot­ter.

The Mole looked down. The voice was still in his ears, but the turf whereon he had sprawled was clearly va­cant. Not an Ot­ter to be seen, as far as the dis­tant ho­ri­zon.

But again there was a streak of bubbles on the sur­face of the river.

The Rat hummed a tune, and the Mole re­col­lec­ted that an­imal-etiquette for­bade any sort of com­ment on the sud­den dis­ap­pear­ance of one’s friends at any mo­ment, for any reason or no reason whatever.

“Well, well,” said the Rat, “I sup­pose we ought to be mov­ing. I won­der which of us had bet­ter pack the lunch­eon-bas­ket?” He did not speak as if he was fright­fully eager for the treat.

“O, please let me,” said the Mole. So, of course, the Rat let him.

Pack­ing the bas­ket was not quite such pleas­ant work as un­pack­ing the bas­ket. It never is. But the Mole was bent on en­joy­ing everything, and al­though just when he had got the bas­ket packed and strapped up tightly he saw a plate star­ing up at him from the grass, and when the job had been done again the Rat poin­ted out a fork which any­body ought to have seen, and last of all, be­hold! the mus­tard pot, which he had been sit­ting on without know­ing it—still, some­how, the thing got fin­ished at last, without much loss of tem­per.

The af­ter­noon sun was get­ting low as the Rat sculled gently home­wards in a dreamy mood, mur­mur­ing po­etry-things over to him­self, and not pay­ing much at­ten­tion to Mole. But the Mole was very full of lunch, and self-sat­is­fac­tion, and pride, and already quite at home in a boat (so he thought), and was get­ting a bit rest­less be­sides: and presently he said, “Ratty! Please, I want to row, now!”

The Rat shook his head with a smile. “Not yet, my young friend,” he said; “wait till you’ve had a few les­sons. It’s not so easy as it looks.”

The Mole was quiet for a minute or two. But he began to feel more and more jeal­ous of Rat, scull­ing so strongly and so eas­ily along, and his pride began to whis­per that he could do it every bit as well. He jumped up and seized the sculls so sud­denly that the Rat, who was gaz­ing out over the wa­ter and say­ing more po­etry-things to him­self, was taken by sur­prise and fell back­wards off his seat with his legs in the air for the second time, while the tri­umphant Mole took his place and grabbed the sculls with en­tire con­fid­ence.

“Stop it, you silly ass!” cried the Rat, from the bot­tom of the boat. “You can’t do it! You’ll have us over!”

The Mole flung his sculls back with a flour­ish, and made a great dig at the wa­ter. He missed the sur­face al­to­gether, his legs flew up above his head, and he found him­self ly­ing on the top of the pros­trate Rat. Greatly alarmed, he made a grab at the side of the boat, and the next mo­ment—Sploosh!

Over went the boat, and he found him­self strug­gling in the river.

O my, how cold the wa­ter was, and O, how very wet it felt! How it sang in his ears as he went down, down, down! How bright and wel­come the sun looked as he rose to the sur­face cough­ing and splut­ter­ing! How black was his des­pair when he felt him­self sink­ing again! Then a firm paw gripped him by the back of his neck. It was the Rat, and he was evid­ently laugh­ing—the Mole could feel him laugh­ing, right down his arm and through his paw, and so into his—the Mole’s—neck.

The Rat got hold of a scull and shoved it un­der the Mole’s arm; then he did the same by the other side of him and, swim­ming be­hind, pro­pelled the help­less an­imal to shore, hauled him out, and set him down on the bank, a squashy, pulpy lump of misery.

When the Rat had rubbed him down a bit, and wrung some of the wet out of him, he said, “Now then, old fel­low! Trot up and down the tow­ing-path as hard as you can, till you’re warm and dry again, while I dive for the lunch­eon-bas­ket.”

So the dis­mal Mole, wet without and ashamed within, trot­ted about till he was fairly dry, while the Rat plunged into the wa­ter again, re­covered the boat, righted her and made her fast, fetched his float­ing prop­erty to shore by de­grees, and fi­nally dived suc­cess­fully for the lunch­eon-bas­ket and struggled to land with it.

When all was ready for a start once more, the Mole, limp and de­jec­ted, took his seat in the stern of the boat; and as they set off, he said in a low voice, broken with emo­tion, “Ratty, my gen­er­ous friend! I am very sorry in­deed for my fool­ish and un­grate­ful con­duct. My heart quite fails me when I think how I might have lost that beau­ti­ful lunch­eon-bas­ket. Indeed, I have been a com­plete ass, and I know it. Will you over­look it this once and for­give me, and let things go on as be­fore?”

“That’s all right, bless you!” re­spon­ded the Rat cheer­ily. “What’s a little wet to a Water Rat? I’m more in the wa­ter than out of it most days. Don’t you think any more about it; and look here! I really think you had bet­ter come and stop with me for a little time. It’s very plain and rough, you know—not like Toad’s house at all—but you haven’t seen that yet; still, I can make you com­fort­able. And I’ll teach you to row and to swim, and you’ll soon be as handy on the wa­ter as any of us.”

The Mole was so touched by his kind man­ner of speak­ing that he could find no voice to an­swer him; and he had to brush away a tear or two with the back of his paw. But the Rat kindly looked in an­other dir­ec­tion, and presently the Mole’s spir­its re­vived again, and he was even able to give some straight back­talk to a couple of moorhens who were snig­ger­ing to each other about his be­draggled ap­pear­ance.

When they got home, the Rat made a bright fire in the par­lour, and planted the Mole in an arm­chair in front of it, hav­ing fetched down a dress­ing-gown and slip­pers for him, and told him river stor­ies till sup­per­time. Very thrill­ing stor­ies they were, too, to an earth-dwell­ing an­imal like Mole. St­or­ies about weirs, and sud­den floods, and leap­ing pike, and steam­ers that flung hard bottles—at least bottles were cer­tainly flung, and from steam­ers, so pre­sum­ably by them; and about her­ons, and how par­tic­u­lar they were whom they spoke to; and about ad­ven­tures down drains, and night-fish­ings with Ot­ter, or ex­cur­sions far afield with Badger. Sup­per was a most cheer­ful meal; but very shortly af­ter­wards a ter­ribly sleepy Mole had to be es­cor­ted up­stairs by his con­sid­er­ate host, to the best bed­room, where he soon laid his head on his pil­low in great peace and con­tent­ment, know­ing that his new­found friend, the River, was lap­ping the sill of his win­dow.

This day was only the first of many sim­ilar ones for the eman­cip­ated Mole, each of them longer and full of in­terest as the ripen­ing sum­mer moved on­ward. He learnt to swim and to row, and entered into the joy of run­ning wa­ter; and with his ear to the reed-stems he caught, at in­ter­vals, some­thing of what the wind went whis­per­ing so con­stantly among them.

II The Open Road

“Ratty,” said the Mole sud­denly, one bright sum­mer morn­ing, “if you please, I want to ask you a fa­vour.”

The Rat was sit­ting on the river bank, singing a little song. He had just com­posed it him­self, so he was very taken up with it, and would not pay proper at­ten­tion to Mole or any­thing else. Since early morn­ing he had been swim­ming in the river, in com­pany with his friends, the ducks. And when the ducks stood on their heads sud­denly, as ducks will, he would dive down and tickle their necks, just un­der where their chins would be if ducks had chins, till they were forced to come to the sur­face again in a hurry, splut­ter­ing and angry and shak­ing their feath­ers at him, for it is im­possible to say quite all you feel when your head is un­der wa­ter. At last they im­plored him to go away and at­tend to his own af­fairs and leave them to mind theirs. So the Rat went away, and sat on the river bank in the sun, and made up a song about them, which he called:

“Ducks’ Ditty.”

All along the back­wa­ter,
Through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a-dab­bling,
Up tails all!

Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails,
Yel­low feet a-quiver,
Yel­low bills all out of sight
Busy in the river!

Slushy green un­der­growth
Where the roach swim—
Here we keep our lar­der,
Cool and full and dim.

Every­one for what he likes!
We like to be
Heads down, tails up,
Dab­bling free!

High in the blue above
Swifts whirl and call—
We are down a-dab­bling
Up tails all!

“I don’t know that I think so very much of that little song, Rat,” ob­served the Mole cau­tiously. He was no poet him­self and didn’t care who knew it; and he had a can­did nature.

“Nor don’t the ducks neither,” replied the Rat cheer­fully. “They say, ‘Why can’t fel­lows be al­lowed to do what they like when they like and as they like, in­stead of other fel­lows sit­ting on banks and watch­ing them all the time and mak­ing re­marks and po­etry and things about them? What non­sense it all is!’ That’s what the ducks say.”

“So it is, so it is,” said the Mole, with great hearti­ness.

“No, it isn’t!” cried the Rat in­dig­nantly.

“Well then, it isn’t, it isn’t,” replied the Mole sooth­ingly. “But what I wanted to ask you was, won’t you take me to call on Mr. Toad? I’ve heard so much about him, and I do so want to make his ac­quaint­ance.”

“Why, cer­tainly,” said the good-natured Rat, jump­ing to his feet and dis­miss­ing po­etry from his mind for the day. “Get the boat out, and we’ll paddle up there at once. It’s never the wrong time to call on Toad. Early or late, he’s al­ways the same fel­low. Al­ways good-tempered, al­ways glad to see you, al­ways sorry when you go!”

“He must be a very nice an­imal,” ob­served the Mole, as he got into the boat and took the sculls, while the Rat settled him­self com­fort­ably in the stern.

“He is in­deed the best of an­im­als,” replied Rat. “So simple, so good-natured, and so af­fec­tion­ate. Per­haps he’s not very clever—we can’t all be geni­uses; and it may be that he is both boast­ful and con­ceited. But he has got some great qual­it­ies, has Toady.”

Round­ing a bend in the river, they came in sight of a hand­some, dig­ni­fied old house of mel­lowed red brick, with well-kept lawns reach­ing down to the wa­ter’s edge.

“There’s Toad Hall,” said the Rat; “and that creek on the left, where the no­tice-board says, ‘Priv­ate. No land­ing al­lowed,’ leads to his boat­house, where we’ll leave the boat. The stables are over there to the right. That’s the ban­quet­ing-hall you’re look­ing at now—very old, that is. Toad is rather rich, you know, and this is really one of the nicest houses in these parts, though we never ad­mit as much to Toad.”

They glided up the creek, and the Mole shipped his sculls as they passed into the shadow of a large boat­house. Here they saw many hand­some boats, slung from the cross­beams or hauled up on a slip, but none in the wa­ter; and the place had an un­used and a deser­ted air.

The Rat looked around him. “I un­der­stand,” said he. “Boat­ing is played out. He’s tired of it, and done with it. I won­der what new fad he has taken up now? Come along and let’s look him up. We shall hear all about it quite soon enough.”

They dis­em­barked, and strolled across the gay flower-decked lawns in search of Toad, whom they presently happened upon rest­ing in a wicker garden-chair, with a pre­oc­cu­pied ex­pres­sion of face, and a large map spread out on his knees.

“Hooray!” he cried, jump­ing up on see­ing them, “this is splen­did!” He shook the paws of both of them warmly, never wait­ing for an in­tro­duc­tion to the Mole. “How kind of you!” he went on, dan­cing round them. “I was just go­ing to send a boat down the river for you, Ratty, with strict or­ders that you were to be fetched up here at once, whatever you were do­ing. I want you badly—both of you. Now what will you take? Come in­side and have some­thing! You don’t know how lucky it is, your turn­ing up just now!”

“Let’s sit quiet a bit, Toady!” said the Rat, throw­ing him­self into an easy chair, while the Mole took an­other by the side of him and made some civil re­mark about Toad’s “de­light­ful res­id­ence.”

“Fin­est house on the whole river,” cried Toad bois­ter­ously. “Or any­where else, for that mat­ter,” he could not help adding.

Here the Rat nudged the Mole. Un­for­tu­nately the Toad saw him do it, and turned very red. There was a mo­ment’s pain­ful si­lence. Then Toad burst out laugh­ing. “All right, Ratty,” he said. “It’s only my way, you know. And it’s not such a very bad house, is it? You know, you rather like it your­self. Now, look here. Let’s be sens­ible. You are the very an­im­als I wanted. You’ve got to help me. It’s most im­port­ant!”

“It’s about your row­ing, I sup­pose,” said the Rat, with an in­no­cent air. “You’re get­ting on fairly well, though you splash a good bit still. With a great deal of pa­tience and any quant­ity of coach­ing, you may—”

“O, pooh! boat­ing!” in­ter­rup­ted the Toad, in great dis­gust. “Silly boy­ish amuse­ment. I’ve given that up long ago. Sheer waste of time, that’s what it is. It makes me down­right sorry to see you fel­lows, who ought to know bet­ter, spend­ing all your en­er­gies in that aim­less man­ner. No, I’ve dis­covered the real thing, the only genu­ine oc­cu­pa­tion for a life­time. I pro­pose to de­vote the re­mainder of mine to it, and can only re­gret the wasted years that lie be­hind me, squandered in tri­vi­al­it­ies. Come with me, dear Ratty, and your ami­able friend also, if he will be so very good, just as far as the stable-yard, and you shall see what you shall see!”

He led the way to the stable-yard ac­cord­ingly, the Rat fol­low­ing with a most mis­trust­ful ex­pres­sion; and there, drawn out of the coach-house into the open, they saw a gipsy cara­van, shin­ing with new­ness, painted a ca­nary-yel­low picked out with green, and red wheels.

“There you are!” cried the Toad, strad­dling and ex­pand­ing him­self. “There’s real life for you, em­bod­ied in that little cart. The open road, the dusty high­way, the heath, the com­mon, the hedgerows, the rolling downs! Camps, vil­lages, towns, cit­ies! Here today, up and off to some­where else to­mor­row! Travel, change, in­terest, ex­cite­ment! The whole world be­fore you, and a ho­ri­zon that’s al­ways chan­ging! And mind! this is the very finest cart of its sort that was ever built, without any ex­cep­tion. Come in­side and look at the ar­range­ments. Planned ’em all my­self, I did!”

The Mole was tre­mend­ously in­ter­ested and ex­cited, and fol­lowed him eagerly up the steps and into the in­terior of the cara­van. The Rat only snorted and thrust his hands deep into his pock­ets, re­main­ing where he was.

It was in­deed very com­pact and com­fort­able. Little sleep­ing bunks—a little table that fol­ded up against the wall—a cook­ing-stove, lock­ers, book­shelves, a bird­cage with a bird in it; and pots, pans, jugs, and kettles of every size and vari­ety.

“All com­plete!” said the Toad tri­umphantly, pulling open a locker. “You see—bis­cuits, pot­ted lob­ster, sardines—everything you can pos­sibly want. Soda-wa­ter here—baccy there—let­ter-pa­per, ba­con, jam, cards, and dom­in­oes—you’ll find,” he con­tin­ued, as they des­cen­ded the steps again, “you’ll find that noth­ing whatever has been for­got­ten, when we make our start this af­ter­noon.”

“I beg your par­don,” said the Rat slowly, as he chewed a straw, “but did I over­hear you say some­thing about ‘we,’ and ‘start,’ and ‘this af­ter­noon’?”

“Now, you dear good old Ratty,” said Toad im­plor­ingly, “don’t be­gin talk­ing in that stiff and sniffy sort of way, be­cause you know you’ve got to come. I can’t pos­sibly man­age without you, so please con­sider it settled, and don’t ar­gue—it’s the one thing I can’t stand. You surely don’t mean to stick to your dull fusty old river all your life, and just live in a hole in a bank, and boat? I want to show you the world! I’m go­ing to make an an­imal of you, my boy!”

“I don’t care,” said the Rat dog­gedly. “I’m not com­ing, and that’s flat. And I am go­ing to stick to my old river, and live in a hole, and boat, as I’ve al­ways done. And what’s more, Mole’s go­ing to stick to me and do as I do, aren’t you, Mole?”

“Of course I am,” said the Mole, loy­ally. “I’ll al­ways stick to you, Rat, and what you say is to be—has got to be. All the same, it sounds as if it might have been—well, rather fun, you know!” he ad­ded wist­fully. Poor Mole! The Life Ad­ven­tur­ous was so new a thing to him, and so thrill­ing; and this fresh as­pect of it was so tempt­ing; and he had fallen in love at first sight with the ca­nary-col­oured cart and all its little fit­ments.

The Rat saw what was passing in his mind, and wavered. He hated dis­ap­point­ing people, and he was fond of the Mole, and would do al­most any­thing to ob­lige him. Toad was watch­ing both of them closely.

“Come along in, and have some lunch,” he said, dip­lo­mat­ic­ally, “and we’ll talk it over. We needn’t de­cide any­thing in a hurry. Of course, I don’t really care. I only want to give pleas­ure to you fel­lows. ‘Live for oth­ers!’ That’s my motto in life.”

Dur­ing lunch­eon—which was ex­cel­lent, of course, as everything at Toad Hall al­ways was—the Toad simply let him­self go. Dis­reg­ard­ing the Rat, he pro­ceeded to play upon the in­ex­per­i­enced Mole as on a harp. Nat­ur­ally a vol­uble an­imal, and al­ways mastered by his ima­gin­a­tion, he painted the pro­spects of the trip and the joys of the open life and the road­side in such glow­ing col­ours that the Mole could hardly sit in his chair for ex­cite­ment. Some­how, it soon seemed taken for gran­ted by all three of them that the trip was a settled thing; and the Rat, though still un­con­vinced in his mind, al­lowed his good-nature to over­ride his per­sonal ob­jec­tions. He could not bear to dis­ap­point his two friends, who were already deep in schemes and an­ti­cip­a­tions, plan­ning out each day’s sep­ar­ate oc­cu­pa­tion for sev­eral weeks ahead.

When they were quite ready, the now tri­umphant Toad led his com­pan­ions to the pad­dock and set them to cap­ture the old grey horse, who, without hav­ing been con­sul­ted, and to his own ex­treme an­noy­ance, had been told off by Toad for the dusti­est job in this dusty ex­ped­i­tion. He frankly pre­ferred the pad­dock, and took a deal of catch­ing. Mean­time Toad packed the lock­ers still tighter with ne­ces­sar­ies, and hung nose­bags, nets of onions, bundles of hay, and bas­kets from the bot­tom of the cart. At last the horse was caught and har­nessed, and they set off, all talk­ing at once, each an­imal either trudging by the side of the cart or sit­ting on the shaft, as the hu­mour took him. It was a golden af­ter­noon. The smell of the dust they kicked up was rich and sat­is­fy­ing; out of thick orch­ards on either side the road, birds called and whistled to them cheer­ily; good-natured way­farers, passing them, gave them “Good day,” or stopped to say nice things about their beau­ti­ful cart; and rab­bits, sit­ting at their front doors in the hedgerows, held up their fore­paws, and said, “O my! O my! O my!”

Late in the even­ing, tired and happy and miles from home, they drew up on a re­mote com­mon far from hab­it­a­tions, turned the horse loose to graze, and ate their simple sup­per sit­ting on the grass by the side of the cart. Toad talked big about all he was go­ing to do in the days to come, while stars grew fuller and lar­ger all around them, and a yel­low moon, ap­pear­ing sud­denly and si­lently from nowhere in par­tic­u­lar, came to keep them com­pany and listen to their talk. At last they turned in to their little bunks in the cart; and Toad, kick­ing out his legs, sleepily said, “Well, good night, you fel­lows! This is the real life for a gen­tle­man! Talk about your old river!”

“I don’t talk about my river,” replied the pa­tient Rat. “You know I don’t, Toad. But I think about it,” he ad­ded pathet­ic­ally, in a lower tone: “I think about it—all the time!”

The Mole reached out from un­der his blanket, felt for the Rat’s paw in the dark­ness, and gave it a squeeze. “I’ll do whatever you like, Ratty,” he whispered. “Shall we run away to­mor­row morn­ing, quite early—very early—and go back to our dear old hole on the river?”

“No, no, we’ll see it out,” whispered back the Rat. “Thanks aw­fully, but I ought to stick by Toad till this trip is ended. It wouldn’t be safe for him to be left to him­self. It won’t take very long. His fads never do. Good night!”

The end was in­deed nearer than even the Rat sus­pec­ted.

After so much open air and ex­cite­ment the Toad slept very soundly, and no amount of shak­ing could rouse him out of bed next morn­ing. So the Mole and Rat turned to, quietly and man­fully, and while the Rat saw to the horse, and lit a fire, and cleaned last night’s cups and plat­ters, and got things ready for break­fast, the Mole trudged off to the nearest vil­lage, a long way off, for milk and eggs and vari­ous ne­ces­sar­ies the Toad had, of course, for­got­ten to provide. The hard work had all been done, and the two an­im­als were rest­ing, thor­oughly ex­hausted, by the time Toad ap­peared on the scene, fresh and gay, re­mark­ing what a pleas­ant, easy life it was they were all lead­ing now, after the cares and wor­ries and fa­tigues of house­keep­ing at home.

They had a pleas­ant ramble that day over grassy downs and along nar­row by-lanes, and camped, as be­fore, on a com­mon, only this time the two guests took care that Toad should do his fair share of work. In con­sequence, when the time came for start­ing next morn­ing, Toad was by no means so rap­tur­ous about the sim­pli­city of the prim­it­ive life, and in­deed at­temp­ted to re­sume his place in his bunk, whence he was hauled by force. Their way lay, as be­fore, across coun­try by nar­row lanes, and it was not till the af­ter­noon that they came out on the highroad, their first highroad; and there dis­aster, fleet and un­fore­seen, sprang out on them—dis­aster mo­ment­ous in­deed to their ex­ped­i­tion, but simply over­whelm­ing in its ef­fect on the after ca­reer of Toad.

They were strolling along the highroad eas­ily, the Mole by the horse’s head, talk­ing to him, since the horse had com­plained that he was be­ing fright­fully left out of it, and nobody con­sidered him in the least; the Toad and the Water Rat walk­ing be­hind the cart talk­ing to­gether—at least Toad was talk­ing, and Rat was say­ing at in­ter­vals, “Yes, pre­cisely; and what did you say to him?”—and think­ing all the time of some­thing very dif­fer­ent, when far be­hind them they heard a faint warn­ing hum, like the drone of a dis­tant bee. Glan­cing back, they saw a small cloud of dust, with a dark centre of en­ergy, ad­van­cing on them at in­cred­ible speed, while from out the dust a faint “Poop-poop!” wailed like an un­easy an­imal in pain. Hardly re­gard­ing it, they turned to re­sume their con­ver­sa­tion, when in an in­stant (as it seemed) the peace­ful scene was changed, and with a blast of wind and a whirl of sound that made them jump for the nearest ditch. It was on them! The “Poop-poop” rang with a brazen shout in their ears, they had a mo­ment’s glimpse of an in­terior of glit­ter­ing plate-glass and rich mo­rocco, and the mag­ni­fi­cent mo­tor­car, im­mense, breath-snatch­ing, pas­sion­ate, with its pi­lot tense and hug­ging his wheel, pos­sessed all earth and air for the frac­tion of a second, flung an en­vel­op­ing cloud of dust that blinded and en­wrapped them ut­terly, and then dwindled to a speck in the far dis­tance, changed back into a dron­ing bee once more.

The old grey horse, dream­ing, as he plod­ded along, of his quiet pad­dock, in a new raw situ­ation such as this, simply aban­doned him­self to his nat­ural emo­tions. Rear­ing, plunging, back­ing stead­ily, in spite of all the Mole’s ef­forts at his head, and all the Mole’s lively lan­guage dir­ec­ted at his bet­ter feel­ings, he drove the cart back­ward to­wards the deep ditch at the side of the road. It wavered an in­stant—then there was a heartrend­ing crash—and the ca­nary-col­oured cart, their pride and their joy, lay on its side in the ditch, an ir­re­deem­able wreck.

The Rat danced up and down in the road, simply trans­por­ted with pas­sion. “You vil­lains!” he shouted, shak­ing both fists. “You scoun­drels, you high­way­men, you—you—road-hogs!—I’ll have the law of you! I’ll re­port you! I’ll take you through all the Courts!” His home­sick­ness had quite slipped away from him, and for the mo­ment he was the skip­per of the ca­nary-col­oured ves­sel driven on a shoal by the reck­less jock­ey­ing of rival mar­iners, and he was try­ing to re­col­lect all the fine and bit­ing things he used to say to mas­ters of steam-launches when their wash, as they drove too near the bank, used to flood his par­lour-car­pet at home.

Toad sat straight down in the middle of the dusty road, his legs stretched out be­fore him, and stared fix­edly in the dir­ec­tion of the dis­ap­pear­ing mo­tor­car. He breathed short, his face wore a pla­cid, sat­is­fied ex­pres­sion, and at in­ter­vals he faintly mur­mured “Poop-poop!”

The Mole was busy try­ing to quiet the horse, which he suc­ceeded in do­ing after a time. Then he went to look at the cart, on its side in the ditch. It was in­deed a sorry sight. Panels and win­dows smashed, axles hope­lessly bent, one wheel off, sardine-tins scattered over the wide world, and the bird in the bird­cage sob­bing pi­ti­fully and call­ing to be let out.

The Rat came to help him, but their united ef­forts were not suf­fi­cient to right the cart. “Hi! Toad!” they cried. “Come and bear a hand, can’t you!”

The Toad never answered a word, or budged from his seat in the road; so they went to see what was the mat­ter with him. They found him in a sort of a trance, a happy smile on his face, his eyes still fixed on the dusty wake of their des­troyer. At in­ter­vals he was still heard to mur­mur “Poop-poop!”

The Rat shook him by the shoulder. “Are you com­ing to help us, Toad?” he de­man­ded sternly.

“Glori­ous, stir­ring sight!” mur­mured Toad, never of­fer­ing to move. “The po­etry of mo­tion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here today—in next week to­mor­row! Vil­lages skipped, towns and cit­ies jumped—al­ways some­body else’s ho­ri­zon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!”

“O stop be­ing an ass, Toad!” cried the Mole des­pair­ingly.

“And to think I never knew!” went on the Toad in a dreamy mono­tone. “All those wasted years that lie be­hind me, I never knew, never even dreamt! But now—but now that I know, now that I fully real­ise! O what a flowery track lies spread be­fore me, hence­forth! What dust-clouds shall spring up be­hind me as I speed on my reck­less way! What carts I shall fling care­lessly into the ditch in the wake of my mag­ni­fi­cent on­set! Hor­rid little carts—com­mon carts—ca­nary-col­oured carts!”

