This was a wonderful thing, indeed, that the Badger should pay a formal call on them, or indeed on anybody. He generally had to be caught, if you wanted him badly, as he slipped quietly along a hedgerow of an early morning or a late evening, or else hunted up in his own house in the middle of the Wood, which was a serious undertaking.
The Badger strode heavily into the room, and stood looking at the two animals with an expression full of seriousness. The Rat let his egg-spoon fall on the table-cloth, and sat open- mouthed.
'The hour has come!" said the Badger at last with great solemnity.
'What hour?" asked the Rat uneasily, glanc- ing at the clock on the mantelpiece.
'Whose hour, you should rather say," replied the Badger. "Why, Toad's hour! The hour of Toad! I said I would take him in hand as
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soon as the winter was well over, and I 'm going to take him in hand to-day!"
'Toad's hour, of course!" cried the Mole de- lightedly. "Hooray! I remember now! We'll teach him to be a sensible Toad!"
'This very morning," continued the Badger, taking an arm-chair, "as I learnt last night from a trustworthy source, another new and exceptionally powerful motor-car will arrive at Toad Hall on approval or return. At this very moment, perhaps, Toad is busy arraying him- self in those singularly hideous habiliments so dear to him, which transform him from a (com- paratively) good-looking Toad into an Object which throws any decent-minded animal that comes across it into a violent fit. We must be up and doing, ere it is too late. You two ani- mals will accompany me instantly to Toad Hall, and the work of rescue shall be accomplished."
"Right you are!" cried the Rat, starting up.
' We '11 rescue the poor unhappy animal! We '11
convert him! He '11 be the most converted
Toad that ever was before we 've done with
him!"
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They set off up the road on their mission of mercy, Badger leading the way. Animals when in company walk in a proper and sensible manner, in single file, instead of sprawling all across the road and being of no use or support to each other in case of sudden trouble or danger.
They reached the carriage-drive of Toad Hall to find, as Badger had anticipated, a shiny new motor-car, of great size, painted a bright red (Toad's favourite colour), standing in front of the house. As they neared the door it was flung open, and Mr. Toad, arrayed in goggles, cap, gaiters, and enormous overcoat, came swag- gering down the steps, drawing on his gaunt- leted gloves.
'Hullo! come on, you fellows!" he cried cheerfully on catching sight of them. 'You 're just in time to come with me for a jolly — to come for a jolly- -for a — er — jolly—"
His hearty accents faltered and fell away as he noticed the stern unbending look on the countenances of his silent friends, and his invi- tation remained unfinished.
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The Badger strode up the steps. 'Take him inside," he said sternly to his companions. Then, as Toad was hustled through the door, struggling and protesting, he turned to the chauffeur in charge of the new motor-car.
"I 'm afraid you won't be wanted to-day," he said. "Mr. Toad has changed his mind. He will not require the car. Please understand that this is final. You needn't wait."
"Now then!" he said to the Toad, when the four of them stood together in the Hall, "first of all, take those ridiculous things off!"
"Shan't!' replied Toad, with great spirit. "What is the meaning of this gross outrage? I demand an instant explanation."
"Take them off him, then, you two," ordered the Badger briefly.
They had to lay Toad out on the floor, kick- ing and calling all sorts of names, before they could get to work properly.  A good deal of his blustering spirit
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seemed to have evaporated with the removal of his fine panoply. Now that he was merely Toad, and no longer the Terror of the Highway, he giggled feebly and looked from one to the other appealingly, seeming quite to understand the situation.
'You knew it must come to this, sooner or later, Toad," the Badger explained severely.  Independence is all very well, but we animals never allow our friends to make fools of themselves beyond a certain limit; and that limit you 've reached. Now, you 're a good fellow in many respects, and I don't want to be too hard on you. I '11 make one more effort to bring you to reason. You will come with me into the smoking-room, and there you will hear some facts about yourself; and we '11 see whether you come out of that room the same Toad that you went in."
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He took Toad firmly by the arm, led him into the smoking-room, and closed the door be- hind them.
'That 's no good!" said the Rat contemptu- ously. ' Talking to Toad '11 never cure him. He '11 say anything."
They made themselves comfortable in arm- chairs and waited patiently. Through the closed door they could just hear the long continuous drone of the Badger's voice, rising and falling in waves of oratory; and presently they noticed that the sermon began to be punctuated at intervals by long-drawn sobs, evidently pro- ceeding from the bosom of Toad, who was a soft-hearted and affectionate fellow, very easily converted — for the time being — to any point of view.
After some three-quarters of an hour the door opened, and the Badger reappeared, sol- emnly leading by the paw a very limp and de- jected Toad. His skin hung baggily about him, his legs wobbled, and his cheeks were furrowed by the tears so plentifully called forth by the Badger's moving discourse.
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<< i
:Sit down there, Toad," said the Badger kindly, pointing to a chair. :'My friends," he went on, 'I am pleased to inform you that Toad has at last seen the error of his ways. He is truly sorry for his misguided conduct in the past, and he has undertaken to give up motor- cars entirely and for ever. I have his solemn promise to that effect."
'That is very good news," said the Mole gravely.
'Very good news indeed," observed the Rat dubiously, "if only — if only -
He was looking very hard at Toad as he said this, and could not help thinking he perceived something vaguely resembling a twinkle in that animal's still sorrowful eye.
'There 's only one thing more to be done," continued the gratified Badger. 'Toad, I want you solemnly to repeat, before your friends here, what you fully admitted to me in the smoking- room just now. First, you are sorry for what you 've done, and you see the folly of it all?"
There was a long, long pause. Toad looked desperately this way and that, while the other
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animals waited in grave silence. At last he spoke.
