208 



THE RAT 



When I did, I gave him what I beheve to have 

 been a very nasty bite for himself, and hurriedly 

 backed out again ; but I was in a terrible dilemma, 

 if you know what that is, and I very much wished 

 that I was anywhere else. I might find a ferret in 

 any of the upstairs holes, and the stack was more 

 or less surrounded by three or four ugly boys with 

 sticks, so that it was no easy matter to reach the 

 holes at the bottom. 



Luckily, my small adventure with the ferret had 

 cooled my excited brain, and 1 dodged another 

 flint by a very narrow margin — those boys were 

 wickedly straight shots — and hid myself for a 

 moment in the crest of straw at the top of the 

 stack, where the thatch of one side meets the 

 thatch of the other. Then, when one of the 

 aristocracy made a bolt down one side, creating 

 thereby a small diversion, I plucked up courage 

 to jump out and bustle down the opposite slope. 

 The young rascal who was on guard thereabouts 

 saw me out of the corner of his evil eye, and 

 though he could not get up in time to have a 

 shot at me as I took my flying leap for safety, 

 he managed to bang his stick down on to the last 

 inch of my tail just as I was wriggling into a hole. 



' Leggo, will you ?' I squealed in agony ; * you're 



