22 
THE RAT. 
advancing from the adjoining stables. You may imagine my 
fright at being caught oat of the boundaries, when a retreat 
was impossible. Nor do I believe that our black cat felt 
more confounded and astonished when she missed the 
sparrow, and went souse into the water-butt, than I did at 
the terribly well-known grunting cough of this grand master 
of the rod. I thought he had gone to market, and I am 
satisfied that pussy did not scramble out of the water with 
greater agility than I clambered into the loft above the calf- 
pen, and as speedily buried myself among the straw. Nor 
was it till I heard the shuffling tramp of his heavy step and 
capacious slippers die gradually away, that I dared to breathe, 
or think myself something living. 
While thus listening and musing, with all the frantic 
bogies of imagination dancing menacingly before my mental 
vision, I was suddenly aroused from my unenviable reverie 
by the grumbling and squealing of rats in the adjoin- 
ing faggot-stack ; when, through a hole in the boards, 
in tumbled a pair of monsters, rolly-polly over each other, 
and fighting like two bull-dogs. In came others in all 
directions, till the place seemed one mass of living rats. 
They all gathered close round the combatants — those behind 
scrambling and pushing on those before them, till there was 
not a ring a foot in diameter left to fight in. Those in front, 
and those immediately next them, were reared upon their 
hind quarters. By this time the stronger had got the weaker 
down, and was in the act of killing him, when his dying 
moans seemed to be the invitation for a general onslaught. 
They then, one and all, as if by a given signal, fell upon the 
combatants, and scrambled over each other's backs — those 
behind struofiilino: hard to be in at the death, till nothino: of 
the victims was seen. Indeed they looked like a mound of 
rats, or all backs and tails. Presently there was a most 
violent and general struggle ; so that you would have thought 
they were all fighting together. When one ran away, he 
was followed by others scrambling for a piece. Then a 
second, a third, and so on, till the combatants were torn to 
tatters; and then came the quarrelling, grumbling, and 
scranchinc: of bones — 'twas enouc^h to make one's hair stand 
on end. No sooner were they demolished, than in came a 
large fellovr, evidently attracted either by the smell of blood, 