"No!" he said, a little sullenly, but stoutly; "I 'm not sorry. And it wasn't folly at all! It was simply glorious!"
"What?" cried the Badger, greatly scandal- ised. 'You backsliding animal, didn't you tell me just now, in there—"
"Oh, yes, yes, in there" said Toad impa- tiently. "I'd have said anything in there. You 're so eloquent, dear Badger, and so mov- ing, and so convincing, and put all your points so frightfully well — you can do what you like with me in there, and you know it. But I 've been searching my mind since, and going over things in it, and I find that I 'm not a bit sorry or repentant really, so it's no earthly good saying I am; now, is it?"
"Then you don't promise," said the Badger, "never to touch a motor-car again?"
"Certainly not!" replied Toad emphatically. "On the contrary, I faithfully promise that the very first motor-car I see, poop-poop! off I go in it!"
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"Told you so, didn't I?" observed the Rat to the Mole.
"Very well, then," said the Badger firmly, rising to his feet. "Since you won't yield to persuasion, we '11 try what force can do. I feared it would come to this all along. You 've often asked us three to come and stay with you, Toad, in this handsome house of yours; well, now we 're going to. When we 've converted you to a proper point of view we may quit, but not before. Take him upstairs, you two, and lock him up in his bedroom, while we arrange matters between ourselves."
"It's for your own good, Toady, you know," said the Rat kindly, as Toad, kicking and struggling, was hauled up the stairs by his two faithful friends. 'Think what fun we shall all have together, just as we used to, when you Ve quite got over this — this painful attack of yours!"
'We '11 take great care of everything for you till you 're well, Toad," said the Mole; "and we '11 see your money isn't wasted, as it has
been."
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MR. TOAD
"No more of those regrettable incidents with the police, Toad," said the Rat, as they thrust him into his bedroom.
"And no more weeks in hospital, being or- dered about by female nurses, Toad," added the Mole, turning the key on him.
They descended the stair, Toad shouting abuse at them through the keyhole; and the three friends then met in conference on the situation.
"It's going to be a tedious business," said the Badger, sighing. "I 've never seen Toad so determined. However, we will see it out. He must never be left an instant unguarded. We shall have to take it in turns to be with him, till the poison has worked itself out of his system."
They arranged watches accordingly. Each animal took it in turns to sleep in Toad's room at night, and they divided the day up between them. At first Toad was undoubtedly very trying to his careful guardians. When his vio- lent paroxysms possessed him he would arrange bedroom chairs in rude resemblance of a motor-
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THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
car and would crouch on the foremost of them, bent forward and staring fixedly ahead, making uncouth and ghastly noises, till the climax was reached, when, turning a complete somersault, he would lie prostrate amidst the ruins of the chairs, apparently completely satisfied for the moment. As time passed, however, these pain- ful seizures grew gradually less frequent, and his friends strove to divert his mind into fresh channels. But his interest in other matters did not seem to revive, and he grew apparently languid and depressed.
One fine morning the Rat, whose turn it was to go on duty, went upstairs to relieve Badger, whom he found fidgeting to be off and stretch his legs in a long ramble round his wood and dowrn his earths and burrows. 'Toad 's still in bed," he told the Rat, outside the door. :< Can't get much out of him, except, '0 leave him alone, he wants nothing, perhaps he '11 be better presently, it may pass off in time, don't be unduly anxious,' and so on. Now, you look out, Rat! When Toad 's quiet and submissive, and playing at being the hero of a Sunday-
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MR. TOAD
school prize, then he 's at his artfullest. There 's sure to be something up. I know him. Well, now, I must be off."
"How are you to-day, old chap?" inquired the Rat cheerfully, as he approached Toad 's bedside.
He had to wait some minutes for an answer.  So good of you to inquire! But first tell me how you are yourself, and the excellent Mole?"
"O, we 're all right," replied the Rat. "Mole," he added incautiously, "is going out for a run round with Badger. They '11 be out till luncheon time, so you and I will spend a pleasant morn- ing together, and I '11 do my best to amuse you. Now jump up, there 's a good fellow, and don't lie moping there on a fine morning like this!"
"Dear, kind Rat," murmured Toad, "how little you realise my condition, and how very far I am from 'jumping up' now- -if ever! But do not trouble about me.  Indeed, I almost hope not."
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"Well, I hope not, too," said the Rat heartily. "You 've been a fine bother to us all this time, and I 'm glad to hear it's going to stop. And in weather like this, and the boating season just beginning! It's too bad of you, Toad! It isn't the trouble we mind, but you 're making us miss such an awful lot."
'I 'm afraid it is the trouble you mind, though," replied the Toad languidly. 'I can quite understand it. It's natural enough. You 're tired of bothering about me. I mustn't ask you to do anything further. I 'm a nui- sance, I know."
'You are, indeed," said the Rat.
"If I thought that, Ratty," murmured Toad, more feebly than ever, "then I would beg you - for the last time, probably - - to step round to the village as quickly as possible — even now it may be too late - - and fetch the doctor. But don't you bother. It's only a trouble, and per- haps we may as well let things take their course."
'Why, what do you want a doctor for?"
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MR. TOAD
inquired the Rat, coming closer and examining him. He certainly lay very still and flat, and his voice was weaker and his manner much changed.
"Surely you have noticed of late— ' mur- mured Toad. 'But, no — why should you? Noticing things is only a trouble. To-morrow, indeed, you may be saying to yourself, 'O, if only I had noticed sooner! If only I had done something!' But no; it's a trouble.
"Look here, old man," said the Rat, begin- ning to get rather alarmed, "of course I '11 fetch a doctor to you, if you really think you want him. But you can hardly be bad enough for that yet. Let's talk about something else."