“What are we to do with him?” asked the Mole of the Water Rat.

“Noth­ing at all,” replied the Rat firmly. “Be­cause there is really noth­ing to be done. You see, I know him from of old. He is now pos­sessed. He has got a new craze, and it al­ways takes him that way, in its first stage. He’ll con­tinue like that for days now, like an an­imal walk­ing in a happy dream, quite use­less for all prac­tical pur­poses. Never mind him. Let’s go and see what there is to be done about the cart.”

A care­ful in­spec­tion showed them that, even if they suc­ceeded in right­ing it by them­selves, the cart would travel no longer. The axles were in a hope­less state, and the miss­ing wheel was shattered into pieces.

The Rat knot­ted the horse’s reins over his back and took him by the head, car­ry­ing the bird­cage and its hys­ter­ical oc­cu­pant in the other hand. “Come on!” he said grimly to the Mole. “It’s five or six miles to the nearest town, and we shall just have to walk it. The sooner we make a start the bet­ter.”

“But what about Toad?” asked the Mole anxiously, as they set off to­gether. “We can’t leave him here, sit­ting in the middle of the road by him­self, in the dis­trac­ted state he’s in! It’s not safe. Sup­pos­ing an­other Th­ing were to come along?”

“O, bother Toad,” said the Rat sav­agely; “I’ve done with him.”

They had not pro­ceeded very far on their way, how­ever, when there was a pat­ter­ing of feet be­hind them, and Toad caught them up and thrust a paw in­side the el­bow of each of them; still breath­ing short and star­ing into va­cancy.

“Now, look here, Toad!” said the Rat sharply: “as soon as we get to the town, you’ll have to go straight to the po­lice-sta­tion and see if they know any­thing about that mo­tor­car and who it be­longs to, and lodge a com­plaint against it. And then you’ll have to go to a black­smith’s or a wheel­wright’s and ar­range for the cart to be fetched and men­ded and put to rights. It’ll take time, but it’s not quite a hope­less smash. Mean­while, the Mole and I will go to an inn and find com­fort­able rooms where we can stay till the cart’s ready, and till your nerves have re­covered their shock.”

“Po­lice-sta­tion! Com­plaint!” mur­mured Toad dream­ily. “Me com­plain of that beau­ti­ful, that heav­enly vis­ion that has been vouch­safed me! Mend the cart! I’ve done with carts forever. I never want to see the cart, or to hear of it, again. O Ratty! You can’t think how ob­liged I am to you for con­sent­ing to come on this trip! I wouldn’t have gone without you, and then I might never have seen that—that swan, that sun­beam, that thun­der­bolt! I might never have heard that en­tran­cing sound, or smelt that be­witch­ing smell! I owe it all to you, my best of friends!”

The Rat turned from him in des­pair. “You see what it is?” he said to the Mole, ad­dress­ing him across Toad’s head: “He’s quite hope­less. I give it up—when we get to the town we’ll go to the rail­way sta­tion, and with luck we may pick up a train there that’ll get us back to river bank to­night. And if ever you catch me go­ing a-pleas­ur­ing with this pro­vok­ing an­imal again!”—He snorted, and dur­ing the rest of that weary trudge ad­dressed his re­marks ex­clus­ively to Mole.

On reach­ing the town they went straight to the sta­tion and de­pos­ited Toad in the second-class wait­ing-room, giv­ing a porter two­pence to keep a strict eye on him. They then left the horse at an inn stable, and gave what dir­ec­tions they could about the cart and its con­tents. Even­tu­ally, a slow train hav­ing landed them at a sta­tion not very far from Toad Hall, they es­cor­ted the spell­bound, sleep­walk­ing Toad to his door, put him in­side it, and in­struc­ted his house­keeper to feed him, un­dress him, and put him to bed. Then they got out their boat from the boat­house, sculled down the river home, and at a very late hour sat down to sup­per in their own cosy river­side par­lour, to the Rat’s great joy and con­tent­ment.

The fol­low­ing even­ing the Mole, who had risen late and taken things very easy all day, was sit­ting on the bank fish­ing, when the Rat, who had been look­ing up his friends and gos­sip­ing, came strolling along to find him. “Heard the news?” he said. “There’s noth­ing else be­ing talked about, all along the river bank. Toad went up to Town by an early train this morn­ing. And he has ordered a large and very ex­pens­ive mo­tor­car.”

III The Wild Wood

The Mole had long wanted to make the ac­quaint­ance of the Badger. He seemed, by all ac­counts, to be such an im­port­ant per­son­age and, though rarely vis­ible, to make his un­seen in­flu­ence felt by every­body about the place. But whenever the Mole men­tioned his wish to the Water Rat, he al­ways found him­self put off. “It’s all right,” the Rat would say. “Badger’ll turn up some day or other—he’s al­ways turn­ing up—and then I’ll in­tro­duce you. The best of fel­lows! But you must not only take him as you find him, but when you find him.”

“Couldn’t you ask him here—din­ner or some­thing?” said the Mole.

“He wouldn’t come,” replied the Rat simply. “Badger hates So­ci­ety, and in­vit­a­tions, and din­ner, and all that sort of thing.”

“Well, then, sup­pos­ing we go and call on him?” sug­ges­ted the Mole.

“O, I’m sure he wouldn’t like that at all,” said the Rat, quite alarmed. “He’s so very shy, he’d be sure to be of­fen­ded. I’ve never even ven­tured to call on him at his own home my­self, though I know him so well. Besides, we can’t. It’s quite out of the ques­tion, be­cause he lives in the very middle of the Wild Wood.”

“Well, sup­pos­ing he does,” said the Mole. “You told me the Wild Wood was all right, you know.”

“O, I know, I know, so it is,” replied the Rat evas­ively. “But I think we won’t go there just now. Not just yet. It’s a long way, and he wouldn’t be at home at this time of year any­how, and he’ll be com­ing along some day, if you’ll wait quietly.”

The Mole had to be con­tent with this. But the Badger never came along, and every day brought its amuse­ments, and it was not till sum­mer was long over, and cold and frost and miry ways kept them much in­doors, and the swollen river raced past out­side their win­dows with a speed that mocked at boat­ing of any sort or kind, that he found his thoughts dwell­ing again with much per­sist­ence on the sol­it­ary grey Badger, who lived his own life by him­self, in his hole in the middle of the Wild Wood.

In the winter time the Rat slept a great deal, re­tir­ing early and rising late. Dur­ing his short day he some­times scribbled po­etry or did other small do­mestic jobs about the house; and, of course, there were al­ways an­im­als drop­ping in for a chat, and con­sequently there was a good deal of story-telling and com­par­ing notes on the past sum­mer and all its do­ings.

Such a rich chapter it had been, when one came to look back on it all! With il­lus­tra­tions so nu­mer­ous and so very highly-col­oured! The pa­geant of the river bank had marched stead­ily along, un­fold­ing it­self in scene-pic­tures that suc­ceeded each other in stately pro­ces­sion. Purple loosestrife ar­rived early, shak­ing lux­uri­ant tangled locks along the edge of the mir­ror whence its own face laughed back at it. Wil­low-herb, tender and wist­ful, like a pink sun­set cloud, was not slow to fol­low. Com­frey, the purple hand-in-hand with the white, crept forth to take its place in the line; and at last one morn­ing the dif­fid­ent and delay­ing dog-rose stepped del­ic­ately on the stage, and one knew, as if string-mu­sic had an­nounced it in stately chords that strayed into a ga­votte, that June at last was here. One mem­ber of the com­pany was still awaited; the shep­herd-boy for the nymphs to woo, the knight for whom the ladies waited at the win­dow, the prince that was to kiss the sleep­ing sum­mer back to life and love. But when meadow-sweet, de­bon­air and odor­ous in am­ber jer­kin, moved gra­ciously to his place in the group, then the play was ready to be­gin.

And what a play it had been! Drowsy an­im­als, snug in their holes while wind and rain were bat­ter­ing at their doors, re­called still keen morn­ings, an hour be­fore sun­rise, when the white mist, as yet un­dis­persed, clung closely along the sur­face of the wa­ter; then the shock of the early plunge, the scamper along the bank, and the ra­di­ant trans­form­a­tion of earth, air, and wa­ter, when sud­denly the sun was with them again, and grey was gold and col­our was born and sprang out of the earth once more. They re­called the lan­guor­ous si­esta of hot mid­day, deep in green un­der­growth, the sun strik­ing through in tiny golden shafts and spots; the boat­ing and bathing of the af­ter­noon, the rambles along dusty lanes and through yel­low corn­fields; and the long, cool even­ing at last, when so many threads were gathered up, so many friend­ships roun­ded, and so many ad­ven­tures planned for the mor­row. There was plenty to talk about on those short winter days when the an­im­als found them­selves round the fire; still, the Mole had a good deal of spare time on his hands, and so one af­ter­noon, when the Rat in his arm­chair be­fore the blaze was al­tern­ately doz­ing and try­ing over rhymes that wouldn’t fit, he formed the res­ol­u­tion to go out by him­self and ex­plore the Wild Wood, and per­haps strike up an ac­quaint­ance with Mr. Badger.

It was a cold, still af­ter­noon with a hard, steely sky over­head, when he slipped out of the warm par­lour into the open air. The coun­try lay bare and en­tirely leaf­less around him, and he thought that he had never seen so far and so in­tim­ately into the in­sides of things as on that winter day when Nature was deep in her an­nual slum­ber and seemed to have kicked the clothes off. Copses, dells, quar­ries, and all hid­den places, which had been mys­ter­i­ous mines for ex­plor­a­tion in leafy sum­mer, now ex­posed them­selves and their secrets pathet­ic­ally, and seemed to ask him to over­look their shabby poverty for a while, till they could riot in rich mas­quer­ade as be­fore, and trick and en­tice him with the old de­cep­tions. It was pi­ti­ful in a way, and yet cheer­ing—even ex­hil­ar­at­ing. He was glad that he liked the coun­try un­dec­or­ated, hard, and stripped of its finery. He had got down to the bare bones of it, and they were fine and strong and simple. He did not want the warm clover and the play of seed­ing grasses; the screens of quick­set, the bil­lowy drapery of beech and elm seemed best away; and with great cheer­ful­ness of spirit he pushed on to­wards the Wild Wood, which lay be­fore him low and threat­en­ing, like a black reef in some still south­ern sea.

There was noth­ing to alarm him at first entry. Twigs crackled un­der his feet, logs tripped him, funguses on stumps re­sembled ca­ri­ca­tures, and startled him for the mo­ment by their like­ness to some­thing fa­mil­iar and far away; but that was all fun, and ex­cit­ing. It led him on, and he pen­et­rated to where the light was less, and trees crouched nearer and nearer, and holes made ugly mouths at him on either side.

Everything was very still now. The dusk ad­vanced on him stead­ily, rap­idly, gath­er­ing in be­hind and be­fore; and the light seemed to be drain­ing away like flood-wa­ter.

Then the faces began.

It was over his shoulder, and in­dis­tinctly, that he first thought he saw a face, a little, evil, wedge-shaped face, look­ing out at him from a hole. When he turned and con­fron­ted it, the thing had van­ished.

He quickened his pace, telling him­self cheer­fully not to be­gin ima­gin­ing things or there would be simply no end to it. He passed an­other hole, and an­other, and an­other; and then—yes!—no!—yes! cer­tainly a little, nar­row face, with hard eyes, had flashed up for an in­stant from a hole, and was gone. He hes­it­ated—braced him­self up for an ef­fort and strode on. Then sud­denly, and as if it had been so all the time, every hole, far and near, and there were hun­dreds of them, seemed to pos­sess its face, com­ing and go­ing rap­idly, all fix­ing on him glances of malice and hatred: all hard-eyed and evil and sharp.

If he could only get away from the holes in the banks, he thought, there would be no more faces. He swung off the path and plunged into the un­trod­den places of the wood.

Then the whist­ling began.

Very faint and shrill it was, and far be­hind him, when first he heard it; but some­how it made him hurry for­ward. Then, still very faint and shrill, it soun­ded far ahead of him, and made him hes­it­ate and want to go back. As he hal­ted in in­de­cision it broke out on either side, and seemed to be caught up and passed on through­out the whole length of the wood to its farthest limit. They were up and alert and ready, evid­ently, who­ever they were! And he—he was alone, and un­armed, and far from any help; and the night was clos­ing in.

Then the pat­ter­ing began.

He thought it was only fall­ing leaves at first, so slight and del­ic­ate was the sound of it. Then as it grew it took a reg­u­lar rhythm, and he knew it for noth­ing else but the pat-pat-pat of little feet still a very long way off. Was it in front or be­hind? It seemed to be first one, and then the other, then both. It grew and it mul­ti­plied, till from every quarter as he listened anxiously, lean­ing this way and that, it seemed to be clos­ing in on him. As he stood still to hearken, a rab­bit came run­ning hard to­wards him through the trees. He waited, ex­pect­ing it to slacken pace or to swerve from him into a dif­fer­ent course. In­stead, the an­imal al­most brushed him as it dashed past, his face set and hard, his eyes star­ing. “Get out of this, you fool, get out!” the Mole heard him mut­ter as he swung round a stump and dis­ap­peared down a friendly bur­row.

The pat­ter­ing in­creased till it soun­ded like sud­den hail on the dry leaf-car­pet spread around him. The whole wood seemed run­ning now, run­ning hard, hunt­ing, chas­ing, clos­ing in round some­thing or—some­body? In panic, he began to run too, aim­lessly, he knew not whither. He ran up against things, he fell over things and into things, he dar­ted un­der things and dodged round things. At last he took refuge in the deep, dark hol­low of an old beech tree, which offered shel­ter, con­ceal­ment—per­haps even safety, but who could tell? Anyhow, he was too tired to run any fur­ther, and could only snuggle down into the dry leaves which had drif­ted into the hol­low and hope he was safe for a time. And as he lay there pant­ing and trem­bling, and listened to the whist­lings and the pat­ter­ings out­side, he knew it at last, in all its ful­ness, that dread thing which other little dwell­ers in field and hedgerow had en­countered here, and known as their darkest mo­ment—that thing which the Rat had vainly tried to shield him from—the Ter­ror of the Wild Wood!

Mean­time the Rat, warm and com­fort­able, dozed by his fireside. His pa­per of half-fin­ished verses slipped from his knee, his head fell back, his mouth opened, and he wandered by the verd­ant banks of dream-rivers. Then a coal slipped, the fire crackled and sent up a spurt of flame, and he woke with a start. Re­mem­ber­ing what he had been en­gaged upon, he reached down to the floor for his verses, pored over them for a minute, and then looked round for the Mole to ask him if he knew a good rhyme for some­thing or other.

But the Mole was not there.

He listened for a time. The house seemed very quiet.

Then he called “Moly!” sev­eral times, and, re­ceiv­ing no an­swer, got up and went out into the hall.

The Mole’s cap was miss­ing from its ac­cus­tomed peg. His go­loshes, which al­ways lay by the um­brella-stand, were also gone.

The Rat left the house, and care­fully ex­amined the muddy sur­face of the ground out­side, hop­ing to find the Mole’s tracks. There they were, sure enough. The go­loshes were new, just bought for the winter, and the pimples on their soles were fresh and sharp. He could see the im­prints of them in the mud, run­ning along straight and pur­pose­ful, lead­ing dir­ect to the Wild Wood.

The Rat looked very grave, and stood in deep thought for a minute or two. Then he re-entered the house, strapped a belt round his waist, shoved a brace of pis­tols into it, took up a stout cudgel that stood in a corner of the hall, and set off for the Wild Wood at a smart pace.

It was already get­ting to­wards dusk when he reached the first fringe of trees and plunged without hes­it­a­tion into the wood, look­ing anxiously on either side for any sign of his friend. Here and there wicked little faces popped out of holes, but van­ished im­me­di­ately at sight of the val­or­ous an­imal, his pis­tols, and the great ugly cudgel in his grasp; and the whist­ling and pat­ter­ing, which he had heard quite plainly on his first entry, died away and ceased, and all was very still. He made his way man­fully through the length of the wood, to its fur­thest edge; then, for­sak­ing all paths, he set him­self to tra­verse it, la­bor­i­ously work­ing over the whole ground, and all the time call­ing out cheer­fully, “Moly, Moly, Moly! Where are you? It’s me—it’s old Rat!”

He had pa­tiently hunted through the wood for an hour or more, when at last to his joy he heard a little an­swer­ing cry. Guid­ing him­self by the sound, he made his way through the gath­er­ing dark­ness to the foot of an old beech tree, with a hole in it, and from out of the hole came a feeble voice, say­ing “Ratty! Is that really you?”

The Rat crept into the hol­low, and there he found the Mole, ex­hausted and still trem­bling. “O Rat!” he cried, “I’ve been so frightened, you can’t think!”

“O, I quite un­der­stand,” said the Rat sooth­ingly. “You shouldn’t really have gone and done it, Mole. I did my best to keep you from it. We river-bankers, we hardly ever come here by ourselves. If we have to come, we come in couples at least; then we’re gen­er­ally all right. Besides, there are a hun­dred things one has to know, which we un­der­stand all about and you don’t, as yet. I mean pass­words, and signs, and say­ings which have power and ef­fect, and plants you carry in your pocket, and verses you re­peat, and dodges and tricks you prac­tise; all simple enough when you know them, but they’ve got to be known if you’re small, or you’ll find your­self in trouble. Of course if you were Badger or Ot­ter, it would be quite an­other mat­ter.”

“Surely the brave Mr. Toad wouldn’t mind com­ing here by him­self, would he?” in­quired the Mole.

“Old Toad?” said the Rat, laugh­ing heart­ily. “He wouldn’t show his face here alone, not for a whole hat­ful of golden guineas, Toad wouldn’t.”

The Mole was greatly cheered by the sound of the Rat’s care­less laughter, as well as by the sight of his stick and his gleam­ing pis­tols, and he stopped shiv­er­ing and began to feel bolder and more him­self again.

“Now then,” said the Rat presently, “we really must pull ourselves to­gether and make a start for home while there’s still a little light left. It will never do to spend the night here, you un­der­stand. Too cold, for one thing.”

“Dear Ratty,” said the poor Mole, “I’m dread­fully sorry, but I’m simply dead beat and that’s a solid fact. You must let me rest here a while longer, and get my strength back, if I’m to get home at all.”

“O, all right,” said the good-natured Rat, “rest away. It’s pretty nearly pitch dark now, any­how; and there ought to be a bit of a moon later.”

So the Mole got well into the dry leaves and stretched him­self out, and presently dropped off into sleep, though of a broken and troubled sort; while the Rat covered him­self up, too, as best he might, for warmth, and lay pa­tiently wait­ing, with a pis­tol in his paw.

When at last the Mole woke up, much re­freshed and in his usual spir­its, the Rat said, “Now then! I’ll just take a look out­side and see if everything’s quiet, and then we really must be off.”

He went to the en­trance of their re­treat and put his head out. Then the Mole heard him say­ing quietly to him­self, “Hullo! hullo! here—is—a—go!”

“What’s up, Ratty?” asked the Mole.

“Snow is up,” replied the Rat briefly; “or rather, down. It’s snow­ing hard.”

The Mole came and crouched be­side him, and, look­ing out, saw the wood that had been so dread­ful to him in quite a changed as­pect. Holes, hol­lows, pools, pit­falls, and other black men­aces to the way­farer were van­ish­ing fast, and a gleam­ing car­pet of faery was spring­ing up every­where, that looked too del­ic­ate to be trod­den upon by rough feet. A fine powder filled the air and caressed the cheek with a tingle in its touch, and the black boles of the trees showed up in a light that seemed to come from be­low.

“Well, well, it can’t be helped,” said the Rat, after pon­der­ing. “We must make a start, and take our chance, I sup­pose. The worst of it is, I don’t ex­actly know where we are. And now this snow makes everything look so very dif­fer­ent.”

It did in­deed. The Mole would not have known that it was the same wood. However, they set out bravely, and took the line that seemed most prom­ising, hold­ing on to each other and pre­tend­ing with in­vin­cible cheer­ful­ness that they re­cog­nised an old friend in every fresh tree that grimly and si­lently greeted them, or saw open­ings, gaps, or paths with a fa­mil­iar turn in them, in the mono­tony of white space and black tree-trunks that re­fused to vary.

An hour or two later—they had lost all count of time—they pulled up, dis­pir­ited, weary, and hope­lessly at sea, and sat down on a fallen tree-trunk to re­cover their breath and con­sider what was to be done. They were aching with fa­tigue and bruised with tumbles; they had fallen into sev­eral holes and got wet through; the snow was get­ting so deep that they could hardly drag their little legs through it, and the trees were thicker and more like each other than ever. There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no be­gin­ning, and no dif­fer­ence in it, and, worst of all, no way out.

“We can’t sit here very long,” said the Rat. “We shall have to make an­other push for it, and do some­thing or other. The cold is too aw­ful for any­thing, and the snow will soon be too deep for us to wade through.” He peered about him and con­sidered. “Look here,” he went on, “this is what oc­curs to me. There’s a sort of dell down here in front of us, where the ground seems all hilly and humpy and hum­mocky. We’ll make our way down into that, and try and find some sort of shel­ter, a cave or hole with a dry floor to it, out of the snow and the wind, and there we’ll have a good rest be­fore we try again, for we’re both of us pretty dead beat. Besides, the snow may leave off, or some­thing may turn up.”

So once more they got on their feet, and struggled down into the dell, where they hunted about for a cave or some corner that was dry and a pro­tec­tion from the keen wind and the whirl­ing snow. They were in­vest­ig­at­ing one of the hum­mocky bits the Rat had spoken of, when sud­denly the Mole tripped up and fell for­ward on his face with a squeal.

“O my leg!” he cried. “O my poor shin!” and he sat up on the snow and nursed his leg in both his front paws.

“Poor old Mole!” said the Rat kindly. “You don’t seem to be hav­ing much luck today, do you? Let’s have a look at the leg. Yes,” he went on, go­ing down on his knees to look, “you’ve cut your shin, sure enough. Wait till I get at my handker­chief, and I’ll tie it up for you.”

“I must have tripped over a hid­den branch or a stump,” said the Mole miser­ably. “O, my! O, my!”

“It’s a very clean cut,” said the Rat, ex­amin­ing it again at­tent­ively. “That was never done by a branch or a stump. Looks as if it was made by a sharp edge of some­thing in metal. Funny!” He pondered awhile, and ex­amined the humps and slopes that sur­roun­ded them.

“Well, never mind what done it,” said the Mole, for­get­ting his gram­mar in his pain. “It hurts just the same, whatever done it.”

But the Rat, after care­fully ty­ing up the leg with his handker­chief, had left him and was busy scrap­ing in the snow. He scratched and shov­elled and ex­plored, all four legs work­ing busily, while the Mole waited im­pa­tiently, re­mark­ing at in­ter­vals, “O, come on, Rat!”

Sud­denly the Rat cried “Hooray!” and then “Hooray-oo-ray-oo-ray-oo-ray!” and fell to ex­ecut­ing a feeble jig in the snow.

“What have you found, Ratty?” asked the Mole, still nurs­ing his leg.

“Come and see!” said the de­lighted Rat, as he jigged on.

The Mole hobbled up to the spot and had a good look.

“Well,” he said at last, slowly, “I see it right enough. Seen the same sort of thing be­fore, lots of times. Fa­mil­iar ob­ject, I call it. A door-scraper! Well, what of it? Why dance jigs around a door-scraper?”

“But don’t you see what it means, you—you dull-wit­ted an­imal?” cried the Rat im­pa­tiently.

“Of course I see what it means,” replied the Mole. “It simply means that some very care­less and for­get­ful per­son has left his door-scraper ly­ing about in the middle of the Wild Wood, just where it’s sure to trip every­body up. Very thought­less of him, I call it. When I get home I shall go and com­plain about it to—to some­body or other, see if I don’t!”

“O, dear! O, dear!” cried the Rat, in des­pair at his ob­tuse­ness. “Here, stop ar­guing and come and scrape!” And he set to work again and made the snow fly in all dir­ec­tions around him.

After some fur­ther toil his ef­forts were re­war­ded, and a very shabby doormat lay ex­posed to view.

“There, what did I tell you?” ex­claimed the Rat in great tri­umph.

“Ab­so­lutely noth­ing whatever,” replied the Mole, with per­fect truth­ful­ness. “Well, now,” he went on, “you seem to have found an­other piece of do­mestic lit­ter, done for and thrown away, and I sup­pose you’re per­fectly happy. Bet­ter go ahead and dance your jig round that if you’ve got to, and get it over, and then per­haps we can go on and not waste any more time over rub­bish-heaps. Can we eat a doormat? Or sleep un­der a doormat? Or sit on a doormat and sledge home over the snow on it, you ex­as­per­at­ing ro­dent?”

“Do—you—mean—to—say,” cried the ex­cited Rat, “that this doormat doesn’t tell you any­thing?”

“Really, Rat,” said the Mole, quite pet­tishly, “I think we’ve had enough of this folly. Who ever heard of a doormat telling any­one any­thing? They simply don’t do it. They are not that sort at all. Doormats know their place.”

“Now look here, you—you thick­headed beast,” replied the Rat, really angry, “this must stop. Not an­other word, but scrape—scrape and scratch and dig and hunt round, es­pe­cially on the sides of the hum­mocks, if you want to sleep dry and warm to­night, for it’s our last chance!”

The Rat at­tacked a snow­bank be­side them with ar­dour, prob­ing with his cudgel every­where and then dig­ging with fury; and the Mole scraped busily too, more to ob­lige the Rat than for any other reason, for his opin­ion was that his friend was get­ting light­headed.

Some ten minutes’ hard work, and the point of the Rat’s cudgel struck some­thing that soun­ded hol­low. He worked till he could get a paw through and feel; then called the Mole to come and help him. Hard at it went the two an­im­als, till at last the res­ult of their la­bours stood full in view of the as­ton­ished and hitherto in­cred­u­lous Mole.

In the side of what had seemed to be a snow­bank stood a solid-look­ing little door, painted a dark green. An iron bell-pull hung by the side, and be­low it, on a small brass plate, neatly en­graved in square cap­ital let­ters, they could read by the aid of moon­light

Mr. Badger.

