224 THE MIGHTY DREAD. 
rather acrobatically, up that wall, disturbing 
many sparrows, even up to the roof; then 
through the hole by which those giddy air 
conquerors, the swifts, entered to their nests 
in summer, and so, down the wall again, inside 
this time, to the wall of the dining-room in 
the end, by a route explored, and here and 
there gnawed, by probably many generations 
of mice. 
It was good to be in an inhabited house 
once again, to smell hot air, to sniff—oh ! 
Something scuttled in front of him, two 
somethings, and were still, with that stillness 
that marks a rodent disturbed. So was our 
mouse still, all but his little pointed nose, and 
that was ‘working’ continuously, like a little 
pulsating motor. And it told him plainly all 
that he wanted to know. It said that he had 
in front of him a young female mouse—a 
‘flapper’ mouse, that is, and—for mice, like 
men, are precocious creatures—her lover. 
Now, it is not a sound military maxim, as a 
rule, to fight on an empty stomach. I don’t 
know if the mouse knew that, but he knew 
that it was the one time when he felt most 
savage. Anyway, the mouse, sounding his 
pet top note as a trumpet-call, charged. 
It was a long, long fight, partly because the 
prize seemed to be more frightened of the 