"I fear, dear friend," said Toad, with a sad smile, 'that 'talk' can do little in a case like this — or doctors either, for that matter; still, one must grasp at the slightest straw. And, by the way — while you are about it — I hate to give you additional trouble, but I happen to remember that you will pass the door — would you mind at the same time asking the lawyer to step up? It would be a convenience to me,
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and there are moments - - perhaps I should say there is a moment - - when one must face dis- agreeable tasks, at whatever cost to exhausted nature!"
"A lawyer! O, he must be really bad!" the affrighted Rat said to himself, as he hurried from the room, not forgetting, however, to lock the door carefully behind him.
Outside, he stopped to consider. The other two were far away, and he had no one to consult. 'It's best to be on the safe side," he said, on reflection. "I 've known Toad fancy himself frightfully bad before, without the slightest rea- son; but I 've never heard him ask for a lawyer! If there 's nothing really the matter, the doctor will tell him he 's an old ass, and cheer him up; and that will be something gained. I 'd better humour him and go; it won't take very long." So he ran off to the village on his errand of mercy.
The Toad, who had hopped lightly out of bed as soon as he heard the key turned in the lock, watched him eagerly from the window till he disappeared down the carriage-drive. Then, laughing heartily, he dressed as quickly as pos-
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MR. TOAD
sible in the smartest suit he could lay hands on at the moment, filled his pockets with cash which he took from a small drawer in the dressing-table, and next, knotting the sheets from his bed together and tying one end of the improvised rope round the central mullion of the handsome Tudor window which formed such a feature of his bedroom, he scrambled out, slid lightly to the ground, and, taking the oppo- site direction to the Rat, marched off light- heartedly, whistling a merry tune.
It was a gloomy luncheon for Rat when the Badger and the Mole at length returned, and he had to face them at table with his pitiful and unconvincing story. The Badger's caustic, not to say brutal, remarks may be imagined, and therefore passed over; but it was painful to the Rat that even the Mole, though he took his friend's side as far as possible, could not help saying, ' You 've been a bit of a duffer this time, Ratty! Toad, too, of all animals!"
"He did it awfully well," said the crestfallen Rat.
"He did you awfully well!" rejoined the
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THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
Badger hotly. 'However, talking won't mend matters. He 's got clear away for the time, that's certain; and the worst of it is, he '11 be so conceited with what he '11 think is his clever- ness that he may commit any folly. One com- fort is, we 're free now, and needn't waste any more of our precious time doing sentry-go. But we 'd better continue to sleep at Toad Hall for a while longer. Toad may be brought back at any moment — on a stretcher, or between two policemen."
So spoke the Badger, not knowing what the future held in store, or how much water, and of how turbid a character, was to run under bridges before Toad should sit at ease again in his ancestral Hall.
 At first he had taken by-paths, and crossed many fields, and changed his course several times, in case of pursuit; but now, feel- ing by this time safe from recapture, and the sun smiling brightly on him, and all Nature
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MR. TOAD
joining in a chorus of approval to the song of self-praise that his own heart was singing to him, he almost danced along the road in his satisfaction and conceit.
"Smart piece of work that!" he remarked to himself chuckling. :'Brain against brute force — and brain came out on the top — as it's bound to do. Poor old Ratty! My! won't he catch it when the Badger gets back! A worthy fellow, Ratty, with many good qualities, but very little intelligence and absolutely no educa- tion. I must take him in hand some day, and see if I can make something of him."
Filled full of conceited thoughts such as these he strode along, his head in the air, till he reached a little town, where the sign of 'The Red Lion," swinging across the road half-way down the main street, reminded him that he had not breakfasted that day, and that he was exceedingly hungry after his long walk. He marched into the Inn, ordered the best lunch- eon that could be provided at so short a notice, and sat down to eat it in the coffee-room.
He was about half-way through his meal when
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THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
an only too familiar sound, approaching down the street, made him start and fall a-trembling all over. The poop-poop! drew nearer and nearer, the car could be heard to turn into the inn-yard and come to a stop, and Toad had to hold on to the leg of the table to conceal his over-mastering emotion. Presently the party entered the coffee-room, hungry, talkative, and gay, voluble on their experiences of the morning and the merits of the chariot that had brought them along so well. Toad listened eagerly, all ears, for a time; at last he could stand it no longer. He slipped out of the room quietly, paid his bill at the bar, and as soon as he got outside sauntered round quietly to the inn-yard. 'There cannot be any harm," he said to him- self, "in my only just looking at it!"
The car stood in the middle of the yard, quite unattended, the stable-helps and other hangers-on being all at their dinner. Toad walked slowly round it, inspecting, criticising, musing deeply.
"I wonder," he said to himself presently, "I wonder if this sort of car starts easily?"
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MR. TOAD
Next moment, hardly knowing how it came about, he found he had hold of the handle and was turning it. As the familiar sound broke forth, the old passion seized on Toad and com- pletely mastered him, body and soul. As if in a dream he found himself, somehow, seated in the driver's seat; as if in a dream, he pulled the lever and swung the car round the yard and out through the archway; and, as if in a dream, all sense of right and wrong, all fear of obvious consequences, seemed temporarily suspended. He increased his pace, and as the car devoured the street and leapt forth on the high road through the open country, he was only con- scious that he was Toad once more, Toad at his best and highest, Toad the terror, the traffic- queller, the Lord of the lone trail, before whom all must give way or be smitten into nothingness and everlasting night. He chanted as he flew, and the car responded with sonorous drone; the miles were eaten up under him as he sped he knew not whither, fulfilling his instincts, living his hour, reckless of what might come to him.
