A NESTOR AMONG RATS 33 



hare, the rabbit, or the weasel, of a covey of 

 partridges, of a flock of wood-pigeons, of a family 

 of magpies, and watch them at their ease and his 

 own. I was tricycling homeward, one evening, from 

 the village of Puddletown, near Dorchester, when I 

 saw passing slowly across the lane in front of me, 

 down one steep bank and up another, a creature 

 which at first completely puzzled me. It had long, 

 shaggy, grizzled hair, and everything about it 

 betokened extreme old age. Its long hair, it may 

 well be, made it appear at the time to be bigger 

 than it really was, and, for the moment, I thought 

 it must be a species of pole-cat. I now believe it to 

 have been a rat, but a Nestor among rats a Nestor 

 who had lived, like its prototype, through some 

 three generations of its kind. I stopped my tricycle 

 short, wondering what this strange creature could be. 

 It was closely followed by an ordinary rat, and then, 

 as though it were a second Pied Piper of Hamelin, 

 by another and another, and yet another, sometimes 

 singly, sometimes in twos or threes, and of all ages. 

 I watched, for some time, the ragged regiment till 

 there was a pause in it, and then, dismounting, 

 gently stirred the tufts of long grass or clumps of 

 nettles on the bank whence it came. They con- 

 cealed, nearly every one of them, a rat or a mouse, 



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