The Mole fell back­wards on the snow from sheer sur­prise and de­light. “Rat!” he cried in pen­it­ence, “you’re a won­der! A real won­der, that’s what you are. I see it all now! You ar­gued it out, step by step, in that wise head of yours, from the very mo­ment that I fell and cut my shin, and you looked at the cut, and at once your majestic mind said to it­self, ‘Door-scraper!’ And then you turned to and found the very door-scraper that done it! Did you stop there? No. Some people would have been quite sat­is­fied; but not you. Your in­tel­lect went on work­ing. ‘Let me only just find a doormat,’ says you to your­self, ‘and my the­ory is proved!’ And of course you found your doormat. You’re so clever, I be­lieve you could find any­thing you liked. ‘Now,’ says you, ‘that door ex­ists, as plain as if I saw it. There’s noth­ing else re­mains to be done but to find it!’ Well, I’ve read about that sort of thing in books, but I’ve never come across it be­fore in real life. You ought to go where you’ll be prop­erly ap­pre­ci­ated. You’re simply wasted here, among us fel­lows. If I only had your head, Ratty—”

“But as you haven’t,” in­ter­rup­ted the Rat, rather un­kindly, “I sup­pose you’re go­ing to sit on the snow all night and talk? Get up at once and hang on to that bell-pull you see there, and ring hard, as hard as you can, while I ham­mer!”

While the Rat at­tacked the door with his stick, the Mole sprang up at the bell-pull, clutched it and swung there, both feet well off the ground, and from quite a long way off they could faintly hear a deep-toned bell re­spond.

IV Mr. Badger

They waited pa­tiently for what seemed a very long time, stamp­ing in the snow to keep their feet warm. At last they heard the sound of slow shuff­ling foot­steps ap­proach­ing the door from the in­side. It seemed, as the Mole re­marked to the Rat, like someone walk­ing in car­pet slip­pers that were too large for him and down at heel; which was in­tel­li­gent of Mole, be­cause that was ex­actly what it was.

There was the noise of a bolt shot back, and the door opened a few inches, enough to show a long snout and a pair of sleepy blink­ing eyes.

“Now, the very next time this hap­pens,” said a gruff and sus­pi­cious voice, “I shall be ex­ceed­ingly angry. Who is it this time, dis­turb­ing people on such a night? Speak up!”

“Oh, Badger,” cried the Rat, “let us in, please. It’s me, Rat, and my friend Mole, and we’ve lost our way in the snow.”

“What, Ratty, my dear little man!” ex­claimed the Badger, in quite a dif­fer­ent voice. “Come along in, both of you, at once. Why, you must be per­ished. Well, I never! Lost in the snow! And in the Wild Wood, too, and at this time of night! But come in with you.”

The two an­im­als tumbled over each other in their eager­ness to get in­side, and heard the door shut be­hind them with great joy and re­lief.

The Badger, who wore a long dress­ing-gown, and whose slip­pers were in­deed very down at heel, car­ried a flat can­dle­stick in his paw and had prob­ably been on his way to bed when their sum­mons soun­ded. He looked kindly down on them and pat­ted both their heads. “This is not the sort of night for small an­im­als to be out,” he said pa­ternally. “I’m afraid you’ve been up to some of your pranks again, Ratty. But come along; come into the kit­chen. There’s a first-rate fire there, and sup­per and everything.”

He shuffled on in front of them, car­ry­ing the light, and they fol­lowed him, nudging each other in an an­ti­cip­at­ing sort of way, down a long, gloomy, and, to tell the truth, de­cidedly shabby pas­sage, into a sort of a cent­ral hall, out of which they could dimly see other long tun­nel-like pas­sages branch­ing, pas­sages mys­ter­i­ous and without ap­par­ent end. But there were doors in the hall as well—stout oaken, com­fort­able-look­ing doors. One of these the Badger flung open, and at once they found them­selves in all the glow and warmth of a large fire-lit kit­chen.

The floor was well-worn red brick, and on the wide hearth burnt a fire of logs, between two at­tract­ive chim­ney-corners tucked away in the wall, well out of any sus­pi­cion of draught. A couple of high-backed settles, fa­cing each other on either side of the fire, gave fur­ther sit­ting ac­com­mod­a­tions for the so­ci­ably dis­posed. In the middle of the room stood a long table of plain boards placed on trestles, with benches down each side. At one end of it, where an arm­chair stood pushed back, were spread the re­mains of the Badger’s plain but ample sup­per. Rows of spot­less plates winked from the shelves of the dresser at the far end of the room, and from the rafters over­head hung hams, bundles of dried herbs, nets of onions, and bas­kets of eggs. It seemed a place where her­oes could fitly feast after vic­tory, where weary har­vesters could line up in scores along the table and keep their Har­vest Home with mirth and song, or where two or three friends of simple tastes could sit about as they pleased and eat and smoke and talk in com­fort and con­tent­ment. The ruddy brick floor smiled up at the smoky ceil­ing; the oaken settles, shiny with long wear, ex­changed cheer­ful glances with each other; plates on the dresser grinned at pots on the shelf, and the merry fire­light flickered and played over everything without dis­tinc­tion.

The kindly Badger thrust them down on a settle to toast them­selves at the fire, and bade them re­move their wet coats and boots. Then he fetched them dress­ing-gowns and slip­pers, and him­self bathed the Mole’s shin with warm wa­ter and men­ded the cut with stick­ing-plaster, till the whole thing was just as good as new, if not bet­ter. In the em­bra­cing light and warmth, warm and dry at last, with weary legs propped up in front of them, and a sug­gest­ive clink of plates be­ing ar­ranged on the table be­hind, it seemed to the storm-driven an­im­als, now in safe an­chor­age, that the cold and track­less Wild Wood just left out­side was miles and miles away, and all that they had suffered in it a half-for­got­ten dream.

When at last they were thor­oughly toasted, the Badger summoned them to the table, where he had been busy lay­ing a re­past. They had felt pretty hungry be­fore, but when they ac­tu­ally saw at last the sup­per that was spread for them, really it seemed only a ques­tion of what they should at­tack first where all was so at­tract­ive, and whether the other things would ob­li­gingly wait for them till they had time to give them at­ten­tion. Con­ver­sa­tion was im­possible for a long time; and when it was slowly re­sumed, it was that re­gret­table sort of con­ver­sa­tion that res­ults from talk­ing with your mouth full. The Badger did not mind that sort of thing at all, nor did he take any no­tice of el­bows on the table, or every­body speak­ing at once. As he did not go into So­ci­ety him­self, he had got an idea that these things be­longed to the things that didn’t really mat­ter. (We know of course that he was wrong, and took too nar­row a view; be­cause they do mat­ter very much, though it would take too long to ex­plain why.) He sat in his arm­chair at the head of the table, and nod­ded gravely at in­ter­vals as the an­im­als told their story; and he did not seem sur­prised or shocked at any­thing, and he never said, “I told you so,” or, “Just what I al­ways said,” or re­marked that they ought to have done so-and-so, or ought not to have done some­thing else. The Mole began to feel very friendly to­wards him.

When sup­per was really fin­ished at last, and each an­imal felt that his skin was now as tight as was de­cently safe, and that by this time he didn’t care a hang for any­body or any­thing, they gathered round the glow­ing em­bers of the great wood fire, and thought how jolly it was to be sit­ting up so late, and so in­de­pend­ent, and so full; and after they had chat­ted for a time about things in gen­eral, the Badger said heart­ily, “Now then! tell us the news from your part of the world. How’s old Toad go­ing on?”

“Oh, from bad to worse,” said the Rat gravely, while the Mole, cocked up on a settle and bask­ing in the fire­light, his heels higher than his head, tried to look prop­erly mourn­ful. “Another smash-up only last week, and a bad one. You see, he will in­sist on driv­ing him­self, and he’s hope­lessly in­cap­able. If he’d only em­ploy a de­cent, steady, well-trained an­imal, pay him good wages, and leave everything to him, he’d get on all right. But no; he’s con­vinced he’s a heaven-born driver, and nobody can teach him any­thing; and all the rest fol­lows.”

“How many has he had?” in­quired the Badger gloomily.

“Smashes, or ma­chines?” asked the Rat. “Oh, well, after all, it’s the same thing—with Toad. This is the sev­enth. As for the oth­ers—you know that coach-house of his? Well, it’s piled up—lit­er­ally piled up to the roof—with frag­ments of mo­tor­cars, none of them big­ger than your hat! That ac­counts for the other six—so far as they can be ac­coun­ted for.”

“He’s been in hos­pital three times,” put in the Mole; “and as for the fines he’s had to pay, it’s simply aw­ful to think of.”

“Yes, and that’s part of the trouble,” con­tin­ued the Rat. “Toad’s rich, we all know; but he’s not a mil­lion­aire. And he’s a hope­lessly bad driver, and quite re­gard­less of law and or­der. Killed or ruined—it’s got to be one of the two things, sooner or later. Badger! we’re his friends—oughtn’t we to do some­thing?”

The Badger went through a bit of hard think­ing. “Now look here!” he said at last, rather severely; “of course you know I can’t do any­thing now?”

His two friends as­sen­ted, quite un­der­stand­ing his point. No an­imal, ac­cord­ing to the rules of an­imal etiquette, is ever ex­pec­ted to do any­thing strenu­ous, or heroic, or even mod­er­ately act­ive dur­ing the off-sea­son of winter. All are sleepy—some ac­tu­ally asleep. All are weather-bound, more or less; and all are rest­ing from ar­du­ous days and nights, dur­ing which every muscle in them has been severely tested, and every en­ergy kept at full stretch.

“Very well then!” con­tin­ued the Badger. “But, when once the year has really turned, and the nights are shorter, and halfway through them one rouses and feels fid­gety and want­ing to be up and do­ing by sun­rise, if not be­fore—you know!—”

Both an­im­als nod­ded gravely. They knew!

“Well, then,” went on the Badger, “we—that is, you and me and our friend the Mole here—we’ll take Toad ser­i­ously in hand. We’ll stand no non­sense whatever. We’ll bring him back to reason, by force if need be. We’ll make him be a sens­ible Toad. We’ll—you’re asleep, Rat!”

“Not me!” said the Rat, wak­ing up with a jerk.

“He’s been asleep two or three times since sup­per,” said the Mole, laugh­ing. He him­self was feel­ing quite wake­ful and even lively, though he didn’t know why. The reason was, of course, that he be­ing nat­ur­ally an un­der­ground an­imal by birth and breed­ing, the situ­ation of Badger’s house ex­actly suited him and made him feel at home; while the Rat, who slept every night in a bed­room the win­dows of which opened on a breezy river, nat­ur­ally felt the at­mo­sphere still and op­press­ive.

“Well, it’s time we were all in bed,” said the Badger, get­ting up and fetch­ing flat can­dle­sticks. “Come along, you two, and I’ll show you your quar­ters. And take your time to­mor­row morn­ing—break­fast at any hour you please!”

He con­duc­ted the two an­im­als to a long room that seemed half bed­cham­ber and half loft. The Badger’s winter stores, which in­deed were vis­ible every­where, took up half the room—piles of apples, turnips, and pota­toes, bas­kets full of nuts, and jars of honey; but the two little white beds on the re­mainder of the floor looked soft and in­vit­ing, and the linen on them, though coarse, was clean and smelt beau­ti­fully of lav­ender; and the Mole and the Water Rat, shak­ing off their gar­ments in some thirty seconds, tumbled in between the sheets in great joy and con­tent­ment.

In ac­cord­ance with the kindly Badger’s in­junc­tions, the two tired an­im­als came down to break­fast very late next morn­ing, and found a bright fire burn­ing in the kit­chen, and two young hedge­hogs sit­ting on a bench at the table, eat­ing oat­meal por­ridge out of wooden bowls. The hedge­hogs dropped their spoons, rose to their feet, and ducked their heads re­spect­fully as the two entered.

“There, sit down, sit down,” said the Rat pleas­antly, “and go on with your por­ridge. Where have you young­sters come from? Lost your way in the snow, I sup­pose?”

“Yes, please, sir,” said the elder of the two hedge­hogs re­spect­fully. “Me and little Billy here, we was try­ing to find our way to school—mother would have us go, was the weather ever so—and of course we lost ourselves, sir, and Billy he got frightened and took and cried, be­ing young and faint­hearted. And at last we happened up against Mr. Badger’s back door, and made so bold as to knock, sir, for Mr. Badger he’s a kind­hearted gen­tle­man, as every­one knows—”

“I un­der­stand,” said the Rat, cut­ting him­self some rash­ers from a side of ba­con, while the Mole dropped some eggs into a sauce­pan. “And what’s the weather like out­side? You needn’t ‘sir’ me quite so much,” he ad­ded.

“O, ter­rible bad, sir, ter­rible deep the snow is,” said the hedge­hog. “No get­ting out for the likes of you gen­tle­men today.”

“Where’s Mr. Badger?” in­quired the Mole as he warmed the cof­fee­pot be­fore the fire.

“The mas­ter’s gone into his study, sir,” replied the hedge­hog, “and he said as how he was go­ing to be par­tic­u­lar busy this morn­ing, and on no ac­count was he to be dis­turbed.”

This ex­plan­a­tion, of course, was thor­oughly un­der­stood by every­one present. The fact is, as already set forth, when you live a life of in­tense activ­ity for six months in the year, and of com­par­at­ive or ac­tual som­no­lence for the other six, dur­ing the lat­ter period you can­not be con­tinu­ally plead­ing sleep­i­ness when there are people about or things to be done. The ex­cuse gets mono­ton­ous. The an­im­als well knew that Badger, hav­ing eaten a hearty break­fast, had re­tired to his study and settled him­self in an arm­chair with his legs up on an­other and a red cot­ton handker­chief over his face, and was be­ing “busy” in the usual way at this time of the year.

The front-door bell clanged loudly, and the Rat, who was very greasy with buttered toast, sent Billy, the smal­ler hedge­hog, to see who it might be. There was a sound of much stamp­ing in the hall, and presently Billy re­turned in front of the Ot­ter, who threw him­self on the Rat with an em­brace and a shout of af­fec­tion­ate greet­ing.

“Get off!” spluttered the Rat, with his mouth full.

“Thought I should find you here all right,” said the Ot­ter cheer­fully. “They were all in a great state of alarm along River Bank when I ar­rived this morn­ing. Rat never been home all night—nor Mole either—some­thing dread­ful must have happened, they said; and the snow had covered up all your tracks, of course. But I knew that when people were in any fix they mostly went to Badger, or else Badger got to know of it some­how, so I came straight off here, through the Wild Wood and the snow! My! it was fine, com­ing through the snow as the red sun was rising and show­ing against the black tree-trunks! As you went along in the still­ness, every now and then masses of snow slid off the branches sud­denly with a flop! mak­ing you jump and run for cover. Snow-castles and snow-cav­erns had sprung up out of nowhere in the night—and snow bridges, ter­races, ram­parts—I could have stayed and played with them for hours. Here and there great branches had been torn away by the sheer weight of the snow, and robins perched and hopped on them in their perky con­ceited way, just as if they had done it them­selves. A ragged string of wild geese passed over­head, high on the grey sky, and a few rooks whirled over the trees, in­spec­ted, and flapped off home­wards with a dis­gus­ted ex­pres­sion; but I met no sens­ible be­ing to ask the news of. About halfway across I came on a rab­bit sit­ting on a stump, clean­ing his silly face with his paws. He was a pretty scared an­imal when I crept up be­hind him and placed a heavy fore­paw on his shoulder. I had to cuff his head once or twice to get any sense out of it at all. At last I man­aged to ex­tract from him that Mole had been seen in the Wild Wood last night by one of them. It was the talk of the bur­rows, he said, how Mole, Mr. Rat’s par­tic­u­lar friend, was in a bad fix; how he had lost his way, and ‘They’ were up and out hunt­ing, and were chivvy­ing him round and round. ‘Then why didn’t any of you do some­thing?’ I asked. ‘You mayn’t be blessed with brains, but there are hun­dreds and hun­dreds of you, big, stout fel­lows, as fat as but­ter, and your bur­rows run­ning in all dir­ec­tions, and you could have taken him in and made him safe and com­fort­able, or tried to, at all events.’ ‘What, us?’ he merely said: ‘do some­thing? us rab­bits?’ So I cuffed him again and left him. There was noth­ing else to be done. At any rate, I had learnt some­thing; and if I had had the luck to meet any of ‘Them’ I’d have learnt some­thing more—or they would.”

“Weren’t you at all—er—nervous?” asked the Mole, some of yes­ter­day’s ter­ror com­ing back to him at the men­tion of the Wild Wood.

“Ner­vous?” The Ot­ter showed a gleam­ing set of strong white teeth as he laughed. “I’d give ’em nerves if any of them tried any­thing on with me. Here, Mole, fry me some slices of ham, like the good little chap you are. I’m fright­fully hungry, and I’ve got any amount to say to Ratty here. Haven’t seen him for an age.”

So the good-natured Mole, hav­ing cut some slices of ham, set the hedge­hogs to fry it, and re­turned to his own break­fast, while the Ot­ter and the Rat, their heads to­gether, eagerly talked river-shop, which is long shop and talk that is end­less, run­ning on like the bab­bling river it­self.

A plate of fried ham had just been cleared and sent back for more, when the Badger entered, yawn­ing and rub­bing his eyes, and greeted them all in his quiet, simple way, with kind in­quir­ies for every­one. “It must be get­ting on for lunch­eon time,” he re­marked to the Ot­ter. “Bet­ter stop and have it with us. You must be hungry, this cold morn­ing.”

“Rather!” replied the Ot­ter, wink­ing at the Mole. “The sight of these greedy young hedge­hogs stuff­ing them­selves with fried ham makes me feel pos­it­ively fam­ished.”

The hedge­hogs, who were just be­gin­ning to feel hungry again after their por­ridge, and after work­ing so hard at their fry­ing, looked tim­idly up at Mr. Badger, but were too shy to say any­thing.

“Here, you two young­sters, be off home to your mother,” said the Badger kindly. “I’ll send someone with you to show you the way. You won’t want any din­ner today, I’ll be bound.”

He gave them six­pence apiece and a pat on the head, and they went off with much re­spect­ful swinging of caps and touch­ing of fore­locks.

Presently they all sat down to lunch­eon to­gether. The Mole found him­self placed next to Mr. Badger, and, as the other two were still deep in river-gos­sip from which noth­ing could di­vert them, he took the op­por­tun­ity to tell Badger how com­fort­able and home­like it all felt to him. “Once well un­der­ground,” he said, “you know ex­actly where you are. Noth­ing can hap­pen to you, and noth­ing can get at you. You’re en­tirely your own mas­ter, and you don’t have to con­sult any­body or mind what they say. Th­ings go on all the same over­head, and you let ’em, and don’t bother about ’em. When you want to, up you go, and there the things are, wait­ing for you.”

The Badger simply beamed on him. “That’s ex­actly what I say,” he replied. “There’s no se­cur­ity, or peace and tran­quil­lity, ex­cept un­der­ground. And then, if your ideas get lar­ger and you want to ex­pand—why, a dig and a scrape, and there you are! If you feel your house is a bit too big, you stop up a hole or two, and there you are again! No build­ers, no trades­men, no re­marks passed on you by fel­lows look­ing over your wall, and, above all, no weather. Look at Rat, now. A couple of feet of flood wa­ter, and he’s got to move into hired lodgings; un­com­fort­able, in­con­veni­ently situ­ated, and hor­ribly ex­pens­ive. Take Toad. I say noth­ing against Toad Hall; quite the best house in these parts, as a house. But sup­pos­ing a fire breaks out—where’s Toad? Sup­pos­ing tiles are blown off, or walls sink or crack, or win­dows get broken—where’s Toad? Sup­pos­ing the rooms are draughty—I hate a draught my­self—where’s Toad? No, up and out of doors is good enough to roam about and get one’s liv­ing in; but un­der­ground to come back to at last—that’s my idea of home!”

The Mole as­sen­ted heart­ily; and the Badger in con­sequence got very friendly with him. “When lunch is over,” he said, “I’ll take you all round this little place of mine. I can see you’ll ap­pre­ci­ate it. You un­der­stand what do­mestic ar­chi­tec­ture ought to be, you do.”

After lunch­eon, ac­cord­ingly, when the other two had settled them­selves into the chim­ney-corner and had star­ted a heated ar­gu­ment on the sub­ject of eels, the Badger lighted a lan­tern and bade the Mole fol­low him. Cross­ing the hall, they passed down one of the prin­cipal tun­nels, and the waver­ing light of the lan­tern gave glimpses on either side of rooms both large and small, some mere cup­boards, oth­ers nearly as broad and im­pos­ing as Toad’s din­ing-hall. A nar­row pas­sage at right angles led them into an­other cor­ridor, and here the same thing was re­peated. The Mole was staggered at the size, the ex­tent, the rami­fic­a­tions of it all; at the length of the dim pas­sages, the solid vault­ings of the crammed store-cham­bers, the ma­sonry every­where, the pil­lars, the arches, the pave­ments. “How on earth, Badger,” he said at last, “did you ever find time and strength to do all this? It’s as­ton­ish­ing!”

“It would be as­ton­ish­ing in­deed,” said the Badger simply, “if I had done it. But as a mat­ter of fact I did none of it—only cleaned out the pas­sages and cham­bers, as far as I had need of them. There’s lots more of it, all round about. I see you don’t un­der­stand, and I must ex­plain it to you. Well, very long ago, on the spot where the Wild Wood waves now, be­fore ever it had planted it­self and grown up to what it now is, there was a city—a city of people, you know. Here, where we are stand­ing, they lived, and walked, and talked, and slept, and car­ried on their busi­ness. Here they stabled their horses and feasted, from here they rode out to fight or drove out to trade. They were a power­ful people, and rich, and great build­ers. They built to last, for they thought their city would last forever.”

“But what has be­come of them all?” asked the Mole.

“Who can tell?” said the Badger. “People come—they stay for a while, they flour­ish, they build—and they go. It is their way. But we re­main. There were badgers here, I’ve been told, long be­fore that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again. We are an en­dur­ing lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are pa­tient, and back we come. And so it will ever be.”

“Well, and when they went at last, those people?” said the Mole.

“When they went,” con­tin­ued the Badger, “the strong winds and per­sist­ent rains took the mat­ter in hand, pa­tiently, cease­lessly, year after year. Per­haps we badgers too, in our small way, helped a little—who knows? It was all down, down, down, gradu­ally—ruin and lev­el­ling and dis­ap­pear­ance. Then it was all up, up, up, gradu­ally, as seeds grew to sap­lings, and sap­lings to forest trees, and bramble and fern came creep­ing in to help. Leaf-mould rose and ob­lit­er­ated, streams in their winter fresh­ets brought sand and soil to clog and to cover, and in course of time our home was ready for us again, and we moved in. Up above us, on the sur­face, the same thing happened. An­im­als ar­rived, liked the look of the place, took up their quar­ters, settled down, spread, and flour­ished. They didn’t bother them­selves about the past—they never do; they’re too busy. The place was a bit humpy and hil­locky, nat­ur­ally, and full of holes; but that was rather an ad­vant­age. And they don’t bother about the fu­ture, either—the fu­ture when per­haps the people will move in again—for a time—as may very well be. The Wild Wood is pretty well pop­u­lated by now; with all the usual lot, good, bad, and in­dif­fer­ent—I name no names. It takes all sorts to make a world. But I fancy you know some­thing about them your­self by this time.”

“I do in­deed,” said the Mole, with a slight shiver.

“Well, well,” said the Badger, pat­ting him on the shoulder, “it was your first ex­per­i­ence of them, you see. They’re not so bad really; and we must all live and let live. But I’ll pass the word around to­mor­row, and I think you’ll have no fur­ther trouble. Any friend of mine walks where he likes in this coun­try, or I’ll know the reason why!”

When they got back to the kit­chen again, they found the Rat walk­ing up and down, very rest­less. The un­der­ground at­mo­sphere was op­press­ing him and get­ting on his nerves, and he seemed really to be afraid that the river would run away if he wasn’t there to look after it. So he had his over­coat on, and his pis­tols thrust into his belt again. “Come along, Mole,” he said anxiously, as soon as he caught sight of them. “We must get off while it’s day­light. Don’t want to spend an­other night in the Wild Wood again.”

“It’ll be all right, my fine fel­low,” said the Ot­ter. “I’m com­ing along with you, and I know every path blind­fold; and if there’s a head that needs to be punched, you can con­fid­ently rely upon me to punch it.”

“You really needn’t fret, Ratty,” ad­ded the Badger pla­cidly. “My pas­sages run fur­ther than you think, and I’ve bolt-holes to the edge of the wood in sev­eral dir­ec­tions, though I don’t care for every­body to know about them. When you really have to go, you shall leave by one of my short cuts. Mean­time, make your­self easy, and sit down again.”

The Rat was nev­er­the­less still anxious to be off and at­tend to his river, so the Badger, tak­ing up his lan­tern again, led the way along a damp and air­less tun­nel that wound and dipped, part vaul­ted, part hewn through solid rock, for a weary dis­tance that seemed to be miles. At last day­light began to show it­self con­fusedly through tangled growth over­hanging the mouth of the pas­sage; and the Badger, bid­ding them a hasty good­bye, pushed them hur­riedly through the open­ing, made everything look as nat­ural as pos­sible again, with creep­ers, brush­wood, and dead leaves, and re­treated.

They found them­selves stand­ing on the very edge of the Wild Wood. Rocks and brambles and tree-roots be­hind them, con­fusedly heaped and tangled; in front, a great space of quiet fields, hemmed by lines of hedges black on the snow, and, far ahead, a glint of the fa­mil­iar old river, while the wintry sun hung red and low on the ho­ri­zon. The Ot­ter, as know­ing all the paths, took charge of the party, and they trailed out on a beeline for a dis­tant stile. Paus­ing there a mo­ment and look­ing back, they saw the whole mass of the Wild Wood, dense, men­acing, com­pact, grimly set in vast white sur­round­ings; sim­ul­tan­eously they turned and made swiftly for home, for fire­light and the fa­mil­iar things it played on, for the voice, sound­ing cheer­ily out­side their win­dow, of the river that they knew and trus­ted in all its moods, that never made them afraid with any amazement.

As he hur­ried along, eagerly an­ti­cip­at­ing the mo­ment when he would be at home again among the things he knew and liked, the Mole saw clearly that he was an an­imal of tilled field and hedgerow, linked to the ploughed fur­row, the fre­quen­ted pas­ture, the lane of even­ing linger­ings, the cul­tiv­ated garden-plot. For oth­ers the as­per­it­ies, the stub­born en­dur­ance, or the clash of ac­tual con­flict, that went with Nature in the rough; he must be wise, must keep to the pleas­ant places in which his lines were laid and which held ad­ven­ture enough, in their way, to last for a life­time.