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'To my mind," observed the Chairman of the Bench of Magistrates cheerfully, "the only difficulty that presents itself in this otherwise very clear case is, how we can possibly make it sufficiently hot for the incorrigible rogue and hardened ruffian whom we see cowering in the dock before us. Let me see: he has been found guilty, on the clearest evidence, first, of stealing a valuable motor-car; secondly, of driving to the public danger; and, thirdly, of gross imper- tinence to the rural police. Mr. Clerk, will you tell us, please, what is the very stiffest penalty we can impose for each of these offences? With- out, of course, giving the prisoner the benefit of any doubt, because there isn't any."
The Clerk scratched his nose with his pen. "Some people would consider," he observed, 'that stealing the motor-car was the worst offence; and so it is. But cheeking the police undoubtedly carries the severest penalty; and so it ought. Supposing you were to say twelve months for the theft, which is mild; and three years for the furious driving, which is lenient; and fifteen years for the cheek, which was pretty
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MR. TOAD
bad sort of cheek, judging by what we Ve heard from the witness-box, even if you only believe one-tenth part of what you heard, and I never believe more myself — those figures, if added together correctly, tot up to nineteen years—"
"First-rate!" said the Chairman.
"— So you had better make it a round twenty years and be on the safe side," concluded the Clerk.
"An excellent suggestion!" said the Chair- man approvingly. "Prisoner! Pull yourself to- gether and try and stand up straight. It's going to be twenty years for you this time. And mind, if you appear before us again, upon any charge whatever, we shall have to deal with you very seriously!"
Then the brutal minions of the law fell upon the hapless Toad; loaded him with chains, and dragged him from the Court House, shrieking, praying, protesting; across the market-place, where the playful populace, always as severe upon detected crime as they are sympathetic and helpful when one is merely :< wanted,"
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assailed him with jeers, carrots, and popular catch-words; past hooting school children, their innocent faces lit up with the pleasure they ever derive from the sight of a gentleman in diffi- culties; across the hollow-sounding drawbridge, below the spiky portcullis, under the frowning archway of the grim old castle, whose ancient towers soared high overhead; past guardrooms full of grinning soldiery off duty, past sentries who coughed in a horrid, sarcastic way, because that is as much as a sentry on his post dare do to show his contempt and abhorrence of crime; up time-worn winding stairs, past men-at-arms in casquet and corselet of steel, darting threat- ening looks through their vizards; across court- yards, where mastiffs strained at their leash and pawed the air to get at him; past ancient warders, their halberds leant against the wall, dozing over a pasty and a flagon of brown ale; on and on, past the rack-chamber and the thumbscrew-room, past the turning that led to the private scaffold, till they reached the door of the grimmest dungeon that lay in the heart of the innermost keep. There at last they paused,
164
Tiinil irtifs <i Iirtjilcss prisoner in the remotest diint/con
MR.
" Oddsbodikins!" said the sergeant of police, taking off his helmet and wiping his forehead. 'Rouse thee, old loon, and take over from us this vile Toad, a criminal of deepest guilt and matchless artfulness and resource. Watch and ward him with all thy skill; and mark thee well, greybeard, should aught untoward befall, thy old head shall answer for his — and a mur- rain on both of them!"
The gaoler nodded grimly, laying his withered hand on the shoulder of the miserable Toad. The rusty key creaked in the lock, the great door clanged behind them; and Toad was a helpless prisoner in the remotest dungeon of the best-guarded keep of the stoutest castle in all the length and breadth of Merry England.
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VII
THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN
VII
THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN
THE Willow-Wren was twittering his thin little song, hidden himself in the dark selvedge of the river bank. Though it was past ten o'clock at night, the sky still clung to and retained some lingering skirts of light from the departed day; and the sullen heats of the torrid afternoon broke up and rolled away at the dis- persing touch of the cool fingers of the short midsummer night. Mole lay stretched on the bank, still panting from the stress of the fierce day that had been cloudless from dawn to late sunset, and waited for his friend to return. He had been on the river with some companions, leaving the Water Rat free to keep an engage- ment of long standing with Otter; and he had come back to find the house dark and deserted, and no sign of Rat, who was doubtless keeping
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THE \VIND IN THE WILLOWS
it up late with his old comrade. It was still too hot to think of staying indoors, so he lay on some cool dock-leaves, and thought over the past day and its doings, and how very good they all had been.
The Rat's light footfall was presently heard approaching over the parched grass. "0, the blessed coolness!" he said, and sat down, ga- zing thoughtfully into the river, silent and pre- occupied.
"You stayed to supper, of course?" said the Mole presently.
"Simply had to," said the Rat. "They wouldn't hear of my going before. You know how kind they always are. And they made things as jolly for me as ever they could, right up to the moment I left. But I felt a brute all the time, as it was clear to me they were very unhappy, though they tried to hide it. Mole, I 'm afraid they 're in trouble. Little Portly is missing again; and you know what a lot his father thinks of him, though he never says much about it."
"What, that child?" said the Mole lightly,
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THE PIPER
'Well, suppose he is; why worry about it? He 's always straying off and getting lost, and turning up again; he 's so adventurous. But no harm ever happens to him. Everybody here- abouts knows him and likes him, just as they do old Otter, and you may be sure some animal or other will come across him and bring him back again all right. Why, we 've found him ourselves, miles from home, and quite self- possessed and cheerful!"
'Yes; but this time it 's more serious," said the Rat gravely. "He 's been missing for some days now, and the Otters have hunted every- where, high and low, without finding the slight- est trace. And they 've asked every animal, too, for miles around, and no one knows any- thing about him. Otter 's evidently more anx- ious than he '11 admit. I got out of him that young Portly hasn't learnt to swim very well yet, and I can see he 's thinking of the weir. There 's a lot of water coming down still, con- sidering the time of the year, and the place always had a fascination for the child. And then there are — well, traps and things — you
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THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
know. Otter's not the fellow to be nervous about any son of his before it's time. And now he is nervous. When I left, he came out with me - - said he wanted some air, and talked about stretching his legs. But I could see it wasn't that, so I drew him out and pumped him, and got it all from him at last. He was going to spend the night watching by the ford. You know the place where the old ford used to be, in by-gone days before they built the bridge?'; "I know it well," said the Mole. "But why should Otter choose to watch there?"
