164 



THE RAT 



no friend from whom I might beg, borrow, or steal 

 a bit of food, but an enemy — perhaps even a deadly 

 enemy — and that it behoved me to lie low. He 

 made very short work of that eel, and I was not at 

 all sorry to see him lick his lips and swim away 

 downstream, rolling over and over two or three 

 times in the water from sheer joy at having fed so 

 well. 



I know now that he was an otter, and a fine 

 one too, and that I need not have been so very 

 frightened, for as long as there are eels and other 

 fish for him to catch he does not bother his ugly 

 flat head about rats. Still, I should always dis- 

 trust a beggar with such teeth as shone in his 

 mouth. He must have been pretty hungry, 

 because when I sneaked off to the place where he 

 had been crouching to look for scraps there was 

 nothing but a little slime and a very delicious 

 smell of eel, mingled with a very disgusting smell 

 of otter. He never came so far upstream again, 

 but I saw him and his mate and others of his kind 

 when I went away downstream myself. 



The cause of my going was as follows : there 

 came one day to the stream another wanderer, 

 who, like myself, was a relic of the late migration, 

 and who had drifted along the same current which 



