Wee Timrous Beasties | Page 3

strained to
the utmost. The bar rattled in its sockets, slipped round once or twice,
bent the merest trifle, and--jammed immovable as the others. He felt
that he was wasting his strength, and dropped sullenly to the floor. He
had never been so thirsty in his life; yet, true to his instincts, he started
to wash his face and smooth his draggled fur afresh.
This time it was a harder task, for his mouth was parched and tender,
and his fingers ached with exertion. Still, he managed to put his
whiskers into proper trim, and pulled himself together, with every sense
alert for the air-current which should betray some outlet.
He explored every cranny of his prison, slowly and calmly at first, then
with increasing anxiety and speed. By using all his strength, he raised
the door a tail's-breadth. For fully an hour he struggled at this chance of
exit. Five times he forced his nose under the sharp wood edge, and
sobbed as it snapped back, mocking at his failing strength.
It was not until he was sick with weariness, and mad with thirst, that he
lost his head. Then he flung himself recklessly in every direction,
bruising his poor body against the unyielding bars, desperate, grimy,
pitiable.
Nature intervened at length, and lulled him into a semi-conscious,
dream-bound indifference.
* * * * *
There was something to be said for the stack-life, after all. All good
stacks come to an end, but, while they last, it is honey for the
mouse-folk. Picture to yourself the basement of a wheat-stack,
occupied by a flourishing mouse colony--five hundred tiny souls,
super-abundance of food, and no thought for the morrow. The
companions of his youth stole into his dream with all the vividness of
early impressions. The long-tailed wood-mouse--a handsome fellow
this, with great black liquid eyes, and weasel colouring; the

harvest-mouse, that Liliputian rustic to whose deft fingers all good
mouse-nests are indiscriminately assigned; the freaks, white, black, and
nondescript; and, finally, the great brown rats.
[Illustration: THE HARVEST MOUSE, THAT LILIPUTIAN
RUSTIC.]
In the presence of the latter he had always felt nervous, but he had
recognized their usefulness. Had he not seen four of them combine and
rout a weasel? In the midst of plenty they were harmless enough, at
least they had never molested him. Moreover, they were the main
tunnel builders, and it was refreshing for a mouse, who had wormed his
way through two yards of powdery corn-husks, to find a run where he
could stretch his limbs and scamper.
And what wild scampers those were! For free, unimpeded, safe racing,
there is nothing to touch the rat tunnels of a wheat-stack.
He was a fortnight old when he first ventured out into the unknown. He
remembered but little of his earliest sensations, only the vague comfort
of nestling with six companions under his mother's soft fur, and the
vague discomfort caused by her occasional absence. But that first
journey was unforgetable. The maze of winding burrows, the myriad
eyes peering at him through the darkness, the ceaseless patter of tiny
feet, before, behind, and on all sides, the great brown rat sniffing
dubiously as it passed, the jostling, the chattering, the squeaking. He
had been a proud mouse when he had returned, and told his
faint-hearted brothers what the great world outside was really like.
* * * * *
It was a bluebottle that roused him. It floundered heavily against the
bars, crawled through, and brushed across his nose. No! he was not
dead yet, but the bluebottle soon would be. He leaped at it, and, to his
amazement, fell short and missed. Yesterday, he had cleared a flight of
stairs with one light-hearted bound, and left a bewildered kitten at the
top. He sank back heart-broken, and the bluebottle circled solemnly
overhead, buzzing, buzzing, buzzing.

[Illustration: AND LEFT A BEWILDERED KITTEN AT THE TOP.]
* * * * *
Buz-z-z-z! whir-r-r! He was back in the wheat-stack once more,
listening to the dull humming of ten thousand bluebottles. From
without came the sound of heavy tramping feet, whirring wheels, rough,
human voices. The wheaten mass rocked and vibrated above his head:
half the runs were choked, and he, with twenty more of his kind, sat
cowering in a corner of the foundations. Nearer and nearer came the
voices, for the thrashing had commenced at sunrise, and now, as
evening approached, three-parts of the stack were gone. Only once had
he ventured to the edge of his shelter and looked out. A pair of grinning
jaws crashed against the outlet, and snapped within a hair's-breadth of
his nose. It was his first sight of a terrier, and he realized that to break
cover was certain death.
Death, indeed, was very busy outside. Every minute