'Well, it seems that it was there he gave Portly his first swimming-lesson," continued the Rat. "From that shallow, gravelly spit near the bank. And it was there he used to teach him fishing, and there young Portly caught his first fish, of which he was so very proud. The child loved the spot, and Otter thinks that if he came wandering back from wherever he is - - if he is anywhere by this time, poor little chap - - he might make for the ford he was so fond of; or if he came across it he 'd remember it well, and stop there and play, perhaps. So Otter goes
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THE PIPER
there every night and watches — on the chance, you know, just on the chance!'
They were silent for a time, both thinking of the same thing—the lonely, heart-sore animal, crouched by the ford, watching and waiting, the long night through—on the chance.
"Well, well," said the Rat presently, "I sup- pose we ought to be thinking about turning in." But he never offered to move.
"Rat," said the Mole, "I simply can't go and turn in, and go to sleep, and do nothing, even though there doesn't seem to be anything to be done. We '11 get the boat out, and paddle up- stream. The moon will be up in an hour or so, and then we will search as well as we can - anyhow, it will be better than going to bed and doing nothing"
"Just what I was thinking myself," said the Rat. "It's not the sort of night for bed any- how; and daybreak is not so very far off, and then we may pick up some news of him from early risers as we go along."
They got the boat out, and the Rat took the sculls, paddling with caution. Out in mid- 173
THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
stream, there was a clear, narrow track that faintly reflected the sky; but wherever shadows fell on the water from bank, bush, or tree, they were as solid to all appearance as the banks themselves, and the Mole had to steer with judgment accordingly. Dark and deserted as it was, the night was full of small noises, song and chatter and rustling, telling of the busy little population who were up and about, plying their trades and vocations through the night till sunshine should fall on them at last and send them off to their well-earned repose. The water's own noises, too, were more apparent than by day, its gurglings and "cloops" more unexpected and near at hand; and constantly they started at what seemed a sudden clear call from an actual articulate voice.
The line of the horizon was clear and hard against the sky, and in one particular quarter it showed black against a silvery climbing phos- phorescence that grew and grew. At last, over the rim of the waiting earth the moon lifted with slow majesty till it swung clear of the horizon and rode off, free of moorings; and
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THE PIPER
once more they began to see surfaces — mead- ows wide-spread, and quiet gardens, and the river itself from bank to bank, all softly disclosed, all washed clean of mystery and terror, all ra- diant again as by day, but with a difference that was tremendous. Their old haunts greeted them again in other raiment, as if they had slipped away and put on this pure new apparel and come quietly back, smiling as they shyly waited to see if they would be recognised again under it.
Fastening their boat to a willow, the friends landed in this silent, silver kingdom, and pa- tiently explored the hedges, the hollow trees, the runnels and their little culverts, the ditches and dry water-ways. Embarking again and crossing over, they worked their way up the stream in this manner, while the moon, serene and detached in a cloudless sky, did what she could, though so far off, to help them in their quest; till her hour came and she sank earth- wards reluctantly, and left them, and mystery once more held field and river.
Then a change began slowly to declare itself.
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The horizon became clearer, field and tree came more into sight, and somehow with a different look; the mystery began to drop away from them. A bird piped suddenly, and was still; and a light breeze sprang up and set the reeds and bulrushes rustling. Rat, who was in the stern of the boat, while Mole sculled, sat up suddenly and listened with a passionate intent- ness. Mole, who with gentle strokes was just keeping the boat moving while he scanned the banks with care, looked at him with curi- osity.
"It's gone!" sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. "So beautiful and strange and new! Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it for ever. No! There it is again!" he cried, alert once more. Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spell- bound.
"Now it passes on and I begin to lose it," he said presently. "O Mole! the beauty of it!
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The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us."
The Mole, greatly wondering, obeyed. "I hear nothing myself," he said, 'but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers."
The Rat never answered, if indeed he heard. Rapt, transported, trembling, he was possessed in all his senses by this new divine thing that caught up his helpless soul and swung and dandled it, a powerless but happy infant in a strong sustaining grasp.
In silence Mole rowed steadily, and soon they came to a point where the river divided, a long backwater branching off to one side. With a slight movement of his head Rat, who had long dropped the rudder-lines, directed the rower to take the backwater. The creeping tide of light gained and gained, and now they could see the colour of the flowers that gemmed the water's edge.
"Clearer and nearer still," cried the Rat joy-
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ously. 'Now you must surely hear it! Ah - at last- -I see you do!"
 He saw the tears on his comrade's cheeks, and bowed his head and understood. For a space they hung there, brushed by the purple loosestrife that fringed the bank; then the clear imperious summons that marched hand-in-hand with the intoxicating melody imposed its will on Mole, and mechani- cally he bent to his oars again. And the light grew steadily stronger, but no birds sang as they were wont to do at the approach of dawn; and but for the heavenly music all was marvellously still.
On either side of them, as they glided onwards, the rich meadow-grass seemed that morning of a freshness and a greenness unsurpassable. Never had they noticed the roses so vivid, the \villowr-herb so riotous, the meadow-sweet so odorous and pervading. Then the murmur of the approaching weir began to hold the air, and
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they felt a consciousness that they were nearing the end, whatever it might be, that surely awaited their expedition.
