UNREST AND REST 



147 



rise when this took place, for I did not want to get 

 my bed drenched through and through. I should 

 have been obliged to pull it all out and to make 

 a new one, as it would never have dried under- 

 ground. 



I saw at once that I had found the right place. 

 For one thing 1 am fond of music, and the little 

 jets of water that forced their way through the 

 cracks and fell into the deep pool on the other side 

 played a very pretty tune, which went on all day 

 and all night, but was never somehow quite the 

 same at any time, so that I never grew tired of it. 

 I know good music when I hear it. There was a 

 piper once whom all the rats followed, at a place called 

 Hamelin — but you know that story already. Also I 

 found that I could walk straight out of the water 

 behind the boarding along a little pathway of pebbles, 

 so that there was no fear of leaving footprints. I 

 expected to find a colony of water-rats already estab- 

 lished behind the woodwork, and to have to fight 

 hard for the right of making my home there ; and 

 an old buck water-rat is no mean antagonist, though 

 he is generally too fat to make a first-class fighter. 

 But to my delight I found the whole place unoccu- 

 pied ; I suppose that it would not have been easy 

 to make those silly back-doors. The earth had 



10—2 