V Dulce Domum

The sheep ran hud­dling to­gether against the hurdles, blow­ing out thin nos­trils and stamp­ing with del­ic­ate fore­feet, their heads thrown back and a light steam rising from the crowded sheep-pen into the frosty air, as the two an­im­als hastened by in high spir­its, with much chat­ter and laughter. They were re­turn­ing across coun­try after a long day’s out­ing with Ot­ter, hunt­ing and ex­plor­ing on the wide up­lands, where cer­tain streams trib­u­tary to their own River had their first small be­gin­nings; and the shades of the short winter day were clos­ing in on them, and they had still some dis­tance to go. Plod­ding at ran­dom across the plough, they had heard the sheep and had made for them; and now, lead­ing from the sheep-pen, they found a beaten track that made walk­ing a lighter busi­ness, and re­spon­ded, moreover, to that small in­quir­ing some­thing which all an­im­als carry in­side them, say­ing un­mis­tak­ably, “Yes, quite right; this leads home!”

“It looks as if we were com­ing to a vil­lage,” said the Mole some­what du­bi­ously, slack­en­ing his pace, as the track, that had in time be­come a path and then had de­veloped into a lane, now handed them over to the charge of a well-metalled road. The an­im­als did not hold with vil­lages, and their own high­ways, thickly fre­quen­ted as they were, took an in­de­pend­ent course, re­gard­less of church, post-of­fice, or pub­lic-house.

“Oh, never mind!” said the Rat. “At this sea­son of the year they’re all safe in­doors by this time, sit­ting round the fire; men, wo­men, and chil­dren, dogs and cats and all. We shall slip through all right, without any bother or un­pleas­ant­ness, and we can have a look at them through their win­dows if you like, and see what they’re do­ing.”

The rapid night­fall of mid-Decem­ber had quite be­set the little vil­lage as they ap­proached it on soft feet over a first thin fall of powdery snow. Little was vis­ible but squares of a dusky or­ange-red on either side of the street, where the fire­light or lamp­light of each cot­tage over­flowed through the case­ments into the dark world without. Most of the low lat­ticed win­dows were in­no­cent of blinds, and to the look­ers-in from out­side, the in­mates, gathered round the tea-table, ab­sorbed in handi­work, or talk­ing with laughter and ges­ture, had each that happy grace which is the last thing the skilled actor shall cap­ture—the nat­ural grace which goes with per­fect un­con­scious­ness of ob­ser­va­tion. Mov­ing at will from one theatre to an­other, the two spec­tat­ors, so far from home them­selves, had some­thing of wist­ful­ness in their eyes as they watched a cat be­ing stroked, a sleepy child picked up and huddled off to bed, or a tired man stretch and knock out his pipe on the end of a smoul­der­ing log.

But it was from one little win­dow, with its blind drawn down, a mere blank trans­par­ency on the night, that the sense of home and the little cur­tained world within walls—the lar­ger stress­ful world of out­side Nature shut out and for­got­ten—most pulsated. Close against the white blind hung a bird­cage, clearly sil­hou­et­ted, every wire, perch, and ap­pur­ten­ance dis­tinct and re­cog­nis­able, even to yes­ter­day’s dull-edged lump of sugar. On the middle perch the fluffy oc­cu­pant, head tucked well into feath­ers, seemed so near to them as to be eas­ily stroked, had they tried; even the del­ic­ate tips of his plumped-out plumage pen­cilled plainly on the il­lu­min­ated screen. As they looked, the sleepy little fel­low stirred un­eas­ily, woke, shook him­self, and raised his head. They could see the gape of his tiny beak as he yawned in a bored sort of way, looked round, and then settled his head into his back again, while the ruffled feath­ers gradu­ally sub­sided into per­fect still­ness. Then a gust of bit­ter wind took them in the back of the neck, a small sting of frozen sleet on the skin woke them as from a dream, and they knew their toes to be cold and their legs tired, and their own home dis­tant a weary way.

Once bey­ond the vil­lage, where the cot­tages ceased ab­ruptly, on either side of the road they could smell through the dark­ness the friendly fields again; and they braced them­selves for the last long stretch, the home stretch, the stretch that we know is bound to end, some time, in the rattle of the door-latch, the sud­den fire­light, and the sight of fa­mil­iar things greet­ing us as long-ab­sent trav­el­lers from far over­sea. They plod­ded along stead­ily and si­lently, each of them think­ing his own thoughts. The Mole’s ran a good deal on sup­per, as it was pitch-dark, and it was all a strange coun­try for him as far as he knew, and he was fol­low­ing obed­i­ently in the wake of the Rat, leav­ing the guid­ance en­tirely to him. As for the Rat, he was walk­ing a little way ahead, as his habit was, his shoulders humped, his eyes fixed on the straight grey road in front of him; so he did not no­tice poor Mole when sud­denly the sum­mons reached him, and took him like an elec­tric shock.

We oth­ers, who have long lost the more subtle of the phys­ical senses, have not even proper terms to ex­press an an­imal’s inter-com­mu­nic­a­tions with his sur­round­ings, liv­ing or oth­er­wise, and have only the word “smell,” for in­stance, to in­clude the whole range of del­ic­ate thrills which mur­mur in the nose of the an­imal night and day, sum­mon­ing, warn­ing, in­cit­ing, re­pelling. It was one of these mys­ter­i­ous fairy calls from out the void that sud­denly reached Mole in the dark­ness, mak­ing him tingle through and through with its very fa­mil­iar ap­peal, even while yet he could not clearly re­mem­ber what it was. He stopped dead in his tracks, his nose search­ing hither and thither in its ef­forts to re­cap­ture the fine fil­a­ment, the tele­graphic cur­rent, that had so strongly moved him. A mo­ment, and he had caught it again; and with it this time came re­col­lec­tion in fullest flood.

Home! That was what they meant, those caress­ing ap­peals, those soft touches waf­ted through the air, those in­vis­ible little hands pulling and tug­ging, all one way! Why, it must be quite close by him at that mo­ment, his old home that he had hur­riedly for­saken and never sought again, that day when he first found the River! And now it was send­ing out its scouts and its mes­sen­gers to cap­ture him and bring him in. Since his es­cape on that bright morn­ing he had hardly given it a thought, so ab­sorbed had he been in his new life, in all its pleas­ures, its sur­prises, its fresh and cap­tiv­at­ing ex­per­i­ences. Now, with a rush of old memor­ies, how clearly it stood up be­fore him, in the dark­ness! Shabby in­deed, and small and poorly fur­nished, and yet his, the home he had made for him­self, the home he had been so happy to get back to after his day’s work. And the home had been happy with him, too, evid­ently, and was miss­ing him, and wanted him back, and was telling him so, through his nose, sor­row­fully, re­proach­fully, but with no bit­ter­ness or an­ger; only with plaint­ive re­minder that it was there, and wanted him.

The call was clear, the sum­mons was plain. He must obey it in­stantly, and go. “Ratty!” he called, full of joy­ful ex­cite­ment, “hold on! Come back! I want you, quick!”

“Oh, come along, Mole, do!” replied the Rat cheer­fully, still plod­ding along.

“Please stop, Ratty!” pleaded the poor Mole, in an­guish of heart. “You don’t un­der­stand! It’s my home, my old home! I’ve just come across the smell of it, and it’s close by here, really quite close. And I must go to it, I must, I must! Oh, come back, Ratty! Please, please come back!”

The Rat was by this time very far ahead, too far to hear clearly what the Mole was call­ing, too far to catch the sharp note of pain­ful ap­peal in his voice. And he was much taken up with the weather, for he too, could smell some­thing—some­thing sus­pi­ciously like ap­proach­ing snow.

“Mole, we mustn’t stop now, really!” he called back. “We’ll come for it to­mor­row, whatever it is you’ve found. But I daren’t stop now—it’s late, and the snow’s com­ing on again, and I’m not sure of the way! And I want your nose, Mole, so come on quick, there’s a good fel­low!” And the Rat pressed for­ward on his way without wait­ing for an an­swer.

Poor Mole stood alone in the road, his heart torn asun­der, and a big sob gath­er­ing, gath­er­ing, some­where low down in­side him, to leap up to the sur­face presently, he knew, in pas­sion­ate es­cape. But even un­der such a test as this his loy­alty to his friend stood firm. Never for a mo­ment did he dream of abandon­ing him. Mean­while, the wafts from his old home pleaded, whispered, con­jured, and fi­nally claimed him im­per­i­ously. He dared not tarry longer within their ma­gic circle. With a wrench that tore his very heartstrings he set his face down the road and fol­lowed sub­missively in the track of the Rat, while faint, thin little smells, still dog­ging his re­treat­ing nose, re­proached him for his new friend­ship and his cal­lous for­get­ful­ness.

With an ef­fort he caught up to the un­sus­pect­ing Rat, who began chat­ter­ing cheer­fully about what they would do when they got back, and how jolly a fire of logs in the par­lour would be, and what a sup­per he meant to eat; never no­ti­cing his com­pan­ion’s si­lence and dis­tress­ful state of mind. At last, how­ever, when they had gone some con­sid­er­able way fur­ther, and were passing some tree stumps at the edge of a copse that bordered the road, he stopped and said kindly, “Look here, Mole, old chap, you seem dead tired. No talk left in you, and your feet drag­ging like lead. We’ll sit down here for a minute and rest. The snow has held off so far, and the best part of our jour­ney is over.”

The Mole sub­sided for­lornly on a tree stump and tried to con­trol him­self, for he felt it surely com­ing. The sob he had fought with so long re­fused to be beaten. Up and up, it forced its way to the air, and then an­other, and an­other, and oth­ers thick and fast; till poor Mole at last gave up the struggle, and cried freely and help­lessly and openly, now that he knew it was all over and he had lost what he could hardly be said to have found.

The Rat, as­ton­ished and dis­mayed at the vi­ol­ence of Mole’s par­oxysm of grief, did not dare to speak for a while. At last he said, very quietly and sym­path­et­ic­ally, “What is it, old fel­low? Whatever can be the mat­ter? Tell us your trouble, and let me see what I can do.”

Poor Mole found it dif­fi­cult to get any words out between the up­heavals of his chest that fol­lowed one upon an­other so quickly and held back speech and choked it as it came. “I know it’s a—shabby, dingy little place,” he sobbed forth at last brokenly: “not like—your cosy quar­ters—or Toad’s beau­ti­ful hall—or Badger’s great house—but it was my own little home—and I was fond of it—and I went away and for­got all about it—and then I smelt it sud­denly—on the road, when I called and you wouldn’t listen, Rat—and everything came back to me with a rush—and I wanted it!—O dear, O dear!—and when you wouldn’t turn back, Ratty—and I had to leave it, though I was smelling it all the time—I thought my heart would break.—We might have just gone and had one look at it, Ratty—only one look—it was close by—but you wouldn’t turn back, Ratty, you wouldn’t turn back! O dear, O dear!”

Re­col­lec­tion brought fresh waves of sor­row, and sobs again took full charge of him, pre­vent­ing fur­ther speech.

The Rat stared straight in front of him, say­ing noth­ing, only pat­ting Mole gently on the shoulder. After a time he muttered gloomily, “I see it all now! What a pig I have been! A pig—that’s me! Just a pig—a plain pig!”

He waited till Mole’s sobs be­came gradu­ally less stormy and more rhyth­mical; he waited till at last sniffs were fre­quent and sobs only in­ter­mit­tent. Then he rose from his seat, and, re­mark­ing care­lessly, “Well, now we’d really bet­ter be get­ting on, old chap!” set off up the road again over the toil­some way they had come.

“Wherever are you (hic) go­ing to (hic), Ratty?” cried the tear­ful Mole, look­ing up in alarm.

“We’re go­ing to find that home of yours, old fel­low,” replied the Rat pleas­antly; “so you had bet­ter come along, for it will take some find­ing, and we shall want your nose.”

“Oh, come back, Ratty, do!” cried the Mole, get­ting up and hur­ry­ing after him. “It’s no good, I tell you! It’s too late, and too dark, and the place is too far off, and the snow’s com­ing! And—and I never meant to let you know I was feel­ing that way about it—it was all an ac­ci­dent and a mis­take! And think of River Bank, and your sup­per!”

“Hang River Bank, and sup­per, too!” said the Rat heart­ily. “I tell you, I’m go­ing to find this place now, if I stay out all night. So cheer up, old chap, and take my arm, and we’ll very soon be back there again.”

Still snuff­ling, plead­ing, and re­luct­ant, Mole suffered him­self to be dragged back along the road by his im­per­i­ous com­pan­ion, who by a flow of cheer­ful talk and an­ec­dote en­deav­oured to be­guile his spir­its back and make the weary way seem shorter. When at last it seemed to the Rat that they must be near­ing that part of the road where the Mole had been “held up,” he said, “Now, no more talk­ing. Busi­ness! Use your nose, and give your mind to it.”

They moved on in si­lence for some little way, when sud­denly the Rat was con­scious, through his arm that was linked in Mole’s, of a faint sort of elec­tric thrill that was passing down that an­imal’s body. In­stantly he dis­en­gaged him­self, fell back a pace, and waited, all at­ten­tion.

The sig­nals were com­ing through!

Mole stood a mo­ment ri­gid, while his up­lif­ted nose, quiv­er­ing slightly, felt the air.

Then a short, quick run for­ward—a fault—a check—a try back; and then a slow, steady, con­fid­ent ad­vance.

The Rat, much ex­cited, kept close to his heels as the Mole, with some­thing of the air of a sleep­walker, crossed a dry ditch, scrambled through a hedge, and nosed his way over a field open and track­less and bare in the faint star­light.

Sud­denly, without giv­ing warn­ing, he dived; but the Rat was on the alert, and promptly fol­lowed him down the tun­nel to which his un­err­ing nose had faith­fully led him.

It was close and air­less, and the earthy smell was strong, and it seemed a long time to Rat ere the pas­sage ended and he could stand erect and stretch and shake him­self. The Mole struck a match, and by its light the Rat saw that they were stand­ing in an open space, neatly swept and sanded un­der­foot, and dir­ectly fa­cing them was Mole’s little front door, with “Mole End” painted, in Gothic let­ter­ing, over the bell-pull at the side.

Mole reached down a lan­tern from a nail on the wall and lit it, and the Rat, look­ing round him, saw that they were in a sort of fore­court. A garden-seat stood on one side of the door, and on the other a roller; for the Mole, who was a tidy an­imal when at home, could not stand hav­ing his ground kicked up by other an­im­als into little runs that ended in earth-heaps. On the walls hung wire bas­kets with ferns in them, al­tern­at­ing with brack­ets car­ry­ing plaster statu­ary—Garibaldi, and the in­fant Samuel, and Queen Vict­oria, and other her­oes of mod­ern Italy. Down on one side of the fore­court ran a skittle-al­ley, with benches along it and little wooden tables marked with rings that hin­ted at beer-mugs. In the middle was a small round pond con­tain­ing gold­fish and sur­roun­ded by a cockleshell bor­der. Out of the centre of the pond rose a fanci­ful erec­tion clothed in more cockleshells and topped by a large silvered glass ball that re­flec­ted everything all wrong and had a very pleas­ing ef­fect.

Mole’s face beamed at the sight of all these ob­jects so dear to him, and he hur­ried Rat through the door, lit a lamp in the hall, and took one glance round his old home. He saw the dust ly­ing thick on everything, saw the cheer­less, deser­ted look of the long-neg­lected house, and its nar­row, mea­gre di­men­sions, its worn and shabby con­tents—and col­lapsed again on a hall-chair, his nose to his paws. “O Ratty!” he cried dis­mally, “why ever did I do it? Why did I bring you to this poor, cold little place, on a night like this, when you might have been at River Bank by this time, toast­ing your toes be­fore a blaz­ing fire, with all your own nice things about you!”

The Rat paid no heed to his dole­ful self-re­proaches. He was run­ning here and there, open­ing doors, in­spect­ing rooms and cup­boards, and light­ing lamps and candles and stick­ing them up every­where. “What a cap­ital little house this is!” he called out cheer­ily. “So com­pact! So well planned! Everything here and everything in its place! We’ll make a jolly night of it. The first thing we want is a good fire; I’ll see to that—I al­ways know where to find things. So this is the par­lour? Splen­did! Your own idea, those little sleep­ing-bunks in the wall? Cap­ital! Now, I’ll fetch the wood and the coals, and you get a duster, Mole—you’ll find one in the drawer of the kit­chen table—and try and smarten things up a bit. Bustle about, old chap!”

En­cour­aged by his in­spir­it­ing com­pan­ion, the Mole roused him­self and dus­ted and pol­ished with en­ergy and hearti­ness, while the Rat, run­ning to and fro with arm­fuls of fuel, soon had a cheer­ful blaze roar­ing up the chim­ney. He hailed the Mole to come and warm him­self; but Mole promptly had an­other fit of the blues, drop­ping down on a couch in dark des­pair and bury­ing his face in his duster. “Rat,” he moaned, “how about your sup­per, you poor, cold, hungry, weary an­imal? I’ve noth­ing to give you—noth­ing—not a crumb!”

“What a fel­low you are for giv­ing in!” said the Rat re­proach­fully. “Why, only just now I saw a sardine-opener on the kit­chen dresser, quite dis­tinctly; and every­body knows that means there are sardines about some­where in the neigh­bour­hood. Rouse your­self! pull your­self to­gether, and come with me and for­age.”

They went and for­aged ac­cord­ingly, hunt­ing through every cup­board and turn­ing out every drawer. The res­ult was not so very de­press­ing after all, though of course it might have been bet­ter; a tin of sardines—a box of cap­tain’s bis­cuits, nearly full—and a Ger­man saus­age en­cased in sil­ver pa­per.

“There’s a ban­quet for you!” ob­served the Rat, as he ar­ranged the table. “I know some an­im­als who would give their ears to be sit­ting down to sup­per with us to­night!”

“No bread!” groaned the Mole dol­or­ously; “no but­ter, no—”

“No pâté de foie gras, no cham­pagne!” con­tin­ued the Rat, grin­ning. “And that re­minds me—what’s that little door at the end of the pas­sage? Your cel­lar, of course! Every lux­ury in this house! Just you wait a minute.”

He made for the cel­lar-door, and presently re­appeared, some­what dusty, with a bottle of beer in each paw and an­other un­der each arm, “Self-in­dul­gent beg­gar you seem to be, Mole,” he ob­served. “Deny your­self noth­ing. This is really the jol­li­est little place I ever was in. Now, wherever did you pick up those prints? Make the place look so home­like, they do. No won­der you’re so fond of it, Mole. Tell us all about it, and how you came to make it what it is.”

Then, while the Rat busied him­self fetch­ing plates, and knives and forks, and mus­tard which he mixed in an eggcup, the Mole, his bosom still heav­ing with the stress of his re­cent emo­tion, re­lated—some­what shyly at first, but with more free­dom as he warmed to his sub­ject—how this was planned, and how that was thought out, and how this was got through a wind­fall from an aunt, and that was a won­der­ful find and a bar­gain, and this other thing was bought out of la­bor­i­ous sav­ings and a cer­tain amount of “go­ing without.” His spir­its fi­nally quite re­stored, he must needs go and caress his pos­ses­sions, and take a lamp and show off their points to his vis­itor and ex­pa­ti­ate on them, quite for­get­ful of the sup­per they both so much needed; Rat, who was des­per­ately hungry but strove to con­ceal it, nod­ding ser­i­ously, ex­amin­ing with a puckered brow, and say­ing, “won­der­ful,” and “most re­mark­able,” at in­ter­vals, when the chance for an ob­ser­va­tion was given him.

At last the Rat suc­ceeded in de­coy­ing him to the table, and had just got ser­i­ously to work with the sardine-opener when sounds were heard from the fore­court without—sounds like the scuff­ling of small feet in the gravel and a con­fused mur­mur of tiny voices, while broken sen­tences reached them—“Now, all in a line—hold the lan­tern up a bit, Tommy—clear your throats first—no cough­ing after I say one, two, three.—Where’s young Bill?—Here, come on, do, we’re all a-wait­ing—”

“What’s up?” in­quired the Rat, paus­ing in his la­bours.

“I think it must be the field-mice,” replied the Mole, with a touch of pride in his man­ner. “They go round carol-singing reg­u­larly at this time of the year. They’re quite an in­sti­tu­tion in these parts. And they never pass me over—they come to Mole End last of all; and I used to give them hot drinks, and sup­per too some­times, when I could af­ford it. It will be like old times to hear them again.”

“Let’s have a look at them!” cried the Rat, jump­ing up and run­ning to the door.

It was a pretty sight, and a sea­son­able one, that met their eyes when they flung the door open. In the fore­court, lit by the dim rays of a horn lan­tern, some eight or ten little field-mice stood in a semi­circle, red worsted com­fort­ers round their throats, their fore­paws thrust deep into their pock­ets, their feet jig­ging for warmth. With bright beady eyes they glanced shyly at each other, snig­ger­ing a little, sniff­ing and ap­ply­ing coat-sleeves a good deal. As the door opened, one of the elder ones that car­ried the lan­tern was just say­ing, “Now then, one, two, three!” and forth­with their shrill little voices up­rose on the air, singing one of the old-time car­ols that their fore­fath­ers com­posed in fields that were fal­low and held by frost, or when snow­bound in chim­ney corners, and handed down to be sung in the miry street to lamp-lit win­dows at Yule-time.

Carol

Vil­la­gers all, this frosty tide,
Let your doors swing open wide,
Though wind may fol­low, and snow be­side,
Yet draw us in by your fire to bide;
Joy shall be yours in the morn­ing!

Here we stand in the cold and the sleet,
Blow­ing fin­gers and stamp­ing feet,
Come from far away you to greet—
You by the fire and we in the street—
Bid­ding you joy in the morn­ing!

For ere one half of the night was gone,
Sud­den a star has led us on,
Rain­ing bliss and ben­ison—
Bliss to­mor­row and more anon,
Joy for every morn­ing!

Good­man Joseph toiled through the snow—
Saw the star o’er a stable low;
Mary she might not fur­ther go—
Wel­come thatch, and lit­ter be­low!
Joy was hers in the morn­ing!

And then they heard the an­gels tell
“Who were the first to cry Now­ell?
An­im­als all, as it be­fell,
In the stable where they did dwell!
Joy shall be theirs in the morn­ing!”

The voices ceased, the sing­ers, bash­ful but smil­ing, ex­changed side­long glances, and si­lence suc­ceeded—but for a mo­ment only. Then, from up above and far away, down the tun­nel they had so lately trav­elled was borne to their ears in a faint mu­sical hum the sound of dis­tant bells ringing a joy­ful and clan­gor­ous peal.

“Very well sung, boys!” cried the Rat heart­ily. “And now come along in, all of you, and warm yourselves by the fire, and have some­thing hot!”

“Yes, come along, field-mice,” cried the Mole eagerly. “This is quite like old times! Shut the door after you. Pull up that settle to the fire. Now, you just wait a minute, while we—O, Ratty!” he cried in des­pair, plump­ing down on a seat, with tears im­pend­ing. “Whatever are we do­ing? We’ve noth­ing to give them!”

“You leave all that to me,” said the mas­ter­ful Rat. “Here, you with the lan­tern! Come over this way. I want to talk to you. Now, tell me, are there any shops open at this hour of the night?”

“Why, cer­tainly, sir,” replied the field-mouse re­spect­fully. “At this time of the year our shops keep open to all sorts of hours.”

“Then look here!” said the Rat. “You go off at once, you and your lan­tern, and you get me—”

Here much muttered con­ver­sa­tion en­sued, and the Mole only heard bits of it, such as—“Fresh, mind!—no, a pound of that will do—see you get Bug­gins’s, for I won’t have any other—no, only the best—if you can’t get it there, try some­where else—yes, of course, homemade, no tinned stuff—well then, do the best you can!” Fin­ally, there was a chink of coin passing from paw to paw, the field-mouse was provided with an ample bas­ket for his pur­chases, and off he hur­ried, he and his lan­tern.

The rest of the field-mice, perched in a row on the settle, their small legs swinging, gave them­selves up to en­joy­ment of the fire, and toasted their chil­blains till they tingled; while the Mole, fail­ing to draw them into easy con­ver­sa­tion, plunged into fam­ily his­tory and made each of them re­cite the names of his nu­mer­ous broth­ers, who were too young, it ap­peared, to be al­lowed to go out a-car­olling this year, but looked for­ward very shortly to win­ning the par­ental con­sent.

The Rat, mean­while, was busy ex­amin­ing the la­bel on one of the beer-bottles. “I per­ceive this to be Old Bur­ton,” he re­marked ap­prov­ingly. “Sens­ible Mole! The very thing! Now we shall be able to mull some ale! Get the things ready, Mole, while I draw the corks.”

It did not take long to pre­pare the brew and thrust the tin heater well into the red heart of the fire; and soon every field-mouse was sip­ping and cough­ing and chok­ing (for a little mulled ale goes a long way) and wip­ing his eyes and laugh­ing and for­get­ting he had ever been cold in all his life.

“They act plays, too, these fel­lows,” the Mole ex­plained to the Rat. “Make them up all by them­selves, and act them af­ter­wards. And very well they do it, too! They gave us a cap­ital one last year, about a field-mouse who was cap­tured at sea by a Bar­bary cor­sair, and made to row in a gal­ley; and when he es­caped and got home again, his ladylove had gone into a con­vent. Here, you! You were in it, I re­mem­ber. Get up and re­cite a bit.”

The field-mouse ad­dressed got up on his legs, giggled shyly, looked round the room, and re­mained ab­so­lutely tongue-tied. His com­rades cheered him on, Mole coaxed and en­cour­aged him, and the Rat went so far as to take him by the shoulders and shake him; but noth­ing could over­come his stage-fright. They were all busily en­gaged on him like wa­ter­men ap­ply­ing the Royal Hu­mane So­ci­ety’s reg­u­la­tions to a case of long sub­mer­sion, when the latch clicked, the door opened, and the field-mouse with the lan­tern re­appeared, stag­ger­ing un­der the weight of his bas­ket.