A wide half-circle of foam and glinting lights and shining shoulders of green water, the great weir closed the backwater from bank to bank, troubled all the quiet surface with twirling eddies and floating foam-streaks, and deadened all other sounds with its solemn and soothing rumble. In midmost of the stream, embraced in the weir's shimmering arm-spread, a small island lay anchored, fringed close with willow and silver birch and alder. Reserved, shy, but full of significance, it hid whatever it might hold behind a veil, keeping it till the hour should come, and, with the hour, those who were called and chosen.
Slowly, but with no doubt or hesitation what- ever, and in something of a solemn expectancy, the two animals passed through the broken, tumultuous water and moored their boat at the flowery margin of the island. In silence they landed, and pushed through the blossom and scented herbage and undergrowth that led up
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to the level ground, till they stood on a little lawn of a marvellous green, set round with Nature's own orchard-trees — crab-apple, wild cherry, and sloe.
'This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me," whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. 'Here, in this holy place, here if anywrhere, surely we shall find Him!"
Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror - - indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy - - but it was an awe that smote and held him and, with- out seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look for his friend, and saw him at his side, cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was utter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew.
Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still
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dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him in- stantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fulness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humorously, v/hile the bearded mouth broke into a half- smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs dis- posed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleep- ing soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment
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breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.
"Rat!" he found breath to whisper, shaking. "Are you afraid?'
"Afraid?" murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. "Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet - - and yet - - O, Mole, I am afraid!"
Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.
Sudden and magnificent, the sun's broad golden disc showed itself over the horizon facing them; and the first rays, shooting across the level water-meadows, took the animals full in the eyes and dazzled them. When they were able to look once more, the Vision had vanished, and the air was full of the carol of birds that hailed the dawn.
 For this is the last best gift that the kindly demi-god is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and light-hearted as before.
Mole rubbed his eyes and stared at Rat, who was looking about him in a puzzled sort of wTay. 'I beg your pardon; what did you say, Rat?': he asked.
:'I think I was only remarking," said Rat slowly, 'that this was the right sort of place, and that here, if anywhere, we should find him. And look! Why, there he is, the little fellow!" And with a cry of delight he ran towards the slumbering Portly.
But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, and
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can recapture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty of it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its pen- alties; so Mole, after struggling with his mem- ory for a brief space, shook his head sadly and followed the Rat.
Portly woke up with a joyous squeak, and wriggled with pleasure at the sight of his father's friends, who had played with him so often in past days. In a moment, however, his face grew blank, and he fell to hunting round in a circle with pleading whine. As a child that has fallen happily asleep in its nurse's arms, and wakes to find itself alone and laid in a strange place, and searches corners and cupboards, and runs from room to room, despair growing silently in its heart, even so Portly searched the island and searched, dogged and unwearying, till at last the black moment came for giving it up, and sitting down and crying bitterly.
The Mole ran quickly to comfort the little ani- mal; but Rat, lingering, looked long and doubt- fully at certain hoof-marks deep in the sward.
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"Some — great — animal — has been here," he murmured slowly and thoughtfully; and stood musing, musing; his mind strangely stirred.
"Come along, Rat!" called the Mole. "Think of poor Otter, waiting up there by the ford!"
Portly had soon been comforted by the prom- ise of a treat — a jaunt on the river in Mr. Rat's real boat; and the two animals conducted him to the water's side, placed him securely between them in the bottom of the boat, and paddled off down the backwater. The sun was fully up by now, and hot on them, birds sang lustily and without restraint, and flowers smiled and nodded from either bank, but somehow — so thought the animals — with less of richness and blaze of colour than they seemed to remem- ber seeing quite recently somewhere — they won- dered where.
The main river reached again, they turned the boat's head upstream, towards the point where they knew their friend was keeping his lonely vigil. As they drew near the familiar ford, the Mole took the boat in to the bank, and
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they lifted Portly out and set him on his legs on the tow-path, gave him his marching orders and a friendly farewell pat on the back, and shoved out into mid-stream. They watched the little animal as he waddled along the path con- tentedly and with importance; watched him till they saw his muzzle suddenly lift and his waddle break into a clumsy amble as he quick- ened his pace with shrill whines and wriggles of recognition. Looking up the river, they could see Otter start up, tense and rigid, from out of the shallows where he crouched in dumb pa- tience, and could hear his amazed and joyous bark as he bounded up through the osiers on to the path. Then the Mole, with a strong pull on one oar, swung the boat round and let the full stream bear them down again whither it would, their quest now happily ended.
'I feel strangely tired, Rat," said the Mole, leaning wearily over his oars, as the boat drifted. 'It's being up all night, you'll say, perhaps; but that's nothing. We do as much half the nights of the week, at this time of the year. No; I feel as if I had been through something
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very exciting and rather terrible, and it was just over; and yet nothing particular has happened."
"Or something very surprising and splendid and beautiful," murmured the Rat, leaning back and closing his eyes. "I feel just as you do, Mole; simply dead tired, though not body- tired. It's lucky we 've got the stream with us, to take us home. Isn't it jolly to feel the sun again, soaking into one's bones! And hark to the wind playing in the reeds!"
"It's like music — far-away music," said the Mole, nodding drowsily.
"So I was thinking," murmured the Rat, dreamful and languid. :'Dance-music — the lilting sort that runs on without a stop — but with words in it, too — it passes into words and out of them again — I catch them at intervals — then it is dance-music once more, and then nothing but the reeds' soft thin whispering."
'You hear better than I," said the Mole sadly. "I cannot catch the words."
