THE MIGHTY DREAD. 223 
homes for a mouse on a cold winter’s night 
than a good wheat-rick of a thousand bushels 
—food and shelter from cold and foes, and all. 
But the rats—very many brown rats, by the 
sound of it! Books—natural history books— 
have said that mice and rats live in corn-ricks 
in perfect harmony. Just so; but, all the same, 
our little friend Mus musculus hesitated. He 
seemed to be thinking. You know what the 
books say, and J know what the books say, 
but did the rats know it? At any rate, we 
all know the villain rat, and very little of what 
we know is good. And so it was with this, 
our mouse. He passed on. In his generation 
he was wise. 
He passed on in the direction of the singing, 
not entirely by chance, I like to think. This 
meant some risk: the crossing of open spaces ; 
the surrendering one’s self to moonlight; the 
negotiating of the perpendicular rick-yard 
wall—it looked like a bit of magic, that—the 
circling of the farm-yard, among sleeping fat 
stock, that blew and snorted hot, steamy blasts 
like whales ; and, finally, the arrival at the ivy- 
smothered wall of the house. 
Love, even love in ‘the air,’ and an empty 
‘tummy’ have done some great things, made 
some great men, and some heroes, too. They 
drew, between them, that mouse, climbing 