There was no more talk of play­act­ing once the very real and solid con­tents of the bas­ket had been tumbled out on the table. Under the gen­er­al­ship of Rat, every­body was set to do some­thing or to fetch some­thing. In a very few minutes sup­per was ready, and Mole, as he took the head of the table in a sort of a dream, saw a lately bar­ren board set thick with sa­voury com­forts; saw his little friends’ faces brighten and beam as they fell to without delay; and then let him­self loose—for he was fam­ished in­deed—on the provender so ma­gic­ally provided, think­ing what a happy home­com­ing this had turned out, after all. As they ate, they talked of old times, and the field-mice gave him the local gos­sip up to date, and answered as well as they could the hun­dred ques­tions he had to ask them. The Rat said little or noth­ing, only tak­ing care that each guest had what he wanted, and plenty of it, and that Mole had no trouble or anxi­ety about any­thing.

They clattered off at last, very grate­ful and shower­ing wishes of the sea­son, with their jacket pock­ets stuffed with re­mem­brances for the small broth­ers and sis­ters at home. When the door had closed on the last of them and the chink of the lan­terns had died away, Mole and Rat kicked the fire up, drew their chairs in, brewed them­selves a last night­cap of mulled ale, and dis­cussed the events of the long day. At last the Rat, with a tre­mend­ous yawn, said, “Mole, old chap, I’m ready to drop. Sleepy is simply not the word. That your own bunk over on that side? Very well, then, I’ll take this. What a rip­ping little house this is! Everything so handy!”

He clambered into his bunk and rolled him­self well up in the blankets, and slum­ber gathered him forth­with, as a swathe of bar­ley is fol­ded into the arms of the reap­ing ma­chine.

The weary Mole also was glad to turn in without delay, and soon had his head on his pil­low, in great joy and con­tent­ment. But ere he closed his eyes he let them wander round his old room, mel­low in the glow of the fire­light that played or res­ted on fa­mil­iar and friendly things which had long been un­con­sciously a part of him, and now smil­ingly re­ceived him back, without ran­cour. He was now in just the frame of mind that the tact­ful Rat had quietly worked to bring about in him. He saw clearly how plain and simple—how nar­row, even—it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the spe­cial value of some such an­chor­age in one’s ex­ist­ence. He did not at all want to aban­don the new life and its splen­did spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the up­per world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must re­turn to the lar­ger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could al­ways be coun­ted upon for the same simple wel­come.

VI Mr. Toad

It was a bright morn­ing in the early part of sum­mer; the river had re­sumed its wonted banks and its ac­cus­tomed pace, and a hot sun seemed to be pulling everything green and bushy and spiky up out of the earth to­wards him, as if by strings. The Mole and the Water Rat had been up since dawn, very busy on mat­ters con­nec­ted with boats and the open­ing of the boat­ing sea­son; paint­ing and var­nish­ing, mend­ing paddles, re­pair­ing cush­ions, hunt­ing for miss­ing boat-hooks, and so on; and were fin­ish­ing break­fast in their little par­lour and eagerly dis­cuss­ing their plans for the day, when a heavy knock soun­ded at the door.

“Bother!” said the Rat, all over egg. “See who it is, Mole, like a good chap, since you’ve fin­ished.”

The Mole went to at­tend the sum­mons, and the Rat heard him ut­ter a cry of sur­prise. Then he flung the par­lour door open, and an­nounced with much im­port­ance, “Mr. Badger!”

This was a won­der­ful thing, in­deed, that the Badger should pay a formal call on them, or in­deed on any­body. He gen­er­ally had to be caught, if you wanted him badly, as he slipped quietly along a hedgerow of an early morn­ing or a late even­ing, or else hunted up in his own house in the middle of the Wood, which was a ser­i­ous un­der­tak­ing.

The Badger strode heav­ily into the room, and stood look­ing at the two an­im­als with an ex­pres­sion full of ser­i­ous­ness. The Rat let his egg-spoon fall on the table­cloth, and sat open-mouthed.

“The hour has come!” said the Badger at last with great solem­nity.

“What hour?” asked the Rat un­eas­ily, glan­cing at the clock on the man­tel­piece.

“Whose hour, you should rather say,” replied the Badger. “Why, Toad’s hour! The hour of Toad! I said I would take him in hand as soon as the winter was well over, and I’m go­ing to take him in hand today!”

“Toad’s hour, of course!” cried the Mole de­lightedly. “Hooray! I re­mem­ber now! We’ll teach him to be a sens­ible Toad!”

“This very morn­ing,” con­tin­ued the Badger, tak­ing an arm­chair, “as I learnt last night from a trust­worthy source, an­other new and ex­cep­tion­ally power­ful mo­tor­car will ar­rive at Toad Hall on ap­proval or re­turn. At this very mo­ment, per­haps, Toad is busy ar­ray­ing him­self in those sin­gu­larly hideous ha­bili­ments so dear to him, which trans­form him from a (com­par­at­ively) good-look­ing Toad into an Ob­ject which throws any de­cent-minded an­imal that comes across it into a vi­ol­ent fit. We must be up and do­ing, ere it is too late. You two an­im­als will ac­com­pany me in­stantly to Toad Hall, and the work of res­cue shall be ac­com­plished.”

“Right you are!” cried the Rat, start­ing up. “We’ll res­cue the poor un­happy an­imal! We’ll con­vert him! He’ll be the most con­ver­ted Toad that ever was be­fore we’ve done with him!”

They set off up the road on their mis­sion of mercy, Badger lead­ing the way. An­im­als when in com­pany walk in a proper and sens­ible man­ner, in single file, in­stead of sprawl­ing all across the road and be­ing of no use or sup­port to each other in case of sud­den trouble or danger.

They reached the car­riage-drive of Toad Hall to find, as Badger had an­ti­cip­ated, a shiny new mo­tor­car, of great size, painted a bright red (Toad’s fa­vour­ite col­our), stand­ing in front of the house. As they neared the door it was flung open, and Mr. Toad, ar­rayed in goggles, cap, gaiters, and enorm­ous over­coat, came swag­ger­ing down the steps, draw­ing on his gaunt­leted gloves.

“Hullo! come on, you fel­lows!” he cried cheer­fully on catch­ing sight of them. “You’re just in time to come with me for a jolly—to come for a jolly—for a—er—jolly—”

His hearty ac­cents faltered and fell away as he no­ticed the stern un­bend­ing look on the coun­ten­ances of his si­lent friends, and his in­vit­a­tion re­mained un­fin­ished.

The Badger strode up the steps. “Take him in­side,” he said sternly to his com­pan­ions. Then, as Toad was hustled through the door, strug­gling and protest­ing, he turned to the chauf­feur in charge of the new mo­tor­car.

“I’m afraid you won’t be wanted today,” he said. “Mr. Toad has changed his mind. He will not re­quire the car. Please un­der­stand that this is fi­nal. You needn’t wait.” Then he fol­lowed the oth­ers in­side and shut the door.

“Now then!” he said to the Toad, when the four of them stood to­gether in the Hall, “first of all, take those ri­dicu­lous things off!”

“Shan’t!” replied Toad, with great spirit. “What is the mean­ing of this gross out­rage? I de­mand an in­stant ex­plan­a­tion.”

“Take them off him, then, you two,” ordered the Badger briefly.

They had to lay Toad out on the floor, kick­ing and call­ing all sorts of names, be­fore they could get to work prop­erly. Then the Rat sat on him, and the Mole got his mo­tor-clothes off him bit by bit, and they stood him up on his legs again. A good deal of his blus­ter­ing spirit seemed to have evap­or­ated with the re­moval of his fine panoply. Now that he was merely Toad, and no longer the Ter­ror of the High­way, he giggled feebly and looked from one to the other ap­peal­ingly, seem­ing quite to un­der­stand the situ­ation.

“You knew it must come to this, sooner or later, Toad,” the Badger ex­plained severely. “You’ve dis­reg­arded all the warn­ings we’ve given you, you’ve gone on squan­der­ing the money your father left you, and you’re get­ting us an­im­als a bad name in the dis­trict by your furi­ous driv­ing and your smashes and your rows with the po­lice. Independ­ence is all very well, but we an­im­als never al­low our friends to make fools of them­selves bey­ond a cer­tain limit; and that limit you’ve reached. Now, you’re a good fel­low in many re­spects, and I don’t want to be too hard on you. I’ll make one more ef­fort to bring you to reason. You will come with me into the smoking-room, and there you will hear some facts about your­self; and we’ll see whether you come out of that room the same Toad that you went in.”

He took Toad firmly by the arm, led him into the smoking-room, and closed the door be­hind them.

“That’s no good!” said the Rat con­temp­tu­ously. “Talk­ing to Toad’ll never cure him. He’ll say any­thing.”

They made them­selves com­fort­able in arm­chairs and waited pa­tiently. Through the closed door they could just hear the long con­tinu­ous drone of the Badger’s voice, rising and fall­ing in waves of oratory; and presently they no­ticed that the ser­mon began to be punc­tu­ated at in­ter­vals by long-drawn sobs, evid­ently pro­ceed­ing from the bosom of Toad, who was a soft­hearted and af­fec­tion­ate fel­low, very eas­ily con­ver­ted—for the time be­ing—to any point of view.

After some three-quar­ters of an hour the door opened, and the Badger re­appeared, sol­emnly lead­ing by the paw a very limp and de­jec­ted Toad. His skin hung bag­gily about him, his legs wobbled, and his cheeks were fur­rowed by the tears so plen­ti­fully called forth by the Badger’s mov­ing dis­course.

“Sit down there, Toad,” said the Badger kindly, point­ing to a chair. “My friends,” he went on, “I am pleased to in­form you that Toad has at last seen the er­ror of his ways. He is truly sorry for his mis­guided con­duct in the past, and he has un­der­taken to give up mo­tor­cars en­tirely and forever. I have his sol­emn prom­ise to that ef­fect.”

“That is very good news,” said the Mole gravely.

“Very good news in­deed,” ob­served the Rat du­bi­ously, “if only—if only—”

He was look­ing very hard at Toad as he said this, and could not help think­ing he per­ceived some­thing vaguely re­sem­bling a twinkle in that an­imal’s still sor­row­ful eye.

“There’s only one thing more to be done,” con­tin­ued the grat­i­fied Badger. “Toad, I want you sol­emnly to re­peat, be­fore your friends here, what you fully ad­mit­ted to me in the smoking-room just now. First, you are sorry for what you’ve done, and you see the folly of it all?”

There was a long, long pause. Toad looked des­per­ately this way and that, while the other an­im­als waited in grave si­lence. At last he spoke.

“No!” he said, a little sul­lenly, but stoutly; “I’m not sorry. And it wasn’t folly at all! It was simply glor­i­ous!”

“What?” cried the Badger, greatly scan­dal­ised. “You back­slid­ing an­imal, didn’t you tell me just now, in there—”

“Oh, yes, yes, in there,” said Toad im­pa­tiently. “I’d have said any­thing in there. You’re so elo­quent, dear Badger, and so mov­ing, and so con­vin­cing, and put all your points so fright­fully well—you can do what you like with me in there, and you know it. But I’ve been search­ing my mind since, and go­ing over things in it, and I find that I’m not a bit sorry or re­pent­ant really, so it’s no earthly good say­ing I am; now, is it?”

“Then you don’t prom­ise,” said the Badger, “never to touch a mo­tor­car again?”

“Cer­tainly not!” replied Toad em­phat­ic­ally. “On the con­trary, I faith­fully prom­ise that the very first mo­tor­car I see, poop-poop! off I go in it!”

“Told you so, didn’t I?” ob­served the Rat to the Mole.

“Very well, then,” said the Badger firmly, rising to his feet. “Since you won’t yield to per­sua­sion, we’ll try what force can do. I feared it would come to this all along. You’ve of­ten asked us three to come and stay with you, Toad, in this hand­some house of yours; well, now we’re go­ing to. When we’ve con­ver­ted you to a proper point of view we may quit, but not be­fore. Take him up­stairs, you two, and lock him up in his bed­room, while we ar­range mat­ters between ourselves.”

“It’s for your own good, Toady, you know,” said the Rat kindly, as Toad, kick­ing and strug­gling, was hauled up the stairs by his two faith­ful friends. “Think what fun we shall all have to­gether, just as we used to, when you’ve quite got over this—this pain­ful at­tack of yours!”

“We’ll take great care of everything for you till you’re well, Toad,” said the Mole; “and we’ll see your money isn’t wasted, as it has been.”

“No more of those re­gret­table in­cid­ents with the po­lice, Toad,” said the Rat, as they thrust him into his bed­room.

“And no more weeks in hos­pital, be­ing ordered about by fe­male nurses, Toad,” ad­ded the Mole, turn­ing the key on him.

They des­cen­ded the stair, Toad shout­ing ab­use at them through the key­hole; and the three friends then met in con­fer­ence on the situ­ation.

“It’s go­ing to be a te­di­ous busi­ness,” said the Badger, sigh­ing. “I’ve never seen Toad so de­term­ined. However, we will see it out. He must never be left an in­stant un­guarded. We shall have to take it in turns to be with him, till the poison has worked it­self out of his sys­tem.”

They ar­ranged watches ac­cord­ingly. Each an­imal took it in turns to sleep in Toad’s room at night, and they di­vided the day up between them. At first Toad was un­doubtedly very try­ing to his care­ful guard­i­ans. When his vi­ol­ent par­oxysms pos­sessed him he would ar­range bed­room chairs in rude re­semb­lance of a mo­tor­car and would crouch on the fore­most of them, bent for­ward and star­ing fix­edly ahead, mak­ing un­couth and ghastly noises, till the cli­max was reached, when, turn­ing a com­plete somer­sault, he would lie pros­trate amidst the ru­ins of the chairs, ap­par­ently com­pletely sat­is­fied for the mo­ment. As time passed, how­ever, these pain­ful seizures grew gradu­ally less fre­quent, and his friends strove to di­vert his mind into fresh chan­nels. But his in­terest in other mat­ters did not seem to re­vive, and he grew ap­par­ently lan­guid and de­pressed.

One fine morn­ing the Rat, whose turn it was to go on duty, went up­stairs to re­lieve Badger, whom he found fid­get­ing to be off and stretch his legs in a long ramble round his wood and down his earths and bur­rows. “Toad’s still in bed,” he told the Rat, out­side the door. “Can’t get much out of him, ex­cept, ‘O leave him alone, he wants noth­ing, per­haps he’ll be bet­ter presently, it may pass off in time, don’t be un­duly anxious,’ and so on. Now, you look out, Rat! When Toad’s quiet and sub­missive, and play­ing at be­ing the hero of a Sunday-school prize, then he’s at his art­fullest. There’s sure to be some­thing up. I know him. Well, now, I must be off.”

“How are you today, old chap?” in­quired the Rat cheer­fully, as he ap­proached Toad’s bed­side.

He had to wait some minutes for an an­swer. At last a feeble voice replied, “Thank you so much, dear Ratty! So good of you to in­quire! But first tell me how you are your­self, and the ex­cel­lent Mole?”

“O, we’re all right,” replied the Rat. “Mole,” he ad­ded in­cau­tiously, “is go­ing out for a run round with Badger. They’ll be out till lunch­eon time, so you and I will spend a pleas­ant morn­ing to­gether, and I’ll do my best to amuse you. Now jump up, there’s a good fel­low, and don’t lie mop­ing there on a fine morn­ing like this!”

“Dear, kind Rat,” mur­mured Toad, “how little you real­ise my con­di­tion, and how very far I am from ‘jump­ing up’ now—if ever! But do not trouble about me. I hate be­ing a bur­den to my friends, and I do not ex­pect to be one much longer. Indeed, I al­most hope not.”

“Well, I hope not, too,” said the Rat heart­ily. “You’ve been a fine bother to us all this time, and I’m glad to hear it’s go­ing to stop. And in weather like this, and the boat­ing sea­son just be­gin­ning! It’s too bad of you, Toad! It isn’t the trouble we mind, but you’re mak­ing us miss such an aw­ful lot.”

“I’m afraid it is the trouble you mind, though,” replied the Toad lan­guidly. “I can quite un­der­stand it. It’s nat­ural enough. You’re tired of both­er­ing about me. I mustn’t ask you to do any­thing fur­ther. I’m a nuis­ance, I know.”

“You are, in­deed,” said the Rat. “But I tell you, I’d take any trouble on earth for you, if only you’d be a sens­ible an­imal.”

“If I thought that, Ratty,” mur­mured Toad, more feebly than ever, “then I would beg you—for the last time, prob­ably—to step round to the vil­lage as quickly as pos­sible—even now it may be too late—and fetch the doc­tor. But don’t you bother. It’s only a trouble, and per­haps we may as well let things take their course.”

“Why, what do you want a doc­tor for?” in­quired the Rat, com­ing closer and ex­amin­ing him. He cer­tainly lay very still and flat, and his voice was weaker and his man­ner much changed.

“Surely you have no­ticed of late—” mur­mured Toad. “But, no—why should you? No­ti­cing things is only a trouble. To­mor­row, in­deed, you may be say­ing to your­self, ‘O, if only I had no­ticed sooner! If only I had done some­thing!’ But no; it’s a trouble. Never mind—for­get that I asked.”

“Look here, old man,” said the Rat, be­gin­ning to get rather alarmed, “of course I’ll fetch a doc­tor to you, if you really think you want him. But you can hardly be bad enough for that yet. Let’s talk about some­thing else.”

“I fear, dear friend,” said Toad, with a sad smile, “that ‘talk’ can do little in a case like this—or doc­tors either, for that mat­ter; still, one must grasp at the slight­est straw. And, by the way—while you are about it—I hate to give you ad­di­tional trouble, but I hap­pen to re­mem­ber that you will pass the door—would you mind at the same time ask­ing the law­yer to step up? It would be a con­veni­ence to me, and there are mo­ments—per­haps I should say there is a mo­ment—when one must face dis­agree­able tasks, at whatever cost to ex­hausted nature!”

“A law­yer! O, he must be really bad!” the af­frighted Rat said to him­self, as he hur­ried from the room, not for­get­ting, how­ever, to lock the door care­fully be­hind him.

Out­side, he stopped to con­sider. The other two were far away, and he had no one to con­sult.

“It’s best to be on the safe side,” he said, on re­flec­tion. “I’ve known Toad fancy him­self fright­fully bad be­fore, without the slight­est reason; but I’ve never heard him ask for a law­yer! If there’s noth­ing really the mat­ter, the doc­tor will tell him he’s an old ass, and cheer him up; and that will be some­thing gained. I’d bet­ter hu­mour him and go; it won’t take very long.” So he ran off to the vil­lage on his er­rand of mercy.

The Toad, who had hopped lightly out of bed as soon as he heard the key turned in the lock, watched him eagerly from the win­dow till he dis­ap­peared down the car­riage-drive. Then, laugh­ing heart­ily, he dressed as quickly as pos­sible in the smartest suit he could lay hands on at the mo­ment, filled his pock­ets with cash which he took from a small drawer in the dress­ing-table, and next, knot­ting the sheets from his bed to­gether and ty­ing one end of the im­pro­vised rope round the cent­ral mul­lion of the hand­some Tu­dor win­dow which formed such a fea­ture of his bed­room, he scrambled out, slid lightly to the ground, and, tak­ing the op­pos­ite dir­ec­tion to the Rat, marched off light-heartedly, whist­ling a merry tune.

It was a gloomy lunch­eon for Rat when the Badger and the Mole at length re­turned, and he had to face them at table with his pi­ti­ful and un­con­vin­cing story. The Badger’s caustic, not to say bru­tal, re­marks may be ima­gined, and there­fore passed over; but it was pain­ful to the Rat that even the Mole, though he took his friend’s side as far as pos­sible, could not help say­ing, “You’ve been a bit of a duffer this time, Ratty! Toad, too, of all an­im­als!”

“He did it aw­fully well,” said the crest­fal­len Rat.

“He did you aw­fully well!” re­joined the Badger hotly. “However, talk­ing won’t mend mat­ters. He’s got clear away for the time, that’s cer­tain; and the worst of it is, he’ll be so con­ceited with what he’ll think is his clev­erness that he may com­mit any folly. One com­fort is, we’re free now, and needn’t waste any more of our pre­cious time do­ing sen­try-go. But we’d bet­ter con­tinue to sleep at Toad Hall for a while longer. Toad may be brought back at any mo­ment—on a stretcher, or between two po­lice­men.”

So spoke the Badger, not know­ing what the fu­ture held in store, or how much wa­ter, and of how tur­bid a char­ac­ter, was to run un­der bridges be­fore Toad should sit at ease again in his an­ces­tral Hall.

Mean­while, Toad, gay and ir­re­spons­ible, was walk­ing briskly along the high road, some miles from home. At first he had taken bypaths, and crossed many fields, and changed his course sev­eral times, in case of pur­suit; but now, feel­ing by this time safe from re­cap­ture, and the sun smil­ing brightly on him, and all Nature join­ing in a chorus of ap­proval to the song of self-praise that his own heart was singing to him, he al­most danced along the road in his sat­is­fac­tion and con­ceit.

“Smart piece of work that!” he re­marked to him­self chuck­ling. “Brain against brute force—and brain came out on the top—as it’s bound to do. Poor old Ratty! My! won’t he catch it when the Badger gets back! A worthy fel­low, Ratty, with many good qual­it­ies, but very little in­tel­li­gence and ab­so­lutely no edu­ca­tion. I must take him in hand some day, and see if I can make some­thing of him.”

Filled full of con­ceited thoughts such as these he strode along, his head in the air, till he reached a little town, where the sign of “The Red Lion,” swinging across the road halfway down the main street, re­minded him that he had not break­fas­ted that day, and that he was ex­ceed­ingly hungry after his long walk. He marched into the Inn, ordered the best lunch­eon that could be provided at so short a no­tice, and sat down to eat it in the cof­fee-room.

He was about halfway through his meal when an only too fa­mil­iar sound, ap­proach­ing down the street, made him start and fall a-trem­bling all over. The poop-poop! drew nearer and nearer, the car could be heard to turn into the inn-yard and come to a stop, and Toad had to hold on to the leg of the table to con­ceal his over­mas­ter­ing emo­tion. Presently the party entered the cof­fee-room, hungry, talk­at­ive, and gay, vol­uble on their ex­per­i­ences of the morn­ing and the mer­its of the chariot that had brought them along so well. Toad listened eagerly, all ears, for a time; at last he could stand it no longer. He slipped out of the room quietly, paid his bill at the bar, and as soon as he got out­side sauntered round quietly to the inn-yard. “There can­not be any harm,” he said to him­self, “in my only just look­ing at it!”

The car stood in the middle of the yard, quite un­at­ten­ded, the stable-helps and other hangers-on be­ing all at their din­ner. Toad walked slowly round it, in­spect­ing, cri­ti­cising, mus­ing deeply.

“I won­der,” he said to him­self presently, “I won­der if this sort of car starts eas­ily?”

Next mo­ment, hardly know­ing how it came about, he found he had hold of the handle and was turn­ing it. As the fa­mil­iar sound broke forth, the old pas­sion seized on Toad and com­pletely mastered him, body and soul. As if in a dream he found him­self, some­how, seated in the driver’s seat; as if in a dream, he pulled the lever and swung the car round the yard and out through the arch­way; and, as if in a dream, all sense of right and wrong, all fear of ob­vi­ous con­sequences, seemed tem­por­ar­ily sus­pen­ded. He in­creased his pace, and as the car de­voured the street and leapt forth on the high road through the open coun­try, he was only con­scious that he was Toad once more, Toad at his best and highest, Toad the ter­ror, the traffic-queller, the Lord of the lone trail, be­fore whom all must give way or be smit­ten into noth­ing­ness and ever­last­ing night. He chanted as he flew, and the car re­spon­ded with son­or­ous drone; the miles were eaten up un­der him as he sped he knew not whither, ful­filling his in­stincts, liv­ing his hour, reck­less of what might come to him.

“To my mind,” ob­served the Chair­man of the Bench of Ma­gis­trates cheer­fully, “the only dif­fi­culty that presents it­self in this oth­er­wise very clear case is, how we can pos­sibly make it suf­fi­ciently hot for the in­cor­ri­gible rogue and hardened ruf­fian whom we see cower­ing in the dock be­fore us. Let me see: he has been found guilty, on the clearest evid­ence, first, of steal­ing a valu­able mo­tor­car; secondly, of driv­ing to the pub­lic danger; and, thirdly, of gross im­per­tin­ence to the rural po­lice. Mr. Clerk, will you tell us, please, what is the very stiffest pen­alty we can im­pose for each of these of­fences? Without, of course, giv­ing the pris­oner the be­ne­fit of any doubt, be­cause there isn’t any.”

The Clerk scratched his nose with his pen. “Some people would con­sider,” he ob­served, “that steal­ing the mo­tor­car was the worst of­fence; and so it is. But cheeking the po­lice un­doubtedly car­ries the severest pen­alty; and so it ought. Sup­pos­ing you were to say twelve months for the theft, which is mild; and three years for the furi­ous driv­ing, which is le­ni­ent; and fif­teen years for the cheek, which was pretty bad sort of cheek, judging by what we’ve heard from the wit­ness-box, even if you only be­lieve one-tenth part of what you heard, and I never be­lieve more my­self—those fig­ures, if ad­ded to­gether cor­rectly, tot up to nine­teen years—”

“First-rate!” said the Chair­man.

“—So you had bet­ter make it a round twenty years and be on the safe side,” con­cluded the Clerk.

“An ex­cel­lent sug­ges­tion!” said the Chair­man ap­prov­ingly. “Pris­oner! Pull your­self to­gether and try and stand up straight. It’s go­ing to be twenty years for you this time. And mind, if you ap­pear be­fore us again, upon any charge whatever, we shall have to deal with you very ser­i­ously!”

Then the bru­tal min­ions of the law fell upon the hap­less Toad; loaded him with chains, and dragged him from the Court House, shriek­ing, pray­ing, protest­ing; across the mar­ket­place, where the play­ful popu­lace, al­ways as severe upon de­tec­ted crime as they are sym­path­etic and help­ful when one is merely “wanted,” as­sailed him with jeers, car­rots, and pop­u­lar catch­words; past hoot­ing school chil­dren, their in­no­cent faces lit up with the pleas­ure they ever de­rive from the sight of a gen­tle­man in dif­fi­culties; across the hol­low-sound­ing draw­bridge, be­low the spiky port­cullis, un­der the frown­ing arch­way of the grim old castle, whose an­cient towers soared high over­head; past guard­rooms full of grin­ning sol­diery off duty, past sentries who coughed in a hor­rid, sar­castic way, be­cause that is as much as a sen­try on his post dare do to show his con­tempt and ab­hor­rence of crime; up time­worn wind­ing stairs, past men-at-arms in cas­quet and corse­let of steel, dart­ing threat­en­ing looks through their viz­ards; across court­yards, where mastiffs strained at their leash and pawed the air to get at him; past an­cient ward­ers, their hal­berds leant against the wall, doz­ing over a pasty and a flagon of brown ale; on and on, past the rack-cham­ber and the thumb­screw-room, past the turn­ing that led to the private scaf­fold, till they reached the door of the grim­mest dun­geon that lay in the heart of the in­ner­most keep. There at last they paused, where an an­cient gaoler sat fin­ger­ing a bunch of mighty keys.