 "Now it is turning into words again — faint but clear —
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Lest the awe should dwell- - And turn your frolic to fret - - You shall look on my poiver at the help- ing hour - - But then you shall forget! Now the reeds take it up - -forget, forget, they sigh, and it dies away in a rustle and a whisper. Then the voice returns -
"Lest limbs be reddened and rent- -I spring the trap that is set- - As I loose the snare you may glimpse me there - - For surely you shall forget! Row nearer, Mole, nearer to the reeds! It is hard to catch, and grows each minute fainter.
"Helper and healer, I cheer- - Small waifs in the woodland wet — Strays I find in it, wounds I bind in it- -Bidding them all forget! Nearer, Mole, nearer! No, it is no good; the song has died away into reed-talk."
"But what do the words mean?" asked the wondering Mole.
"That I do not know," said the Rat simply. "I passed them on to you as they reached me. Ah! now they return again, and this time full and clear! This time, at last, it is the real, the unmistakable thing, simple - - passionate - - per- fect—"
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"Well, let's have it, then," said the Mole, after he had waited patiently for a few minutes, half-dozing in the hot sun.
But no answer came. He looked, and under- stood the silence. With a smile of much hap- piness on his face, and something of a listening look still lingering there, the weary Rat was fast asleep.
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VIII TOAD'S ADVENTURES
VIII TOAD'S ADVENTURES
WHEN Toad found himself immured in a dank and noisome dungeon, and knew that all the grim darkness of a medieval for- tress lay between him and the outer world of sunshine and well-metalled high roads where he had lately been so happy, disporting himself as if he had bought up every road in England, he flung himself at full length on the floor, and shed bitter tears, and abandoned himself to dark despair. 'This is the end of everything" (he said), "at least it is the end of the career of Toad, which is the same thing; the popular and handsome Toad, the rich and hospitable Toad, the Toad so free and careless and debo- nair! How can I hope to be ever set at large again" (he said), "who have been imprisoned so justly for stealing so handsome a motor-car in such an audacious manner, and for such lurid
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and imaginative cheek, bestowed upon such a number of fat, red-faced policemen!" (Here his sobs choked him.) "Stupid animal that I was" (he said), "now I must languish in this dungeon, till people who were proud to say they knew me, have forgotten the very name of Toad! O wise old Badger!" (he said), "O clever, intelligent Rat and sensible Mole! What sound judgments, what a knowledge of men and matters you pos- sess! O unhappy and forsaken Toad!" With lamentations such as these he passed his days and nights for several weeks, refusing his meals or intermediate light refreshments, though the grim and ancient gaoler, knowing that Toad's pockets were well lined, frequently pointed out that many comforts, and indeed luxuries, could by arrangement be sent in — at a price — from outside.
Now the gaoler had a daughter, a pleasant wench and good-hearted, who assisted her father in the lighter duties of his post. She was par- ticularly fond of animals, and, besides her ca- nary, whose cage hung on a nail in the massive wall of the keep by day, to the great annoyance
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of prisoners who relished an after-dinner nap, and was shrouded in an antimacassar on the parlour table at night, she kept several piebald mice and a restless revolving squirrel. This kind-hearted girl, pitying the misery of Toad, said to her father one day, "Father! I can't bear to see that poor beast so unhappy, and getting so thin! You let me have the managing of him. You know how fond of animals I am. I '11 make him eat from my hand, and sit up, and do all sorts of things."
Her father replied that she could do what she liked with him. He was tired of Toad, and his sulks and his airs and his meanness. So that day she went on her errand of mercy, and knocked at the door of Toad's cell.
 And do try and eat a bit of dinner. See, I 've brought you some of mine, hot from the oven!"
It was bubble-and-squeak, between two plates, and its fragrance filled the narrow cell. The penetrating smell of cabbage reached the nose
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of Toad as he lay prostrate in his misery on the floor, and gave him the idea for a moment that perhaps life was not such a blank and desperate thing as he had imagined.  So the wise girl retired for the time, but, of course, a good deal of the smell of hot cabbage remained behind, as it will do, and Toad, between his sobs, sniffed and re- flected, and gradually began to think new and inspiring thoughts: of chivalry, and poetry, and deeds still to be done; of broad meadows, and cattle browsing in them, raked by sun and wind; of kitchen-gardens, and straight herb- borders, and warm snap-dragon beset by bees; and of the comforting clink of dishes set down on the table at Toad Hall, and the scrape of chair-legs on the floor as every one pulled him- self close up to his work. The air of the narrow cell took a rosy tinge; he began to think of his friends, and how they would surely be able to do something; of lawyers, and how they would have enjoyed his case, and what an ass he had been not to get in a few; and lastly, he thought
196
Hi- Inij jii-t>nti'(itc in liiti mim'ry oil tlte floor
TOAD'S ADVENTURES
of his own great cleverness and resource, and all that he was capable of if he only gave his great mind to it; and the cure was almost com- plete.
When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steam- ing on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in it in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour fire- sides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over, and slippered feet were propped on the fender; of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries. Toad sat up on end once more, dried his eyes, sipped his tea and munched his toast, and soon began talking freely about himself, and the house he lived in, and his doings there, and how important he was, and what a lot his friends thought of him.
The gaoler's daughter saw that the topic was
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doing him as much good as the tea, as indeed it was, and encouraged him to go on.
"Tell me about Toad Hall," said she. "It sounds beautiful."
"Toad Hall," said the Toad proudly, "is an eligible, self-contained gentleman's residence, very unique; dating in part from the fourteenth century, but replete with every modern con- venience. Up-to-date sanitation. Five min- utes from church, post-office, and golf-links. Suitable for —'
"Bless the animal," said the girl, laughing, "I don't want to take it. Tell me something real about it. But first wait till I fetch you some more tea and toast."
