200 AFTER DARK. 
there next morning, you would have found, 
perched on a slender bough, still upright, but 
stark, shrivelled, and stiff, the corpse of a 
bloodless thrush. , 
A few minutes later out from the hedge on 
to the bare, white snow hopped the grim 
shadow of the rat. He was following a trail. 
The trail was of blood, and it ended, ten yards 
farther on out in the field, in a fieldfare, which 
had been wounded by another rat. 
You know fieldfares? They laugh, ‘ Chack, 
chack! chackle-chack !’ across the winter sky. 
They can put up a fight, though, at the 
worst. This one did. He threw himself on 
his back, ready with beak and claw. 
Now for it! 
The rat was no coward. He threw himself 
on the bird with a careless rush—too careless. 
There was a peck, a flutter, a squawk, and it 
was over. 
The bird was dead, but The rat was 
slowly turning round and round like a dazed 
thing, the blood streaming from his right eye. 
Then he rushed for the hedge, leaving the 
fieldfare untouched where it lay. In three 
seconds he was at a gateway, in another 
entering the hedge. 
There was a glint of something lying in his 
path on his right side. It looked like metal. 