“Odds­bod­ikins!” said the ser­geant of po­lice, tak­ing off his hel­met and wip­ing his fore­head. “Rouse thee, old loon, and take over from us this vile Toad, a crim­inal of deep­est guilt and match­less art­ful­ness and re­source. Watch and ward him with all thy skill; and mark thee well, grey­beard, should aught un­to­ward be­fall, thy old head shall an­swer for his—and a mur­rain on both of them!”

The gaoler nod­ded grimly, lay­ing his withered hand on the shoulder of the miser­able Toad. The rusty key creaked in the lock, the great door clanged be­hind them; and Toad was a help­less pris­oner in the re­motest dun­geon of the best-guarded keep of the stoutest castle in all the length and breadth of Merry Eng­land.

VII The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

The Wil­low-Wren was twit­ter­ing his thin little song, hid­den him­self in the dark selvedge of the river bank. Though it was past ten o’clock at night, the sky still clung to and re­tained some linger­ing skirts of light from the de­par­ted day; and the sul­len heats of the tor­rid af­ter­noon broke up and rolled away at the dis­pers­ing touch of the cool fin­gers of the short mid­sum­mer night. Mole lay stretched on the bank, still pant­ing from the stress of the fierce day that had been cloud­less from dawn to late sun­set, and waited for his friend to re­turn. He had been on the river with some com­pan­ions, leav­ing the Water Rat free to keep an en­gage­ment of long stand­ing with Ot­ter; and he had come back to find the house dark and deser­ted, and no sign of Rat, who was doubt­less keep­ing it up late with his old com­rade. It was still too hot to think of stay­ing in­doors, so he lay on some cool dock-leaves, and thought over the past day and its do­ings, and how very good they all had been.

The Rat’s light foot­fall was presently heard ap­proach­ing over the parched grass. “O, the blessed cool­ness!” he said, and sat down, gaz­ing thought­fully into the river, si­lent and pre­oc­cu­pied.

“You stayed to sup­per, of course?” said the Mole presently.

“Sim­ply had to,” said the Rat. “They wouldn’t hear of my go­ing be­fore. You know how kind they al­ways are. And they made things as jolly for me as ever they could, right up to the mo­ment I left. But I felt a brute all the time, as it was clear to me they were very un­happy, though they tried to hide it. Mole, I’m afraid they’re in trouble. Little Portly is miss­ing again; and you know what a lot his father thinks of him, though he never says much about it.”

“What, that child?” said the Mole lightly. “Well, sup­pose he is; why worry about it? He’s al­ways stray­ing off and get­ting lost, and turn­ing up again; he’s so ad­ven­tur­ous. But no harm ever hap­pens to him. Every­body here­abouts knows him and likes him, just as they do old Ot­ter, and you may be sure some an­imal or other will come across him and bring him back again all right. Why, we’ve found him ourselves, miles from home, and quite self-pos­sessed and cheer­ful!”

“Yes; but this time it’s more ser­i­ous,” said the Rat gravely. “He’s been miss­ing for some days now, and the Ot­ters have hunted every­where, high and low, without find­ing the slight­est trace. And they’ve asked every an­imal, too, for miles around, and no one knows any­thing about him. Ot­ter’s evid­ently more anxious than he’ll ad­mit. I got out of him that young Portly hasn’t learnt to swim very well yet, and I can see he’s think­ing of the weir. There’s a lot of wa­ter com­ing down still, con­sid­er­ing the time of the year, and the place al­ways had a fas­cin­a­tion for the child. And then there are—well, traps and things—you know. Ot­ter’s not the fel­low to be nervous about any son of his be­fore it’s time. And now he is nervous. When I left, he came out with me—said he wanted some air, and talked about stretch­ing his legs. But I could see it wasn’t that, so I drew him out and pumped him, and got it all from him at last. He was go­ing to spend the night watch­ing by the ford. You know the place where the old ford used to be, in by­gone days be­fore they built the bridge?”

“I know it well,” said the Mole. “But why should Ot­ter choose to watch there?”

“Well, it seems that it was there he gave Portly his first swim­ming-les­son,” con­tin­ued the Rat. “From that shal­low, grav­elly spit near the bank. And it was there he used to teach him fish­ing, and there young Portly caught his first fish, of which he was so very proud. The child loved the spot, and Ot­ter thinks that if he came wan­der­ing back from wherever he is—if he is any­where by this time, poor little chap—he might make for the ford he was so fond of; or if he came across it he’d re­mem­ber it well, and stop there and play, per­haps. So Ot­ter goes there every night and watches—on the chance, you know, just on the chance!”

They were si­lent for a time, both think­ing of the same thing—the lonely, heart-sore an­imal, crouched by the ford, watch­ing and wait­ing, the long night through—on the chance.

“Well, well,” said the Rat presently, “I sup­pose we ought to be think­ing about turn­ing in.” But he never offered to move.

“Rat,” said the Mole, “I simply can’t go and turn in, and go to sleep, and do noth­ing, even though there doesn’t seem to be any­thing to be done. We’ll get the boat out, and paddle up­stream. The moon will be up in an hour or so, and then we will search as well as we can—any­how, it will be bet­ter than go­ing to bed and do­ing noth­ing.”

“Just what I was think­ing my­self,” said the Rat. “It’s not the sort of night for bed any­how; and day­break is not so very far off, and then we may pick up some news of him from early risers as we go along.”

They got the boat out, and the Rat took the sculls, pad­dling with cau­tion. Out in mid­stream, there was a clear, nar­row track that faintly re­flec­ted the sky; but wherever shad­ows fell on the wa­ter from bank, bush, or tree, they were as solid to all ap­pear­ance as the banks them­selves, and the Mole had to steer with judg­ment ac­cord­ingly. Dark and deser­ted as it was, the night was full of small noises, song and chat­ter and rust­ling, telling of the busy little pop­u­la­tion who were up and about, ply­ing their trades and vo­ca­tions through the night till sun­shine should fall on them at last and send them off to their well-earned re­pose. The wa­ter’s own noises, too, were more ap­par­ent than by day, its gurg­lings and “cloops” more un­ex­pec­ted and near at hand; and con­stantly they star­ted at what seemed a sud­den clear call from an ac­tual ar­tic­u­late voice.

The line of the ho­ri­zon was clear and hard against the sky, and in one par­tic­u­lar quarter it showed black against a sil­very climb­ing phos­phor­es­cence that grew and grew. At last, over the rim of the wait­ing earth the moon lif­ted with slow majesty till it swung clear of the ho­ri­zon and rode off, free of moor­ings; and once more they began to see sur­faces—mead­ows wide­spread, and quiet gar­dens, and the river it­self from bank to bank, all softly dis­closed, all washed clean of mys­tery and ter­ror, all ra­di­ant again as by day, but with a dif­fer­ence that was tre­mend­ous. Their old haunts greeted them again in other raiment, as if they had slipped away and put on this pure new ap­parel and come quietly back, smil­ing as they shyly waited to see if they would be re­cog­nised again un­der it.

Fasten­ing their boat to a wil­low, the friends landed in this si­lent, sil­ver king­dom, and pa­tiently ex­plored the hedges, the hol­low trees, the run­nels and their little cul­verts, the ditches and dry wa­ter­ways. Em­bark­ing again and cross­ing over, they worked their way up the stream in this man­ner, while the moon, se­rene and de­tached in a cloud­less sky, did what she could, though so far off, to help them in their quest; till her hour came and she sank earth­wards re­luct­antly, and left them, and mys­tery once more held field and river.

Then a change began slowly to de­clare it­self. The ho­ri­zon be­came clearer, field and tree came more into sight, and some­how with a dif­fer­ent look; the mys­tery began to drop away from them. A bird piped sud­denly, and was still; and a light breeze sprang up and set the reeds and bul­rushes rust­ling. Rat, who was in the stern of the boat, while Mole sculled, sat up sud­denly and listened with a pas­sion­ate in­tent­ness. Mole, who with gentle strokes was just keep­ing the boat mov­ing while he scanned the banks with care, looked at him with curi­os­ity.

“It’s gone!” sighed the Rat, sink­ing back in his seat again. “So beau­ti­ful and strange and new! Since it was to end so soon, I al­most wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a long­ing in me that is pain, and noth­ing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listen­ing to it forever. No! There it is again!” he cried, alert once more. En­tranced, he was si­lent for a long space, spell­bound.

“Now it passes on and I be­gin to lose it,” he said presently. “O Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the dis­tant pip­ing! Such mu­sic I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the mu­sic is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the mu­sic and the call must be for us.”

The Mole, greatly won­der­ing, obeyed. “I hear noth­ing my­self,” he said, “but the wind play­ing in the reeds and rushes and os­iers.”

The Rat never answered, if in­deed he heard. Rapt, trans­por­ted, trem­bling, he was pos­sessed in all his senses by this new di­vine thing that caught up his help­less soul and swung and dandled it, a power­less but happy in­fant in a strong sus­tain­ing grasp.

In si­lence Mole rowed stead­ily, and soon they came to a point where the river di­vided, a long back­wa­ter branch­ing off to one side. With a slight move­ment of his head Rat, who had long dropped the rud­der-lines, dir­ec­ted the rower to take the back­wa­ter. The creep­ing tide of light gained and gained, and now they could see the col­our of the flowers that gemmed the wa­ter’s edge.

“Clearer and nearer still,” cried the Rat joy­ously. “Now you must surely hear it! Ah—at last—I see you do!”

Breath­less and trans­fixed, the Mole stopped row­ing as the li­quid run of that glad pip­ing broke on him like a wave, caught him up, and pos­sessed him ut­terly. He saw the tears on his com­rade’s cheeks, and bowed his head and un­der­stood. For a space they hung there, brushed by the purple loosestrife that fringed the bank; then the clear im­per­i­ous sum­mons that marched hand-in-hand with the in­tox­ic­at­ing melody im­posed its will on Mole, and mech­an­ic­ally he bent to his oars again. And the light grew stead­ily stronger, but no birds sang as they were wont to do at the ap­proach of dawn; and but for the heav­enly mu­sic all was mar­vel­lously still.

On either side of them, as they glided on­wards, the rich meadow-grass seemed that morn­ing of a fresh­ness and a green­ness un­sur­pass­able. Never had they no­ticed the roses so vivid, the wil­low-herb so ri­ot­ous, the meadow-sweet so odor­ous and per­vad­ing. Then the mur­mur of the ap­proach­ing weir began to hold the air, and they felt a con­scious­ness that they were near­ing the end, whatever it might be, that surely awaited their ex­ped­i­tion.

A wide half-circle of foam and glint­ing lights and shin­ing shoulders of green wa­ter, the great weir closed the back­wa­ter from bank to bank, troubled all the quiet sur­face with twirl­ing ed­dies and float­ing foam-streaks, and deadened all other sounds with its sol­emn and sooth­ing rumble. In mid­most of the stream, em­braced in the weir’s shim­mer­ing arm-spread, a small is­land lay anchored, fringed close with wil­low and sil­ver birch and alder. Reserved, shy, but full of sig­ni­fic­ance, it hid whatever it might hold be­hind a veil, keep­ing it till the hour should come, and, with the hour, those who were called and chosen.

Slowly, but with no doubt or hes­it­a­tion whatever, and in some­thing of a sol­emn ex­pect­ancy, the two an­im­als passed through the broken, tu­mul­tu­ous wa­ter and moored their boat at the flowery mar­gin of the is­land. In si­lence they landed, and pushed through the blos­som and scen­ted herb­age and un­der­growth that led up to the level ground, till they stood on a little lawn of a mar­vel­lous green, set round with Nature’s own orch­ard-trees—crab-apple, wild cherry, and sloe.

“This is the place of my song-dream, the place the mu­sic played to me,” whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. “Here, in this holy place, here if any­where, surely we shall find Him!”

Then sud­denly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to wa­ter, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic ter­ror—in­deed he felt won­der­fully at peace and happy—but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without see­ing, he knew it could only mean that some au­gust Pres­ence was very, very near. With dif­fi­culty he turned to look for his friend, and saw him at his side, cowed, stricken, and trem­bling vi­ol­ently. And still there was ut­ter si­lence in the pop­u­lous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew.

Per­haps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the pip­ing was now hushed, the call and the sum­mons seemed still dom­in­ant and im­per­i­ous. He might not re­fuse, were Death him­self wait­ing to strike him in­stantly, once he had looked with mor­tal eye on things rightly kept hid­den. Trem­bling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that ut­ter clear­ness of the im­min­ent dawn, while Nature, flushed with ful­ness of in­cred­ible col­our, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the back­ward sweep of the curved horns, gleam­ing in the grow­ing day­light; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were look­ing down on them hu­mor­ously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rip­pling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still hold­ing the pan­pipes only just fallen away from the par­ted lips; saw the splen­did curves of the shaggy limbs dis­posed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nest­ling between his very hooves, sleep­ing soundly in en­tire peace and con­tent­ment, the little, round, podgy, child­ish form of the baby ot­ter. All this he saw, for one mo­ment breath­less and in­tense, vivid on the morn­ing sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.

“Rat!” he found breath to whis­per, shak­ing. “Are you afraid?”

“Afraid?” mur­mured the Rat, his eyes shin­ing with un­ut­ter­able love. “Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet—and yet—O, Mole, I am afraid!”

Then the two an­im­als, crouch­ing to the earth, bowed their heads and did wor­ship.

Sud­den and mag­ni­fi­cent, the sun’s broad golden disc showed it­self over the ho­ri­zon fa­cing them; and the first rays, shoot­ing across the level wa­ter-mead­ows, took the an­im­als full in the eyes and dazzled them. When they were able to look once more, the Vi­sion had van­ished, and the air was full of the carol of birds that hailed the dawn.

As they stared blankly, in dumb misery deep­en­ing as they slowly real­ised all they had seen and all they had lost, a ca­pri­cious little breeze, dan­cing up from the sur­face of the wa­ter, tossed the as­pens, shook the dewy roses, and blew lightly and caress­ingly in their faces; and with its soft touch came in­stant ob­li­vion. For this is the last best gift that the kindly demi­god is care­ful to be­stow on those to whom he has re­vealed him­self in their help­ing: the gift of for­get­ful­ness. Lest the aw­ful re­mem­brance should re­main and grow, and over­shadow mirth and pleas­ure, and the great haunt­ing memory should spoil all the after-lives of little an­im­als helped out of dif­fi­culties, in or­der that they should be happy and light­hearted as be­fore.

Mole rubbed his eyes and stared at Rat, who was look­ing about him in a puzzled sort of way. “I beg your par­don; what did you say, Rat?” he asked.

“I think I was only re­mark­ing,” said Rat slowly, “that this was the right sort of place, and that here, if any­where, we should find him. And look! Why, there he is, the little fel­low!” And with a cry of de­light he ran to­wards the slum­ber­ing Portly.

But Mole stood still a mo­ment, held in thought. As one wakened sud­denly from a beau­ti­ful dream, who struggles to re­call it, and can re­cap­ture noth­ing but a dim sense of the beauty of it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bit­terly ac­cepts the hard, cold wak­ing and all its pen­al­ties; so Mole, after strug­gling with his memory for a brief space, shook his head sadly and fol­lowed the Rat.

Portly woke up with a joy­ous squeak, and wriggled with pleas­ure at the sight of his father’s friends, who had played with him so of­ten in past days. In a mo­ment, how­ever, his face grew blank, and he fell to hunt­ing round in a circle with plead­ing whine. As a child that has fallen hap­pily asleep in its nurse’s arms, and wakes to find it­self alone and laid in a strange place, and searches corners and cup­boards, and runs from room to room, des­pair grow­ing si­lently in its heart, even so Portly searched the is­land and searched, dogged and un­weary­ing, till at last the black mo­ment came for giv­ing it up, and sit­ting down and cry­ing bit­terly.

The Mole ran quickly to com­fort the little an­imal; but Rat, linger­ing, looked long and doubt­fully at cer­tain hoof-marks deep in the sward.

“Some—great—an­imal—has been here,” he mur­mured slowly and thought­fully; and stood mus­ing, mus­ing; his mind strangely stirred.

“Come along, Rat!” called the Mole. “Think of poor Ot­ter, wait­ing up there by the ford!”

Portly had soon been com­for­ted by the prom­ise of a treat—a jaunt on the river in Mr. Rat’s real boat; and the two an­im­als con­duc­ted him to the wa­ter’s side, placed him se­curely between them in the bot­tom of the boat, and paddled off down the back­wa­ter. The sun was fully up by now, and hot on them, birds sang lust­ily and without re­straint, and flowers smiled and nod­ded from either bank, but some­how—so thought the an­im­als—with less of rich­ness and blaze of col­our than they seemed to re­mem­ber see­ing quite re­cently some­where—they wondered where.

The main river reached again, they turned the boat’s head up­stream, to­wards the point where they knew their friend was keep­ing his lonely vi­gil. As they drew near the fa­mil­iar ford, the Mole took the boat in to the bank, and they lif­ted Portly out and set him on his legs on the towpath, gave him his march­ing or­ders and a friendly farewell pat on the back, and shoved out into mid­stream. They watched the little an­imal as he waddled along the path con­ten­tedly and with im­port­ance; watched him till they saw his muzzle sud­denly lift and his waddle break into a clumsy amble as he quickened his pace with shrill whines and wriggles of re­cog­ni­tion. Look­ing up the river, they could see Ot­ter start up, tense and ri­gid, from out of the shal­lows where he crouched in dumb pa­tience, and could hear his amazed and joy­ous bark as he bounded up through the os­iers on to the path. Then the Mole, with a strong pull on one oar, swung the boat round and let the full stream bear them down again whither it would, their quest now hap­pily ended.

“I feel strangely tired, Rat,” said the Mole, lean­ing wear­ily over his oars, as the boat drif­ted. “It’s be­ing up all night, you’ll say, per­haps; but that’s noth­ing. We do as much half the nights of the week, at this time of the year. No; I feel as if I had been through some­thing very ex­cit­ing and rather ter­rible, and it was just over; and yet noth­ing par­tic­u­lar has happened.”

“Or some­thing very sur­pris­ing and splen­did and beau­ti­ful,” mur­mured the Rat, lean­ing back and clos­ing his eyes. “I feel just as you do, Mole; simply dead tired, though not body-tired. It’s lucky we’ve got the stream with us, to take us home. Isn’t it jolly to feel the sun again, soak­ing into one’s bones! And hark to the wind play­ing in the reeds!”

“It’s like mu­sic—faraway mu­sic,” said the Mole, nod­ding drowsily.

“So I was think­ing,” mur­mured the Rat, dream­ful and lan­guid. “Dance-mu­sic—the lilt­ing sort that runs on without a stop—but with words in it, too—it passes into words and out of them again—I catch them at in­ter­vals—then it is dance-mu­sic once more, and then noth­ing but the reeds’ soft thin whis­per­ing.”

“You hear bet­ter than I,” said the Mole sadly. “I can­not catch the words.”

“Let me try and give you them,” said the Rat softly, his eyes still closed. “Now it is turn­ing into words again—faint but clear—Lest the awe should dwell—And turn your frolic to fret—You shall look on my power at the help­ing hour—But then you shall for­get! Now the reeds take it up—for­get, for­get, they sigh, and it dies away in a rustle and a whis­per. Then the voice re­turns—

“Lest limbs be reddened and rent—I spring the trap that is set—As I loose the snare you may glimpse me there—For surely you shall for­get! Row nearer, Mole, nearer to the reeds! It is hard to catch, and grows each minute fainter.

“Helper and healer, I cheer—Small waifs in the wood­land wet—Strays I find in it, wounds I bind in it—Bid­ding them all for­get! Nearer, Mole, nearer! No, it is no good; the song has died away into reed-talk.”

“But what do the words mean?” asked the won­der­ing Mole.

“That I do not know,” said the Rat simply. “I passed them on to you as they reached me. Ah! now they re­turn again, and this time full and clear! This time, at last, it is the real, the un­mis­tak­able thing, simple—pas­sion­ate—per­fect—”

“Well, let’s have it, then,” said the Mole, after he had waited pa­tiently for a few minutes, half-doz­ing in the hot sun.

But no an­swer came. He looked, and un­der­stood the si­lence. With a smile of much hap­pi­ness on his face, and some­thing of a listen­ing look still linger­ing there, the weary Rat was fast asleep.

VIII Toad’s Adventures

When Toad found him­self im­mured in a dank and noi­some dun­geon, and knew that all the grim dark­ness of a me­di­eval fort­ress lay between him and the outer world of sun­shine and well-metalled high roads where he had lately been so happy, dis­port­ing him­self as if he had bought up every road in Eng­land, he flung him­self at full length on the floor, and shed bit­ter tears, and aban­doned him­self to dark des­pair. “This is the end of everything” (he said), “at least it is the end of the ca­reer of Toad, which is the same thing; the pop­u­lar and hand­some Toad, the rich and hos­pit­able Toad, the Toad so free and care­less and de­bon­air! How can I hope to be ever set at large again” (he said), “who have been im­prisoned so justly for steal­ing so hand­some a mo­tor­car in such an au­da­cious man­ner, and for such lurid and ima­gin­at­ive cheek, be­stowed upon such a num­ber of fat, red-faced po­lice­men!” (Here his sobs choked him.) “Stu­pid an­imal that I was” (he said), “now I must lan­guish in this dun­geon, till people who were proud to say they knew me, have for­got­ten the very name of Toad! O wise old Badger!” (he said), “O clever, in­tel­li­gent Rat and sens­ible Mole! What sound judg­ments, what a know­ledge of men and mat­ters you pos­sess! O un­happy and for­saken Toad!” With lam­ent­a­tions such as these he passed his days and nights for sev­eral weeks, re­fus­ing his meals or in­ter­me­di­ate light re­fresh­ments, though the grim and an­cient gaoler, know­ing that Toad’s pock­ets were well lined, fre­quently poin­ted out that many com­forts, and in­deed lux­ur­ies, could by ar­range­ment be sent in—at a price—from out­side.

Now the gaoler had a daugh­ter, a pleas­ant wench and good-hearted, who as­sisted her father in the lighter du­ties of his post. She was par­tic­u­larly fond of an­im­als, and, be­sides her ca­nary, whose cage hung on a nail in the massive wall of the keep by day, to the great an­noy­ance of pris­on­ers who rel­ished an after-din­ner nap, and was shrouded in an an­ti­macas­sar on the par­lour table at night, she kept sev­eral piebald mice and a rest­less re­volving squir­rel. This kind­hearted girl, pity­ing the misery of Toad, said to her father one day, “Father! I can’t bear to see that poor beast so un­happy, and get­ting so thin! You let me have the man­aging of him. You know how fond of an­im­als I am. I’ll make him eat from my hand, and sit up, and do all sorts of things.”

Her father replied that she could do what she liked with him. He was tired of Toad, and his sulks and his airs and his mean­ness. So that day she went on her er­rand of mercy, and knocked at the door of Toad’s cell.

“Now, cheer up, Toad,” she said, coax­ingly, on en­ter­ing, “and sit up and dry your eyes and be a sens­ible an­imal. And do try and eat a bit of din­ner. See, I’ve brought you some of mine, hot from the oven!”

It was bubble-and-squeak, between two plates, and its fra­grance filled the nar­row cell. The pen­et­rat­ing smell of cab­bage reached the nose of Toad as he lay pros­trate in his misery on the floor, and gave him the idea for a mo­ment that per­haps life was not such a blank and des­per­ate thing as he had ima­gined. But still he wailed, and kicked with his legs, and re­fused to be com­for­ted. So the wise girl re­tired for the time, but, of course, a good deal of the smell of hot cab­bage re­mained be­hind, as it will do, and Toad, between his sobs, sniffed and re­flec­ted, and gradu­ally began to think new and in­spir­ing thoughts: of chiv­alry, and po­etry, and deeds still to be done; of broad mead­ows, and cattle brows­ing in them, raked by sun and wind; of kit­chen-gar­dens, and straight herb-bor­ders, and warm snap­dragon be­set by bees; and of the com­fort­ing clink of dishes set down on the table at Toad Hall, and the scrape of chair-legs on the floor as every­one pulled him­self close up to his work. The air of the nar­row cell took a rosy tinge; he began to think of his friends, and how they would surely be able to do some­thing; of law­yers, and how they would have en­joyed his case, and what an ass he had been not to get in a few; and lastly, he thought of his own great clev­erness and re­source, and all that he was cap­able of if he only gave his great mind to it; and the cure was al­most com­plete.

When the girl re­turned, some hours later, she car­ried a tray, with a cup of fra­grant tea steam­ing on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the but­ter run­ning through the holes in it in great golden drops, like honey from the hon­ey­comb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no un­cer­tain voice; talked of warm kit­chens, of break­fasts on bright frosty morn­ings, of cosy par­lour firesides on winter even­ings, when one’s ramble was over, and slippered feet were propped on the fender; of the purring of con­ten­ted cats, and the twit­ter of sleepy ca­nar­ies. Toad sat up on end once more, dried his eyes, sipped his tea and munched his toast, and soon began talk­ing freely about him­self, and the house he lived in, and his do­ings there, and how im­port­ant he was, and what a lot his friends thought of him.

The gaoler’s daugh­ter saw that the topic was do­ing him as much good as the tea, as in­deed it was, and en­cour­aged him to go on.

“Tell me about Toad Hall,” said she. “It sounds beau­ti­ful.”

“Toad Hall,” said the Toad proudly, “is an eli­gible, self-con­tained gen­tle­man’s res­id­ence, very unique; dat­ing in part from the four­teenth cen­tury, but re­plete with every mod­ern con­veni­ence. Up-to-date san­it­a­tion. Five minutes from church, post-of­fice, and golf-links. Suit­able for—”

“Bless the an­imal,” said the girl, laugh­ing, “I don’t want to take it. Tell me some­thing real about it. But first wait till I fetch you some more tea and toast.”

