226 THE MIGHTY DREAD. 
neither did our mouse, nor did he care. It 
sent the enemy off, staggering, in the dark- 
ness, anyway, like a drunken thing, and our 
mouse was left to lick his wounds and forget 
them, with the little female mouse. 
He did, but he could not forget the pangs 
of hunger in the roof of his inside, and 
presently he led her off along a hole that 
showed at its end a little circle of golden 
light, like a sovereign, that foretold a room 
with the lamps alight. 
It was a room—indeed, the dining-room— 
and as he poked his sharp nose out, he was 
brought up all standing by—music. It 
always affected him like that, music, and 
so strangely. It came floating in from the 
drawing-room, the doors of both rooms being 
open for the moment, and it was a chorus of 
human voices : 
*“ Fear not,” said he (for mighty dread 
Had seized their troubled mind) ; 
“Glad tidings of great joy I bring 
To you and all mankind.”’ 
A man was walking up and down the 
dining-room, backwards and forwards, eter- 
nally smoking a cigarette and thinking. He 
was a tolerant man, and was fond of animals. 
Perhaps this was why he did not stop his per- 
