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And, in the same way, the case in which the rat arrived was hers. But go on and tell me how things went." "Things went very badly," said the house-mouse. "For four days, we lived on the fat of the land. But, on the fifth, the young mistress and the man started unpacking." "Oh!" said the wood-mouse. "Then the fun was over, I expect?" "It was, cousin," said the house-mouse.
The bear did the same and moreover laughed at the old oak while he lay and rested in the shadow of the beech. The wood-mouse was delighted with the new food which she got and thought that beech-nuts tasted much better than acorns. New little beeches shot up around and grew just as quickly as their parents and looked as green and happy as if they did not know what a bad conscience was.
"But that would have been all. Nothing lasts for ever in this world: not even a chest of groceries from Copenhagen, though it was the biggest I ever saw and simply bursting with good things. But, when they discovered that some one had been at it, they were angry; and we all got blamed for it, you see." "And it was the rat who did it," said the wood-mouse. "That was really hard on you."
And beaks snapped at him more menacingly as he went on, and gray shapes floated over his head, and now and then he heard the cries of dying things the agonized squeak of a wood-mouse, the cry of a day-bird torn from its sleeping place by a sinuous, beady-eyed creature of fur and claw, the noisy screaming of a rabbit swooped upon and pierced to the vitals by one of the gray-feathered pirates of the air.
And they were quite right, for there were only very few people at that time. Otherwise there was nothing but wild animals. The bear, the wolf and the fox went hunting, while the deer grazed by the edge of the marsh. The wood-mouse sat outside her hole and ate acorns and the beaver built his ingenious house on the river-bank.
I say a cock-bird because I know that log to be a drumming-log." She raised herself and guided her horse along the trail, bright eyes restlessly scanning ground and fringing underbrush. "Deer passed here one two three the third a buck a three-year old," she said, sinking her voice by instinct. "Yonder a tree-cat dug for a wood-mouse; your lynx is ever hanging about a drumming-log."
One moonlit night the old wolf took her cubs to the edge of one of these snow-fields, where the eager eyes soon noticed dark streaks shooting hither and yon over the bare white surface. At first they chased them wildly; but one might as well try to catch a moonbeam, which has not so many places to hide as a wood-mouse.
At midnight I was back at a little opening in the woods, watching some hares at play in the bright moonlight. When they had run away, I called a wood-mouse out from his den under a stump; and then a big brown owl from across the river which almost scared the life out of my poor little wood-mouse. Suddenly a strange cry sounded far back on the mountain.
"After all, it's not dark enough yet for you to work; and I never go to the larder before my young lady has cleared away after supper. I've been thinking of what you were saying about the field-mouse and most of all of what you said about relations doing harm. For, you see, properly speaking, it's just the same indoors." "You don't say so!" said the wood-mouse.
I have never seen you, though we are cousins." "Oh, we have become cousins now?" said the wood-mouse, laughing. "A little while ago, we were not. But thank you all the same. My hole, unfortunately, is too narrow for you to get through. And I don't feel equal to going out again to-day. I should catch my death of cold. As for my appearance, you have only to think of a pretty little, nice, fat mouse.
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