She tripped away, and presently re­turned with a fresh tray­ful; and Toad, pitch­ing into the toast with avid­ity, his spir­its quite re­stored to their usual level, told her about the boat­house, and the fish­pond, and the old walled kit­chen-garden; and about the pig-styes and the stables, and the pi­geon-house and the hen­house; and about the dairy, and the wash­house, and the china-cup­boards, and the linen-presses (she liked that bit es­pe­cially); and about the ban­quet­ing-hall, and the fun they had there when the other an­im­als were gathered round the table and Toad was at his best, singing songs, telling stor­ies, car­ry­ing on gen­er­ally. Then she wanted to know about his an­imal-friends, and was very in­ter­ested in all he had to tell her about them and how they lived, and what they did to pass their time. Of course, she did not say she was fond of an­im­als as pets, be­cause she had the sense to see that Toad would be ex­tremely of­fen­ded. When she said good night, hav­ing filled his wa­ter-jug and shaken up his straw for him, Toad was very much the same san­guine, self-sat­is­fied an­imal that he had been of old. He sang a little song or two, of the sort he used to sing at his din­ner-parties, curled him­self up in the straw, and had an ex­cel­lent night’s rest and the pleas­antest of dreams.

They had many in­ter­est­ing talks to­gether, after that, as the dreary days went on; and the gaoler’s daugh­ter grew very sorry for Toad, and thought it a great shame that a poor little an­imal should be locked up in prison for what seemed to her a very trivial of­fence. Toad, of course, in his van­ity, thought that her in­terest in him pro­ceeded from a grow­ing ten­der­ness; and he could not help half-re­gret­ting that the so­cial gulf between them was so very wide, for she was a comely lass, and evid­ently ad­mired him very much.

One morn­ing the girl was very thought­ful, and answered at ran­dom, and did not seem to Toad to be pay­ing proper at­ten­tion to his witty say­ings and spark­ling com­ments.

“Toad,” she said presently, “just listen, please. I have an aunt who is a wash­er­wo­man.”

“There, there,” said Toad, gra­ciously and af­fably, “never mind; think no more about it. I have sev­eral aunts who ought to be wash­er­wo­men.”

“Do be quiet a minute, Toad,” said the girl. “You talk too much, that’s your chief fault, and I’m try­ing to think, and you hurt my head. As I said, I have an aunt who is a wash­er­wo­man; she does the wash­ing for all the pris­on­ers in this castle—we try to keep any pay­ing busi­ness of that sort in the fam­ily, you un­der­stand. She takes out the wash­ing on Monday morn­ing, and brings it in on Fri­day even­ing. This is a Thursday. Now, this is what oc­curs to me: you’re very rich—at least you’re al­ways telling me so—and she’s very poor. A few pounds wouldn’t make any dif­fer­ence to you, and it would mean a lot to her. Now, I think if she were prop­erly ap­proached—squared, I be­lieve is the word you an­im­als use—you could come to some ar­range­ment by which she would let you have her dress and bon­net and so on, and you could es­cape from the castle as the of­fi­cial wash­er­wo­man. You’re very alike in many re­spects—par­tic­u­larly about the fig­ure.”

“We’re not,” said the Toad in a huff. “I have a very el­eg­ant fig­ure—for what I am.”

“So has my aunt,” replied the girl, “for what she is. But have it your own way. You hor­rid, proud, un­grate­ful an­imal, when I’m sorry for you, and try­ing to help you!”

“Yes, yes, that’s all right; thank you very much in­deed,” said the Toad hur­riedly. “But look here! you wouldn’t surely have Mr. Toad, of Toad Hall, go­ing about the coun­try dis­guised as a wash­er­wo­man!”

“Then you can stop here as a Toad,” replied the girl with much spirit. “I sup­pose you want to go off in a coach-and-four!”

Hon­est Toad was al­ways ready to ad­mit him­self in the wrong. “You are a good, kind, clever girl,” he said, “and I am in­deed a proud and a stu­pid toad. In­tro­duce me to your worthy aunt, if you will be so kind, and I have no doubt that the ex­cel­lent lady and I will be able to ar­range terms sat­is­fact­ory to both parties.”

Next even­ing the girl ushered her aunt into Toad’s cell, bear­ing his week’s wash­ing pinned up in a towel. The old lady had been pre­pared be­fore­hand for the in­ter­view, and the sight of cer­tain gold sov­er­eigns that Toad had thought­fully placed on the table in full view prac­tic­ally com­pleted the mat­ter and left little fur­ther to dis­cuss. In re­turn for his cash, Toad re­ceived a cot­ton print gown, an ap­ron, a shawl, and a rusty black bon­net; the only stip­u­la­tion the old lady made be­ing that she should be gagged and bound and dumped down in a corner. By this not very con­vin­cing ar­ti­fice, she ex­plained, aided by pic­tur­esque fic­tion which she could sup­ply her­self, she hoped to re­tain her situ­ation, in spite of the sus­pi­cious ap­pear­ance of things.

Toad was de­lighted with the sug­ges­tion. It would en­able him to leave the prison in some style, and with his repu­ta­tion for be­ing a des­per­ate and dan­ger­ous fel­low un­tar­nished; and he read­ily helped the gaoler’s daugh­ter to make her aunt ap­pear as much as pos­sible the vic­tim of cir­cum­stances over which she had no con­trol.

“Now it’s your turn, Toad,” said the girl. “Take off that coat and waist­coat of yours; you’re fat enough as it is.”

Shak­ing with laughter, she pro­ceeded to “hook-and-eye” him into the cot­ton print gown, ar­ranged the shawl with a pro­fes­sional fold, and tied the strings of the rusty bon­net un­der his chin.

“You’re the very im­age of her,” she giggled, “only I’m sure you never looked half so re­spect­able in all your life be­fore. Now, good­bye, Toad, and good luck. Go straight down the way you came up; and if any­one says any­thing to you, as they prob­ably will, be­ing but men, you can chaff back a bit, of course, but re­mem­ber you’re a widow wo­man, quite alone in the world, with a char­ac­ter to lose.”

With a quak­ing heart, but as firm a foot­step as he could com­mand, Toad set forth cau­tiously on what seemed to be a most hareb­rained and haz­ard­ous un­der­tak­ing; but he was soon agree­ably sur­prised to find how easy everything was made for him, and a little humbled at the thought that both his pop­ular­ity, and the sex that seemed to in­spire it, were really an­other’s. The wash­er­wo­man’s squat fig­ure in its fa­mil­iar cot­ton print seemed a pass­port for every barred door and grim gate­way; even when he hes­it­ated, un­cer­tain as to the right turn­ing to take, he found him­self helped out of his dif­fi­culty by the warder at the next gate, anxious to be off to his tea, sum­mon­ing him to come along sharp and not keep him wait­ing there all night. The chaff and the hu­mour­ous sal­lies to which he was sub­jec­ted, and to which, of course, he had to provide prompt and ef­fect­ive reply, formed, in­deed, his chief danger; for Toad was an an­imal with a strong sense of his own dig­nity, and the chaff was mostly (he thought) poor and clumsy, and the hu­mour of the sal­lies en­tirely lack­ing. However, he kept his tem­per, though with great dif­fi­culty, suited his re­torts to his com­pany and his sup­posed char­ac­ter, and did his best not to over­step the lim­its of good taste.

It seemed hours be­fore he crossed the last court­yard, re­jec­ted the press­ing in­vit­a­tions from the last guard­room, and dodged the out­spread arms of the last warder, plead­ing with sim­u­lated pas­sion for just one farewell em­brace. But at last he heard the wicket-gate in the great outer door click be­hind him, felt the fresh air of the outer world upon his anxious brow, and knew that he was free!

Dizzy with the easy suc­cess of his dar­ing ex­ploit, he walked quickly to­wards the lights of the town, not know­ing in the least what he should do next, only quite cer­tain of one thing, that he must re­move him­self as quickly as pos­sible from the neigh­bour­hood where the lady he was forced to rep­res­ent was so well-known and so pop­u­lar a char­ac­ter.

As he walked along, con­sid­er­ing, his at­ten­tion was caught by some red and green lights a little way off, to one side of the town, and the sound of the puff­ing and snort­ing of en­gines and the banging of shunted trucks fell on his ear. “Aha!” he thought, “this is a piece of luck! A rail­way sta­tion is the thing I want most in the whole world at this mo­ment; and what’s more, I needn’t go through the town to get it, and shan’t have to sup­port this hu­mi­li­at­ing char­ac­ter by re­partees which, though thor­oughly ef­fect­ive, do not as­sist one’s sense of self-re­spect.”

He made his way to the sta­tion ac­cord­ingly, con­sul­ted a timetable, and found that a train, bound more or less in the dir­ec­tion of his home, was due to start in half-an-hour. “More luck!” said Toad, his spir­its rising rap­idly, and went off to the book­ing-of­fice to buy his ticket.

He gave the name of the sta­tion that he knew to be nearest to the vil­lage of which Toad Hall was the prin­cipal fea­ture, and mech­an­ic­ally put his fin­gers, in search of the ne­ces­sary money, where his waist­coat pocket should have been. But here the cot­ton gown, which had nobly stood by him so far, and which he had basely for­got­ten, in­ter­vened, and frus­trated his ef­forts. In a sort of night­mare he struggled with the strange un­canny thing that seemed to hold his hands, turn all mus­cu­lar striv­ings to wa­ter, and laugh at him all the time; while other trav­el­lers, form­ing up in a line be­hind, waited with im­pa­tience, mak­ing sug­ges­tions of more or less value and com­ments of more or less strin­gency and point. At last—some­how—he never rightly un­der­stood how—he burst the bar­ri­ers, at­tained the goal, ar­rived at where all waist­coat pock­ets are etern­ally situ­ated, and found—not only no money, but no pocket to hold it, and no waist­coat to hold the pocket!

To his hor­ror he re­col­lec­ted that he had left both coat and waist­coat be­hind him in his cell, and with them his pock­et­book, money, keys, watch, matches, pen­cil-case—all that makes life worth liv­ing, all that dis­tin­guishes the many-pock­eted an­imal, the lord of cre­ation, from the in­ferior one-pock­eted or no-pock­eted pro­duc­tions that hop or trip about per­missively, un­equipped for the real con­test.

In his misery he made one des­per­ate ef­fort to carry the thing off, and, with a re­turn to his fine old man­ner—a blend of the Squire and the Col­lege Don—he said, “Look here! I find I’ve left my purse be­hind. Just give me that ticket, will you, and I’ll send the money on to­mor­row? I’m well-known in these parts.”

The clerk stared at him and the rusty black bon­net a mo­ment, and then laughed. “I should think you were pretty well known in these parts,” he said, “if you’ve tried this game on of­ten. Here, stand away from the win­dow, please, madam; you’re ob­struct­ing the other pas­sen­gers!”

An old gen­tle­man who had been prod­ding him in the back for some mo­ments here thrust him away, and, what was worse, ad­dressed him as his good wo­man, which angered Toad more than any­thing that had oc­curred that even­ing.

Baffled and full of des­pair, he wandered blindly down the plat­form where the train was stand­ing, and tears trickled down each side of his nose. It was hard, he thought, to be within sight of safety and al­most of home, and to be baulked by the want of a few wretched shil­lings and by the pet­ti­fog­ging mis­trust­ful­ness of paid of­fi­cials. Very soon his es­cape would be dis­covered, the hunt would be up, he would be caught, re­viled, loaded with chains, dragged back again to prison and bread-and-wa­ter and straw; his guards and pen­al­ties would be doubled; and O, what sar­castic re­marks the girl would make! What was to be done? He was not swift of foot; his fig­ure was un­for­tu­nately re­cog­nis­able. Could he not squeeze un­der the seat of a car­riage? He had seen this method ad­op­ted by school­boys, when the jour­ney-money provided by thought­ful par­ents had been di­ver­ted to other and bet­ter ends. As he pondered, he found him­self op­pos­ite the en­gine, which was be­ing oiled, wiped, and gen­er­ally caressed by its af­fec­tion­ate driver, a burly man with an oil­can in one hand and a lump of cot­ton-waste in the other.

“Hullo, mother!” said the en­gine-driver, “what’s the trouble? You don’t look par­tic­u­larly cheer­ful.”

“O, sir!” said Toad, cry­ing afresh, “I am a poor un­happy wash­er­wo­man, and I’ve lost all my money, and can’t pay for a ticket, and I must get home to­night some­how, and whatever I am to do I don’t know. O dear, O dear!”

“That’s a bad busi­ness, in­deed,” said the en­gine-driver re­flect­ively. “Lost your money—and can’t get home—and got some kids, too, wait­ing for you, I dare say?”

“Any amount of ’em,” sobbed Toad. “And they’ll be hungry—and play­ing with matches—and up­set­ting lamps, the little in­no­cents!—and quar­rel­ling, and go­ing on gen­er­ally. O dear, O dear!”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said the good en­gine-driver. “You’re a wash­er­wo­man to your trade, says you. Very well, that’s that. And I’m an en­gine-driver, as you well may see, and there’s no deny­ing it’s ter­ribly dirty work. Uses up a power of shirts, it does, till my mis­sus is fair tired of wash­ing of ’em. If you’ll wash a few shirts for me when you get home, and send ’em along, I’ll give you a ride on my en­gine. It’s against the Com­pany’s reg­u­la­tions, but we’re not so very par­tic­u­lar in these out-of-the-way parts.”

The Toad’s misery turned into rap­ture as he eagerly scrambled up into the cab of the en­gine. Of course, he had never washed a shirt in his life, and couldn’t if he tried and, any­how, he wasn’t go­ing to be­gin; but he thought: “When I get safely home to Toad Hall, and have money again, and pock­ets to put it in, I will send the en­gine-driver enough to pay for quite a quant­ity of wash­ing, and that will be the same thing, or bet­ter.”

The guard waved his wel­come flag, the en­gine-driver whistled in cheer­ful re­sponse, and the train moved out of the sta­tion. As the speed in­creased, and the Toad could see on either side of him real fields, and trees, and hedges, and cows, and horses, all fly­ing past him, and as he thought how every minute was bring­ing him nearer to Toad Hall, and sym­path­etic friends, and money to chink in his pocket, and a soft bed to sleep in, and good things to eat, and praise and ad­mir­a­tion at the re­cital of his ad­ven­tures and his sur­pass­ing clev­erness, he began to skip up and down and shout and sing snatches of song, to the great as­ton­ish­ment of the en­gine-driver, who had come across wash­er­wo­men be­fore, at long in­ter­vals, but never one at all like this.

They had covered many and many a mile, and Toad was already con­sid­er­ing what he would have for sup­per as soon as he got home, when he no­ticed that the en­gine-driver, with a puzzled ex­pres­sion on his face, was lean­ing over the side of the en­gine and listen­ing hard. Then he saw him climb on to the coals and gaze out over the top of the train; then he re­turned and said to Toad: “It’s very strange; we’re the last train run­ning in this dir­ec­tion to­night, yet I could be sworn that I heard an­other fol­low­ing us!”

Toad ceased his frivol­ous antics at once. He be­came grave and de­pressed, and a dull pain in the lower part of his spine, com­mu­nic­at­ing it­self to his legs, made him want to sit down and try des­per­ately not to think of all the pos­sib­il­it­ies.

By this time the moon was shin­ing brightly, and the en­gine-driver, steady­ing him­self on the coal, could com­mand a view of the line be­hind them for a long dis­tance.

Presently he called out, “I can see it clearly now! It is an en­gine, on our rails, com­ing along at a great pace! It looks as if we were be­ing pur­sued!”

The miser­able Toad, crouch­ing in the coal-dust, tried hard to think of some­thing to do, with dis­mal want of suc­cess.

“They are gain­ing on us fast!” cried the en­gine-driver. “And the en­gine is crowded with the queerest lot of people! Men like an­cient ward­ers, wav­ing hal­berds; po­lice­men in their hel­mets, wav­ing truncheons; and shab­bily dressed men in pot-hats, ob­vi­ous and un­mis­tak­able plain-clothes de­tect­ives even at this dis­tance, wav­ing re­volvers and walk­ing-sticks; all wav­ing, and all shout­ing the same thing—‘Stop, stop, stop!’ ”

Then Toad fell on his knees among the coals, and, rais­ing his clasped paws in sup­plic­a­tion, cried, “Save me, only save me, dear kind Mr. Engine-driver, and I will con­fess everything! I am not the simple wash­er­wo­man I seem to be! I have no chil­dren wait­ing for me, in­no­cent or oth­er­wise! I am a toad—the well-known and pop­u­lar Mr. Toad, a landed pro­pri­etor; I have just es­caped, by my great dar­ing and clev­erness, from a loath­some dun­geon into which my en­emies had flung me; and if those fel­lows on that en­gine re­cap­ture me, it will be chains and bread-and-wa­ter and straw and misery once more for poor, un­happy, in­no­cent Toad!”

The en­gine-driver looked down upon him very sternly, and said, “Now tell the truth; what were you put in prison for?”

“It was noth­ing very much,” said poor Toad, col­our­ing deeply. “I only bor­rowed a mo­tor­car while the own­ers were at lunch; they had no need of it at the time. I didn’t mean to steal it, really; but people—es­pe­cially ma­gis­trates—take such harsh views of thought­less and high-spir­ited ac­tions.”

The en­gine-driver looked very grave and said, “I fear that you have been in­deed a wicked toad, and by rights I ought to give you up to of­fen­ded justice. But you are evid­ently in sore trouble and dis­tress, so I will not desert you. I don’t hold with mo­tor­cars, for one thing; and I don’t hold with be­ing ordered about by po­lice­men when I’m on my own en­gine, for an­other. And the sight of an an­imal in tears al­ways makes me feel queer and soft­hearted. So cheer up, Toad! I’ll do my best, and we may beat them yet!”

They piled on more coals, shov­el­ling furi­ously; the fur­nace roared, the sparks flew, the en­gine leapt and swung, but still their pur­suers slowly gained. The en­gine-driver, with a sigh, wiped his brow with a hand­ful of cot­ton-waste, and said, “I’m afraid it’s no good, Toad. You see, they are run­ning light, and they have the bet­ter en­gine. There’s just one thing left for us to do, and it’s your only chance, so at­tend very care­fully to what I tell you. A short way ahead of us is a long tun­nel, and on the other side of that the line passes through a thick wood. Now, I will put on all the speed I can while we are run­ning through the tun­nel, but the other fel­lows will slow down a bit, nat­ur­ally, for fear of an ac­ci­dent. When we are through, I will shut off steam and put on brakes as hard as I can, and the mo­ment it’s safe to do so you must jump and hide in the wood, be­fore they get through the tun­nel and see you. Then I will go full speed ahead again, and they can chase me if they like, for as long as they like, and as far as they like. Now mind and be ready to jump when I tell you!”

They piled on more coals, and the train shot into the tun­nel, and the en­gine rushed and roared and rattled, till at last they shot out at the other end into fresh air and the peace­ful moon­light, and saw the wood ly­ing dark and help­ful upon either side of the line. The driver shut off steam and put on brakes, the Toad got down on the step, and as the train slowed down to al­most a walk­ing pace he heard the driver call out, “Now, jump!”

Toad jumped, rolled down a short em­bank­ment, picked him­self up un­hurt, scrambled into the wood and hid.

Peep­ing out, he saw his train get up speed again and dis­ap­pear at a great pace. Then out of the tun­nel burst the pur­su­ing en­gine, roar­ing and whist­ling, her mot­ley crew wav­ing their vari­ous weapons and shout­ing, “Stop! stop! stop!” When they were past, the Toad had a hearty laugh—for the first time since he was thrown into prison.

But he soon stopped laugh­ing when he came to con­sider that it was now very late and dark and cold, and he was in an un­known wood, with no money and no chance of sup­per, and still far from friends and home; and the dead si­lence of everything, after the roar and rattle of the train, was some­thing of a shock. He dared not leave the shel­ter of the trees, so he struck into the wood, with the idea of leav­ing the rail­way as far as pos­sible be­hind him.

After so many weeks within walls, he found the wood strange and un­friendly and in­clined, he thought, to make fun of him. Night­jars, sound­ing their mech­an­ical rattle, made him think that the wood was full of search­ing ward­ers, clos­ing in on him. An owl, swoop­ing noise­lessly to­wards him, brushed his shoulder with its wing, mak­ing him jump with the hor­rid cer­tainty that it was a hand; then flit­ted off, moth-like, laugh­ing its low ho! ho! ho! which Toad thought in very poor taste. Once he met a fox, who stopped, looked him up and down in a sar­castic sort of way, and said, “Hullo, wash­er­wo­man! Half a pair of socks and a pil­low­case short this week! Mind it doesn’t oc­cur again!” and swaggered off, snig­ger­ing. Toad looked about for a stone to throw at him, but could not suc­ceed in find­ing one, which vexed him more than any­thing. At last, cold, hungry, and tired out, he sought the shel­ter of a hol­low tree, where with branches and dead leaves he made him­self as com­fort­able a bed as he could, and slept soundly till the morn­ing.

IX Wayfarers All

The Water Rat was rest­less, and he did not ex­actly know why. To all ap­pear­ance the sum­mer’s pomp was still at fullest height, and al­though in the tilled acres green had given way to gold, though row­ans were red­den­ing, and the woods were dashed here and there with a tawny fierce­ness, yet light and warmth and col­our were still present in un­di­min­ished meas­ure, clean of any chilly pre­mon­i­tions of the passing year. But the con­stant chorus of the orch­ards and hedges had shrunk to a cas­ual even­song from a few yet un­wear­ied per­formers; the robin was be­gin­ning to as­sert him­self once more; and there was a feel­ing in the air of change and de­par­ture. The cuckoo, of course, had long been si­lent; but many an­other feathered friend, for months a part of the fa­mil­iar land­scape and its small so­ci­ety, was miss­ing too, and it seemed that the ranks thinned stead­ily day by day. Rat, ever ob­ser­v­ant of all winged move­ment, saw that it was tak­ing daily a south­ing tend­ency; and even as he lay in bed at night he thought he could make out, passing in the dark­ness over­head, the beat and quiver of im­pa­tient pin­ions, obed­i­ent to the per­emp­tory call.

Nature’s Grand Hotel has its Season, like the oth­ers. As the guests one by one pack, pay, and de­part, and the seats at the table-d’hôte shrink pi­ti­fully at each suc­ceed­ing meal; as suites of rooms are closed, car­pets taken up, and waiters sent away; those boarders who are stay­ing on, en pen­sion, un­til the next year’s full re­open­ing, can­not help be­ing some­what af­fected by all these flit­tings and farewells, this eager dis­cus­sion of plans, routes, and fresh quar­ters, this daily shrink­age in the stream of com­rade­ship. One gets un­settled, de­pressed, and in­clined to be quer­ulous. Why this crav­ing for change? Why not stay on quietly here, like us, and be jolly? You don’t know this hotel out of the sea­son, and what fun we have among ourselves, we fel­lows who re­main and see the whole in­ter­est­ing year out. All very true, no doubt, the oth­ers al­ways reply; we quite envy you—and some other year per­haps—but just now we have en­gage­ments—and there’s the bus at the door—our time is up! So they de­part, with a smile and a nod, and we miss them, and feel re­sent­ful. The Rat was a self-suf­fi­cing sort of an­imal, rooted to the land, and, who­ever went, he stayed; still, he could not help no­ti­cing what was in the air, and feel­ing some of its in­flu­ence in his bones.

It was dif­fi­cult to settle down to any­thing ser­i­ously, with all this flit­ting go­ing on. Leav­ing the wa­ter­side, where rushes stood thick and tall in a stream that was be­com­ing slug­gish and low, he wandered coun­try-wards, crossed a field or two of pas­tur­age already look­ing dusty and parched, and thrust into the great sea of wheat, yel­low, wavy, and mur­mur­ous, full of quiet mo­tion and small whis­per­ings. Here he of­ten loved to wander, through the forest of stiff strong stalks that car­ried their own golden sky away over his head—a sky that was al­ways dan­cing, shim­mer­ing, softly talk­ing; or sway­ing strongly to the passing wind and re­cov­er­ing it­self with a toss and a merry laugh. Here, too, he had many small friends, a so­ci­ety com­plete in it­self, lead­ing full and busy lives, but al­ways with a spare mo­ment to gos­sip, and ex­change news with a vis­itor. Today, how­ever, though they were civil enough, the field-mice and har­vest mice seemed pre­oc­cu­pied. Many were dig­ging and tun­nel­ling busily; oth­ers, gathered to­gether in small groups, ex­amined plans and draw­ings of small flats, stated to be de­sir­able and com­pact, and situ­ated con­veni­ently near the Stores. Some were haul­ing out dusty trunks and dress-bas­kets, oth­ers were already el­bow-deep pack­ing their be­long­ings; while every­where piles and bundles of wheat, oats, bar­ley, beech-mast and nuts, lay about ready for trans­port.

“Here’s old Ratty!” they cried as soon as they saw him. “Come and bear a hand, Rat, and don’t stand about idle!”

“What sort of games are you up to?” said the Water Rat severely. “You know it isn’t time to be think­ing of winter quar­ters yet, by a long way!”

“O yes, we know that,” ex­plained a field-mouse rather shame­facedly; “but it’s al­ways as well to be in good time, isn’t it? We really must get all the fur­niture and bag­gage and stores moved out of this be­fore those hor­rid ma­chines be­gin click­ing round the fields; and then, you know, the best flats get picked up so quickly nowadays, and if you’re late you have to put up with any­thing; and they want such a lot of do­ing up, too, be­fore they’re fit to move into. Of course, we’re early, we know that; but we’re only just mak­ing a start.”

“O, bother starts,” said the Rat. “It’s a splen­did day. Come for a row, or a stroll along the hedges, or a pic­nic in the woods, or some­thing.”

“Well, I think not today, thank you,” replied the field-mouse hur­riedly. “Per­haps some other day—when we’ve more time—”

The Rat, with a snort of con­tempt, swung round to go, tripped over a hat­box, and fell, with un­dig­ni­fied re­marks.

“If people would be more care­ful,” said a field-mouse rather stiffly, “and look where they’re go­ing, people wouldn’t hurt them­selves—and for­get them­selves. Mind that hold­all, Rat! You’d bet­ter sit down some­where. In an hour or two we may be more free to at­tend to you.”

“You won’t be ‘free’ as you call it, much this side of Christ­mas, I can see that,” re­tor­ted the Rat grump­ily, as he picked his way out of the field.

