18 
THE RAT. 
escape ; and thus were they allowed to return home to their 
families undigested. Suffice it to say, I have since heard 
that nothing could ever induce this man to enter the pit 
again, but that he always pays another to do it for him. 
On the opposite side to where the rat made its escape sat 
an enormous publican, who had laughed most heartily at the 
discomfiture of his friends. His face was a perfect picture 
of the sign of his house, namely, the " Rising Sun." He 
was lounging carelessly on the edge of the pit, and resting 
his chin on his thumbs, when in came the second dog, 
— a fine furious creature. Time was called ; the dog set 
to work, and down lay the rats, one after the other, with 
a single bite each. Presently one seized the dog by the lip ; 
he gave his head a violent shake, and twirled the rat into 
the fat publican's face. To describe his agitation and alarm 
would be impossible ; but, throwing his head back, the rat 
fell into the bosom of his coat ; and, in his anxiety to get it 
unbuttoned, he puffed, grunted, and blew like a great hog 
with a bone in its throat j and thus ended his sport for 
that evening. 
Unhappily, however, these rat-frights do not always ter- 
minate so harmlessly as in the preceding cases. A friend of 
mine once informed me that twenty years since his father 
took a house in Edinburgh, and that after he had taken it, he 
found, to his dismay, that it was swarming with rats. However, 
one day, as they were all in the kitchen, where the boards of 
the flooring were about an inch apart, they were suddenly 
aroused by two rats, which had commenced a regular battle 
beneath the boards. My informant told me that his little 
brother became very much alarmed ; when suddenly one 
of the rats gave a dreadful squeal, and at the same time 
one of their hind legs and a tail appeared through the cracks, 
which so frightened the lad, that he sprang to the other end 
of the place, when it was found, to the great affliction of the 
family, that he was bereft of reason, or, rather, he had become 
a complete maniac ; nor was it till some weeks had passed, 
accompanied with sound medical treatment and warm baths, 
that anything like consciousness returned. However, by 
degrees he recovered the possession of his faculties ; but 
to this day he is horror-stricken at the bare mention of 
a rat. 
