130 NEIGHBOURS UNKNOWN 



ing went on side by side under the indifferent 

 moon, and the untouched swarms whom 

 Fate passed by were as indifferent as the 

 moon herself to the mysterious disappearances 

 of their fellows. 



As winter drew on, with bursts of sharp 

 cold and changing winds that forced her to 

 be continually changing her refuge, the cat 

 grew more and more unhappy. She felt her 

 homelessness keenly. Nowhere on the whole 

 island could she find a nook where she might 

 feel secure from both wind and rain. As for 

 the old barrel, the first cause of her misfor- 

 tunes, there was no help in that. The winds 

 had long ago turned it completely over, open 

 to the sky, then drifted it full of sand and re- 

 buried it. And in any case the cat would 

 have been afraid to go near it again ; she 

 had no short memory. So it came about 

 that she alone, of all the island dwellers, had 

 no shelter to turn to when the real winter 

 arrived, with snows that smothered the grass- 

 tops out of sight, and frosts that lined the 

 shore with grinding ice-cakes. The rats had 

 their holes under the buried fragments .of 

 wreckage ; the mice and shrews had their 

 deep warm tunnels ; the owls had nests in 

 hollow trees far away in the forests of the 

 mainland. But the cat, shivering and fright- 