He re­turned some­what des­pond­ently to his river again—his faith­ful, steady-go­ing old river, which never packed up, flit­ted, or went into winter quar­ters.

In the os­iers which fringed the bank he spied a swal­low sit­ting. Presently it was joined by an­other, and then by a third; and the birds, fid­get­ing rest­lessly on their bough, talked to­gether earn­estly and low.

“What, already,” said the Rat, strolling up to them. “What’s the hurry? I call it simply ri­dicu­lous.”

“O, we’re not off yet, if that’s what you mean,” replied the first swal­low. “We’re only mak­ing plans and ar­ran­ging things. Talk­ing it over, you know—what route we’re tak­ing this year, and where we’ll stop, and so on. That’s half the fun!”

“Fun?” said the Rat; “now that’s just what I don’t un­der­stand. If you’ve got to leave this pleas­ant place, and your friends who will miss you, and your snug homes that you’ve just settled into, why, when the hour strikes I’ve no doubt you’ll go bravely, and face all the trouble and dis­com­fort and change and new­ness, and make be­lieve that you’re not very un­happy. But to want to talk about it, or even think about it, till you really need—”

“No, you don’t un­der­stand, nat­ur­ally,” said the second swal­low. “First, we feel it stir­ring within us, a sweet un­rest; then back come the re­col­lec­tions one by one, like hom­ing pi­geons. They flut­ter through our dreams at night, they fly with us in our wheel­ings and circ­lings by day. We hun­ger to in­quire of each other, to com­pare notes and as­sure ourselves that it was all really true, as one by one the scents and sounds and names of long-for­got­ten places come gradu­ally back and beckon to us.”

“Couldn’t you stop on for just this year?” sug­ges­ted the Water Rat, wist­fully. “We’ll all do our best to make you feel at home. You’ve no idea what good times we have here, while you are far away.”

“I tried ‘stop­ping on’ one year,” said the third swal­low. “I had grown so fond of the place that when the time came I hung back and let the oth­ers go on without me. For a few weeks it was all well enough, but af­ter­wards, O the weary length of the nights! The shiv­er­ing, sun­less days! The air so clammy and chill, and not an in­sect in an acre of it! No, it was no good; my cour­age broke down, and one cold, stormy night I took wing, fly­ing well in­land on ac­count of the strong east­erly gales. It was snow­ing hard as I beat through the passes of the great moun­tains, and I had a stiff fight to win through; but never shall I for­get the bliss­ful feel­ing of the hot sun again on my back as I sped down to the lakes that lay so blue and pla­cid be­low me, and the taste of my first fat in­sect! The past was like a bad dream; the fu­ture was all happy hol­i­day as I moved south­wards week by week, eas­ily, lazily, linger­ing as long as I dared, but al­ways heed­ing the call! No, I had had my warn­ing; never again did I think of dis­obedi­ence.”

“Ah, yes, the call of the South, of the South!” twittered the other two dream­ily. “Its songs, its hues, its ra­di­ant air! O, do you re­mem­ber—” and, for­get­ting the Rat, they slid into pas­sion­ate re­min­is­cence, while he listened fas­cin­ated, and his heart burned within him. In him­self, too, he knew that it was vi­brat­ing at last, that chord hitherto dormant and un­sus­pec­ted. The mere chat­ter of these south­ern-bound birds, their pale and second­hand re­ports, had yet power to awaken this wild new sen­sa­tion and thrill him through and through with it; what would one mo­ment of the real thing work in him—one pas­sion­ate touch of the real south­ern sun, one waft of the au­then­tic odour? With closed eyes he dared to dream a mo­ment in full aban­don­ment, and when he looked again the river seemed steely and chill, the green fields grey and light­less. Then his loyal heart seemed to cry out on his weaker self for its treach­ery.

“Why do you ever come back, then, at all?” he de­man­ded of the swal­lows jeal­ously. “What do you find to at­tract you in this poor drab little coun­try?”

“And do you think,” said the first swal­low, “that the other call is not for us too, in its due sea­son? The call of lush meadow-grass, wet orch­ards, warm, in­sect-haunted ponds, of brows­ing cattle, of hay­mak­ing, and all the farm-build­ings clus­ter­ing round the House of the per­fect Eaves?”

“Do you sup­pose,” asked the second one, “that you are the only liv­ing thing that craves with a hungry long­ing to hear the cuckoo’s note again?”

“In due time,” said the third, “we shall be home­sick once more for quiet wa­ter-lilies sway­ing on the sur­face of an Eng­lish stream. But today all that seems pale and thin and very far away. Just now our blood dances to other mu­sic.”

They fell a-twit­ter­ing among them­selves once more, and this time their in­tox­ic­at­ing babble was of vi­olet seas, tawny sands, and liz­ard-haunted walls.

Rest­lessly the Rat wandered off once more, climbed the slope that rose gently from the north bank of the river, and lay look­ing out to­wards the great ring of Downs that barred his vis­ion fur­ther south­wards—his simple ho­ri­zon hitherto, his Moun­tains of the Moon, his limit be­hind which lay noth­ing he had cared to see or to know. Today, to him gaz­ing South with a new­born need stir­ring in his heart, the clear sky over their long low out­line seemed to pulsate with prom­ise; today, the un­seen was everything, the un­known the only real fact of life. On this side of the hills was now the real blank, on the other lay the crowded and col­oured pan­or­ama that his in­ner eye was see­ing so clearly. What seas lay bey­ond, green, leap­ing, and cres­ted! What sun­bathed coasts, along which the white vil­las glittered against the olive woods! What quiet har­bours, thronged with gal­lant ship­ping bound for purple is­lands of wine and spice, is­lands set low in lan­guor­ous wa­ters!

He rose and des­cen­ded river-wards once more; then changed his mind and sought the side of the dusty lane. There, ly­ing half-bur­ied in the thick, cool un­der-hedge tangle that bordered it, he could muse on the metalled road and all the won­drous world that it led to; on all the way­farers, too, that might have trod­den it, and the for­tunes and ad­ven­tures they had gone to seek or found un­seek­ing—out there, bey­ond—bey­ond!

Foot­steps fell on his ear, and the fig­ure of one that walked some­what wear­ily came into view; and he saw that it was a Rat, and a very dusty one. The way­farer, as he reached him, sa­luted with a ges­ture of cour­tesy that had some­thing for­eign about it—hes­it­ated a mo­ment—then with a pleas­ant smile turned from the track and sat down by his side in the cool herb­age. He seemed tired, and the Rat let him rest un­ques­tioned, un­der­stand­ing some­thing of what was in his thoughts; know­ing, too, the value all an­im­als at­tach at times to mere si­lent com­pan­ion­ship, when the weary muscles slacken and the mind marks time.

The way­farer was lean and keen-fea­tured, and some­what bowed at the shoulders; his paws were thin and long, his eyes much wrinkled at the corners, and he wore small gold ear rings in his neatly-set well-shaped ears. His knit­ted jer­sey was of a faded blue, his breeches, patched and stained, were based on a blue found­a­tion, and his small be­long­ings that he car­ried were tied up in a blue cot­ton handker­chief.

When he had res­ted awhile the stranger sighed, snuffed the air, and looked about him.

“That was clover, that warm whiff on the breeze,” he re­marked; “and those are cows we hear crop­ping the grass be­hind us and blow­ing softly between mouth­fuls. There is a sound of dis­tant reap­ers, and yon­der rises a blue line of cot­tage smoke against the wood­land. The river runs some­where close by, for I hear the call of a moorhen, and I see by your build that you’re a fresh­wa­ter mar­iner. Everything seems asleep, and yet go­ing on all the time. It is a goodly life that you lead, friend; no doubt the best in the world, if only you are strong enough to lead it!”

“Yes, it’s the life, the only life, to live,” re­spon­ded the Water Rat dream­ily, and without his usual whole­hearted con­vic­tion.

“I did not say ex­actly that,” replied the stranger cau­tiously; “but no doubt it’s the best. I’ve tried it, and I know. And be­cause I’ve just tried it—six months of it—and know it’s the best, here am I, foot­sore and hungry, tramp­ing away from it, tramp­ing south­wards, fol­low­ing the old call, back to the old life, the life which is mine and which will not let me go.”

“Is this, then, yet an­other of them?” mused the Rat. “And where have you just come from?” he asked. He hardly dared to ask where he was bound for; he seemed to know the an­swer only too well.

“Nice little farm,” replied the way­farer, briefly. “Upa­long in that dir­ec­tion—” he nod­ded north­wards. “Never mind about it. I had everything I could want—everything I had any right to ex­pect of life, and more; and here I am! Glad to be here all the same, though, glad to be here! So many miles fur­ther on the road, so many hours nearer to my heart’s de­sire!”

His shin­ing eyes held fast to the ho­ri­zon, and he seemed to be listen­ing for some sound that was want­ing from that in­land acre­age, vo­cal as it was with the cheer­ful mu­sic of pas­tur­age and farm­yard.

“You are not one of us,” said the Water Rat, “nor yet a farmer; nor even, I should judge, of this coun­try.”

“Right,” replied the stranger. “I’m a sea­far­ing rat, I am, and the port I ori­gin­ally hail from is Con­stantinople, though I’m a sort of a for­eigner there too, in a man­ner of speak­ing. You will have heard of Con­stantinople, friend? A fair city and an an­cient and glor­i­ous one. And you may have heard too, of Sig­urd, King of Nor­way, and how he sailed thither with sixty ships, and how he and his men rode up through streets all can­op­ied in their hon­our with purple and gold; and how the Em­peror and Em­press came down and ban­queted with him on board his ship. When Sig­urd re­turned home, many of his North­men re­mained be­hind and entered the Em­peror’s body­guard, and my an­cestor, a Nor­we­gian born, stayed be­hind too, with the ships that Sig­urd gave the Em­peror. Sea­farers we have ever been, and no won­der; as for me, the city of my birth is no more my home than any pleas­ant port between there and the Lon­don River. I know them all, and they know me. Set me down on any of their quays or fore­shores, and I am home again.”

“I sup­pose you go great voy­ages,” said the Water Rat with grow­ing in­terest. “Months and months out of sight of land, and pro­vi­sions run­ning short, and al­low­anced as to wa­ter, and your mind com­mun­ing with the mighty ocean, and all that sort of thing?”

“By no means,” said the Sea Rat frankly. “Such a life as you de­scribe would not suit me at all. I’m in the coast­ing trade, and rarely out of sight of land. It’s the jolly times on shore that ap­peal to me, as much as any sea­far­ing. O, those south­ern sea­ports! The smell of them, the rid­ing-lights at night, the glam­our!”

“Well, per­haps you have chosen the bet­ter way,” said the Water Rat, but rather doubt­fully. “Tell me some­thing of your coast­ing, then, if you have a mind to, and what sort of har­vest an an­imal of spirit might hope to bring home from it to warm his lat­ter days with gal­lant memor­ies by the fireside; for my life, I con­fess to you, feels to me today some­what nar­row and cir­cum­scribed.”

“My last voy­age,” began the Sea Rat, “that landed me even­tu­ally in this coun­try, bound with high hopes for my in­land farm, will serve as a good ex­ample of any of them, and, in­deed, as an epi­tome of my highly-col­oured life. Fam­ily troubles, as usual, began it. The do­mestic storm-cone was hois­ted, and I shipped my­self on board a small trad­ing ves­sel bound from Con­stantinople, by clas­sic seas whose every wave throbs with a death­less memory, to the Gre­cian Is­lands and the Levant. Those were golden days and balmy nights! In and out of har­bour all the time—old friends every­where—sleep­ing in some cool temple or ruined cistern dur­ing the heat of the day—feast­ing and song after sun­down, un­der great stars set in a vel­vet sky! Thence we turned and coas­ted up the Adri­atic, its shores swim­ming in an at­mo­sphere of am­ber, rose, and aqua­mar­ine; we lay in wide land­locked har­bours, we roamed through an­cient and noble cit­ies, un­til at last one morn­ing, as the sun rose roy­ally be­hind us, we rode into Venice down a path of gold. O, Venice is a fine city, wherein a rat can wander at his ease and take his pleas­ure! Or, when weary of wan­der­ing, can sit at the edge of the Grand Canal at night, feast­ing with his friends, when the air is full of mu­sic and the sky full of stars, and the lights flash and shim­mer on the pol­ished steel prows of the sway­ing gon­dolas, packed so that you could walk across the canal on them from side to side! And then the food—do you like shell­fish? Well, well, we won’t linger over that now.”

He was si­lent for a time; and the Water Rat, si­lent too and en­thralled, floated on dream-canals and heard a phantom song peal­ing high between va­por­ous grey wave-lapped walls.

“South­wards we sailed again at last,” con­tin­ued the Sea Rat, “coast­ing down the Italian shore, till fi­nally we made Palermo, and there I quit­ted for a long, happy spell on shore. I never stick too long to one ship; one gets nar­row-minded and pre­ju­diced. Besides, Si­cily is one of my happy hunt­ing-grounds. I know every­body there, and their ways just suit me. I spent many jolly weeks in the is­land, stay­ing with friends up­coun­try. When I grew rest­less again I took ad­vant­age of a ship that was trad­ing to Sardinia and Cor­sica; and very glad I was to feel the fresh breeze and the sea-spray in my face once more.”

“But isn’t it very hot and stuffy, down in the—hold, I think you call it?” asked the Water Rat.

The sea­farer looked at him with the sus­pi­cion of a wink. “I’m an old hand,” he re­marked with much sim­pli­city. “The cap­tain’s cabin’s good enough for me.”

“It’s a hard life, by all ac­counts,” mur­mured the Rat, sunk in deep thought.

“For the crew it is,” replied the sea­farer gravely, again with the ghost of a wink.

“From Cor­sica,” he went on, “I made use of a ship that was tak­ing wine to the main­land. We made Alassio in the even­ing, lay to, hauled up our wine-casks, and hove them over­board, tied one to the other by a long line. Then the crew took to the boats and rowed shore­wards, singing as they went, and draw­ing after them the long bob­bing pro­ces­sion of casks, like a mile of por­poises. On the sands they had horses wait­ing, which dragged the casks up the steep street of the little town with a fine rush and clat­ter and scramble. When the last cask was in, we went and re­freshed and res­ted, and sat late into the night, drink­ing with our friends, and next morn­ing I took to the great olive-woods for a spell and a rest. For now I had done with is­lands for the time, and ports and ship­ping were plen­ti­ful; so I led a lazy life among the peas­ants, ly­ing and watch­ing them work, or stretched high on the hill­side with the blue Medi­ter­ranean far be­low me. And so at length, by easy stages, and partly on foot, partly by sea, to Mar­seilles, and the meet­ing of old ship­mates, and the vis­it­ing of great ocean-bound ves­sels, and feast­ing once more. Talk of shell­fish! Why, some­times I dream of the shell­fish of Mar­seilles, and wake up cry­ing!”

“That re­minds me,” said the po­lite Water Rat; “you happened to men­tion that you were hungry, and I ought to have spoken earlier. Of course, you will stop and take your mid­day meal with me? My hole is close by; it is some time past noon, and you are very wel­come to whatever there is.”

“Now I call that kind and broth­erly of you,” said the Sea Rat. “I was in­deed hungry when I sat down, and ever since I in­ad­vert­ently happened to men­tion shell­fish, my pangs have been ex­treme. But couldn’t you fetch it along out here? I am none too fond of go­ing un­der hatches, un­less I’m ob­liged to; and then, while we eat, I could tell you more con­cern­ing my voy­ages and the pleas­ant life I lead—at least, it is very pleas­ant to me, and by your at­ten­tion I judge it com­mends it­self to you; whereas if we go in­doors it is a hun­dred to one that I shall presently fall asleep.”

“That is in­deed an ex­cel­lent sug­ges­tion,” said the Water Rat, and hur­ried off home. There he got out the lunch­eon-bas­ket and packed a simple meal, in which, re­mem­ber­ing the stranger’s ori­gin and pref­er­ences, he took care to in­clude a yard of long French bread, a saus­age out of which the gar­lic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sun­shine shed and garnered on far South­ern slopes. Thus laden, he re­turned with all speed, and blushed for pleas­ure at the old sea­man’s com­mend­a­tions of his taste and judg­ment, as to­gether they un­packed the bas­ket and laid out the con­tents on the grass by the road­side.

The Sea Rat, as soon as his hun­ger was some­what as­suaged, con­tin­ued the his­tory of his latest voy­age, con­duct­ing his simple hearer from port to port of Spain, land­ing him at Lis­bon, Oporto, and Bordeaux, in­tro­du­cing him to the pleas­ant har­bours of Corn­wall and Devon, and so up the Chan­nel to that fi­nal quay­side, where, land­ing after winds long con­trary, storm-driven and weather-beaten, he had caught the first ma­gical hints and her­ald­ings of an­other Spring, and, fired by these, had sped on a long tramp in­land, hungry for the ex­per­i­ment of life on some quiet farm­stead, very far from the weary beat­ing of any sea.

Spell­bound and quiv­er­ing with ex­cite­ment, the Water Rat fol­lowed the Ad­ven­turer league by league, over stormy bays, through crowded road­steads, across har­bour bars on a ra­cing tide, up wind­ing rivers that hid their busy little towns round a sud­den turn; and left him with a re­gret­ful sigh planted at his dull in­land farm, about which he de­sired to hear noth­ing.

By this time their meal was over, and the Sea­farer, re­freshed and strengthened, his voice more vi­brant, his eye lit with a bright­ness that seemed caught from some faraway sea-beacon, filled his glass with the red and glow­ing vin­tage of the South, and, lean­ing to­wards the Water Rat, com­pelled his gaze and held him, body and soul, while he talked. Those eyes were of the chan­ging foam-streaked grey-green of leap­ing North­ern seas; in the glass shone a hot ruby that seemed the very heart of the South, beat­ing for him who had cour­age to re­spond to its pulsa­tion. The twin lights, the shift­ing grey and the stead­fast red, mastered the Water Rat and held him bound, fas­cin­ated, power­less. The quiet world out­side their rays re­ceded far away and ceased to be. And the talk, the won­der­ful talk flowed on—or was it speech en­tirely, or did it pass at times into song—chanty of the sail­ors weigh­ing the drip­ping an­chor, son­or­ous hum of the shrouds in a tear­ing North-Easter, bal­lad of the fish­er­man haul­ing his nets at sun­down against an apricot sky, chords of gui­tar and man­do­line from gon­dola or caique? Did it change into the cry of the wind, plaint­ive at first, an­grily shrill as it freshened, rising to a tear­ing whistle, sink­ing to a mu­sical trickle of air from the leech of the bel­ly­ing sail? All these sounds the spell­bound listener seemed to hear, and with them the hungry com­plaint of the gulls and the sea-mews, the soft thun­der of the break­ing wave, the cry of the protest­ing shingle. Back into speech again it passed, and with beat­ing heart he was fol­low­ing the ad­ven­tures of a dozen sea­ports, the fights, the es­capes, the ral­lies, the com­rade­ships, the gal­lant un­der­tak­ings; or he searched is­lands for treas­ure, fished in still la­goons and dozed daylong on warm white sand. Of deep-sea fish­ings he heard tell, and mighty sil­ver gath­er­ings of the mile-long net; of sud­den per­ils, noise of break­ers on a moon­less night, or the tall bows of the great liner tak­ing shape over­head through the fog; of the merry home­com­ing, the head­land roun­ded, the har­bour lights opened out; the groups seen dimly on the quay, the cheery hail, the splash of the hawser; the trudge up the steep little street to­wards the com­fort­ing glow of red-cur­tained win­dows.

Lastly, in his wak­ing dream it seemed to him that the Ad­ven­turer had risen to his feet, but was still speak­ing, still hold­ing him fast with his sea-grey eyes.

“And now,” he was softly say­ing, “I take to the road again, hold­ing on south­west­wards for many a long and dusty day; till at last I reach the little grey sea town I know so well, that clings along one steep side of the har­bour. There through dark door­ways you look down flights of stone steps, over­hung by great pink tufts of va­lerian and end­ing in a patch of spark­ling blue wa­ter. The little boats that lie tethered to the rings and stan­chions of the old sea­wall are gaily painted as those I clambered in and out of in my own child­hood; the sal­mon leap on the flood tide, schools of mack­erel flash and play past quay-sides and fore­shores, and by the win­dows the great ves­sels glide, night and day, up to their moor­ings or forth to the open sea. There, sooner or later, the ships of all sea­far­ing na­tions ar­rive; and there, at its destined hour, the ship of my choice will let go its an­chor. I shall take my time, I shall tarry and bide, till at last the right one lies wait­ing for me, warped out into mid­stream, loaded low, her bow­sprit point­ing down har­bour. I shall slip on board, by boat or along hawser; and then one morn­ing I shall wake to the song and tramp of the sail­ors, the clink of the cap­stan, and the rattle of the an­chor-chain com­ing mer­rily in. We shall break out the jib and the fore­sail, the white houses on the har­bour side will glide slowly past us as she gath­ers steer­ing-way, and the voy­age will have be­gun! As she forges to­wards the head­land she will clothe her­self with can­vas; and then, once out­side, the sound­ing slap of great green seas as she heels to the wind, point­ing South!

“And you, you will come too, young brother; for the days pass, and never re­turn, and the South still waits for you. Take the ad­ven­ture, heed the call, now ere the ir­re­voc­able mo­ment passes! ’Tis but a banging of the door be­hind you, a blithe­some step for­ward, and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memor­ies for com­pany. You can eas­ily over­take me on the road, for you are young, and I am age­ing and go softly. I will linger, and look back; and at last I will surely see you com­ing, eager and light­hearted, with all the South in your face!”

The voice died away and ceased as an in­sect’s tiny trum­pet dwindles swiftly into si­lence; and the Water Rat, para­lysed and star­ing, saw at last but a dis­tant speck on the white sur­face of the road.

Mech­an­ic­ally he rose and pro­ceeded to re­pack the lunch­eon-bas­ket, care­fully and without haste. Mech­an­ic­ally he re­turned home, gathered to­gether a few small ne­ces­sar­ies and spe­cial treas­ures he was fond of, and put them in a satchel; act­ing with slow de­lib­er­a­tion, mov­ing about the room like a sleep­walker; listen­ing ever with par­ted lips. He swung the satchel over his shoulder, care­fully se­lec­ted a stout stick for his way­far­ing, and with no haste, but with no hes­it­a­tion at all, he stepped across the threshold just as the Mole ap­peared at the door.

“Why, where are you off to, Ratty?” asked the Mole in great sur­prise, grasp­ing him by the arm.

“Go­ing South, with the rest of them,” mur­mured the Rat in a dreamy mono­tone, never look­ing at him. “Seawards first and then on ship­board, and so to the shores that are call­ing me!”

He pressed res­ol­utely for­ward, still without haste, but with dogged fix­ity of pur­pose; but the Mole, now thor­oughly alarmed, placed him­self in front of him, and look­ing into his eyes saw that they were glazed and set and turned a streaked and shift­ing grey—not his friend’s eyes, but the eyes of some other an­imal! Grap­pling with him strongly he dragged him in­side, threw him down, and held him.

The Rat struggled des­per­ately for a few mo­ments, and then his strength seemed sud­denly to leave him, and he lay still and ex­hausted, with closed eyes, trem­bling. Presently the Mole as­sisted him to rise and placed him in a chair, where he sat col­lapsed and shrunken into him­self, his body shaken by a vi­ol­ent shiv­er­ing, passing in time into an hys­ter­ical fit of dry sob­bing. Mole made the door fast, threw the satchel into a drawer and locked it, and sat down quietly on the table by his friend, wait­ing for the strange seizure to pass. Gradu­ally the Rat sank into a troubled doze, broken by starts and con­fused mur­mur­ings of things strange and wild and for­eign to the un­en­lightened Mole; and from that he passed into a deep slum­ber.

Very anxious in mind, the Mole left him for a time and busied him­self with house­hold mat­ters; and it was get­ting dark when he re­turned to the par­lour and found the Rat where he had left him, wide awake in­deed, but list­less, si­lent, and de­jec­ted. He took one hasty glance at his eyes; found them, to his great grat­i­fic­a­tion, clear and dark and brown again as be­fore; and then sat down and tried to cheer him up and help him to re­late what had happened to him.

Poor Ratty did his best, by de­grees, to ex­plain things; but how could he put into cold words what had mostly been sug­ges­tion? How re­call, for an­other’s be­ne­fit, the haunt­ing sea voices that had sung to him, how re­pro­duce at second­hand the ma­gic of the Sea­farer’s hun­dred re­min­is­cences? Even to him­self, now the spell was broken and the glam­our gone, he found it dif­fi­cult to ac­count for what had seemed, some hours ago, the in­ev­it­able and only thing. It is not sur­pris­ing, then, that he failed to con­vey to the Mole any clear idea of what he had been through that day.

To the Mole this much was plain: the fit, or at­tack, had passed away, and had left him sane again, though shaken and cast down by the re­ac­tion. But he seemed to have lost all in­terest for the time in the things that went to make up his daily life, as well as in all pleas­ant fore­cast­ings of the altered days and do­ings that the chan­ging sea­son was surely bring­ing.

Casu­ally, then, and with seem­ing in­dif­fer­ence, the Mole turned his talk to the har­vest that was be­ing gathered in, the tower­ing wag­ons and their strain­ing teams, the grow­ing ricks, and the large moon rising over bare acres dot­ted with sheaves. He talked of the red­den­ing apples around, of the brown­ing nuts, of jams and pre­serves and the dis­tilling of cor­di­als; till by easy stages such as these he reached mid­winter, its hearty joys and its snug home life, and then he be­came simply lyr­ical.

By de­grees the Rat began to sit up and to join in. His dull eye brightened, and he lost some of his listen­ing air.

Presently the tact­ful Mole slipped away and re­turned with a pen­cil and a few half-sheets of pa­per, which he placed on the table at his friend’s el­bow.

“It’s quite a long time since you did any po­etry,” he re­marked. “You might have a try at it this even­ing, in­stead of—well, brood­ing over things so much. I’ve an idea that you’ll feel a lot bet­ter when you’ve got some­thing jot­ted down—if it’s only just the rhymes.”

The Rat pushed the pa­per away from him wear­ily, but the dis­creet Mole took oc­ca­sion to leave the room, and when he peeped in again some time later, the Rat was ab­sorbed and deaf to the world; al­tern­ately scrib­bling and suck­ing the top of his pen­cil. It is true that he sucked a good deal more than he scribbled; but it was joy to the Mole to know that the cure had at least be­gun.