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The scene rose vividly before him the moon shining grimly overhead, and the mouse-folk stealing from the half-threshed stack across two fields into the farmstead. Since that night he had never entered a wheat-stack, for fear of the leaving of it. For there are some things which, from a mouse standpoint, will not bear repetition.
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.
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.
He sank back heart-broken, and the bluebottle circled solemnly overhead, buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. 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.
"There, again, did you see that?" His cousins had seen what he alluded to, and said so; but the light appeared upon their blind again, and this time lasted so long, that they got out of bed to look, when, to their horror, they could see flames running up the side of a great wheat-stack in the farm-yard, and the blaze every moment growing larger.
The party moved off at seven, and passing, soon after, near the farm of an old man, whom I had assisted some years before, in the selection of his land, I rode to see him, accompanied by Mr. White. He was busy with his harvest, but left the top of his wheat-stack on seeing me, and running up, cordially welcomed us to his dwelling.
The firing had ceased, and the besieged were congratulating themselves on success, when a sudden light glared across the fields. A sheet of flame soon came curling over the crest of a wheat-stack, and quickly wrapped the inflammable material in its fierce torrent. Against this destruction there remained no remedy.
"Stand here with a bucket of water and keep the cloth wet." said Gabriel again. The flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the huge roof covering the wheat-stack. "A ladder," cried Gabriel. "The ladder was against the straw-rick and is burnt to a cinder," said a spectre-like form in the smoke.
"Stand here with a bucket of water and keep the cloth wet." said Gabriel again. The flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the huge roof covering the wheat-stack. "A ladder." cried Gabriel. "The ladder was against the straw-rick and is burnt to a cinder." said a spectre-like form in the smoke.
We went out into the stackyard, and agreed that each of us should draw a straw from a wheat-stack. He that drew the longest straw should have the first right of speaking. Then we put our hands to the stack and drew our straws. I beat him there my straw was a good foot longer than his. "You have beaten me again," he said. "Is it always to be so? But I will wait, cousin Humphrey."
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