She tripped away, and presently returned with a fresh trayful; and Toad, pitching into the toast with avidity, his spirits quite restored to their usual level, told her about the boat-house, and the fish-pond, and the old walled kitchen- garden; and about the pig-styes and the stables, and the pigeon-house and the hen- house; and about the dairy, and the wash- house, and the china-cupboards, and the linen-
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presses (she liked that bit especially); and about the banqueting-hall, and the fun they had there when the other animals were gathered round the table and Toad was at his best, singing songs, telling stories, carrying on generally. Then she wanted to know about his animal- friends, and was very interested in all he had to tell her about them and how they lived, and what they did to pass their time. Of course, she did not say she was fond of animals as pets, because she had the sense to see that Toad would be extremely offended. When she said good-night, having filled his water-jug and shaken up his straw for him, Toad was very much the same sanguine, self-satisfied animal that he had been of old. He sang a little song or two, of the sort he used to sing at his dinner- parties, curled himself up in the straw, and had an excellent night's rest and the pleasantest of dreams.
They had many interesting talks together, after that, as the dreary days went on; and the gaoler's daughter grew very sorry for Toad, and thought it a great shame that a poor little
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animal should be locked up in prison for what seemed to her a very trivial offence. Toad, of course, in his vanity, thought that her interest in him proceeded from a growing tenderness; and he could not help half-regretting that the social gulf between them was so very wide, for she was a comely lass, and evidently admired him very much.
One morning the girl was very thoughtful, and answered at random, and did not seem to Toad to be paying proper attention to his witty sayings and sparkling comments.
'Toad," she said presently, "just listen, please. I have an aunt who is a washerwoman."
'There, there," said Toad, graciously and af- fably, "never mind; think no more about it. I have several aunts who ought to be washer-
women.'
"Do be quiet a minute, Toad," said the girl.  As I said, I have an aunt who is a washerwoman; she does the washing for all the prisoners in this castle — we try to keep any paying business of
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that sort in the family, you understand. She takes out the washing on Monday morning, and brings it in on Friday evening. This is a Thurs- day. Now, this is what occurs to me: you 're very rich — at least you 're always telling me so — and she 's very poor. A few pounds wouldn't make any difference to you, and it would mean a lot to her. Now, I think if she were properly approached — squared, I believe is the word you animals use — you could come to some arrangement by which she would let you have her dress and bonnet and so on, and you could escape from the castle as the official wash- erwoman. You 're very alike in many respects — particularly about the figure."
"We're not," said the Toad in a huff. "I have a very elegant figure — for what I am."
"So has my aunt," replied the girl, "for what she is. But have it your own way. You horrid, proud, ungrateful animal, when I 'm sorry for you, and trying to help you!"
'Yes, yes, that's all right; thank you very much indeed," said the Toad hurriedly. 'But
look here! you wouldn't surely have Mr. Toad,
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of Toad Hall, going about the country dis- guised as a washerwoman!"
"Then you can stop here as a Toad," replied the girl with much spirit. 'I suppose you want to go off in a coach-and-four!v
Honest Toad was always ready to admit himself in the wrong.  Introduce me to your worthy aunt, if you will be so kind, and I have no doubt that the excellent lady and I will be able to arrange terms satisfactory to both parties."
Next evening the girl ushered her aunt into Toad's cell, bearing his week's washing pinned up in a towel. The old lady had been prepared beforehand for the interview, and the sight of certain gold sovereigns that Toad had thought- fully placed on the table in full view practically completed the matter and left little further to discuss. In return for his cash, Toad received a cotton print gown, an apron, a shawl, and a rusty black bonnet; the only stipulation the old lady made being that she should be gagged and bound and dumped down in a corner. By
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this not very convincing artifice, she explained, aided by picturesque fiction which she could supply herself, she hoped to retain her situa- tion, in spite of the suspicious appearance of things.
Toad was delighted with the suggestion. It would enable him to leave the prison in some style, and with his reputation for being a des- perate and dangerous fellow untarnished; and he readily helped the gaoler's daughter to make her aunt appear as much as possible the victim of circumstances over which she had no con- trol.
"Now it's your turn, Toad," said the girl.
Shaking with laughter, she proceeded to "hook-and-eye" him into the cotton print gown, arranged the shawl with a professional fold, and tied the strings of the rusty bonnet under his chin.
'You 're the very image of her," she giggled, "only I 'm sure you never looked half so re- spectable in all your life before. Now, good-bye,
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Toad, and good luck. Go straight down the way you came up; and if any one says any- thing to you, as they probably will, being but men, you can chaff back a bit, of course, but remember you 're a widow woman, quite alone in the world, with a character to lose."
With a quaking heart, but as firm a footstep as he could command, Toad set forth cautiously on what seemed to be a most hare-brained and hazardous undertaking; but he was soon agree- ably surprised to find how easy everything was made for him, and a little humbled at the thought that both his popularity, and the sex that seemed to inspire it, were really another's. The washerwoman's squat figure in its familiar cotton print seemed a passport for every barred door and grim gateway; even when he hesi- tated, uncertain as to the right turning to take, he found himself helped out of his difficulty by the warder at the next gate, anxious to be off to his tea, summoning him to come along sharp and not keep him waiting there all night. The chaff and the humourous sallies to which he was subjected, and to which, of course, he had to
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provide prompt and effective reply, formed, in- deed, his chief danger; for Toad was an animal with a strong sense of his own dignity, and the chaff was mostly (he thought) poor and clumsy, and the humour of the sallies entirely lacking. However, he kept his temper, though with great difficulty, suited his retorts to his company and his supposed character, and did his best not to overstep the limits of good taste.
It seemed hours before he crossed the last courtyard, rejected the pressing invitations from the last guardroom, and dodged the outspread arms of the last warder, pleading with simulated passion for just one farewell embrace. But at last he heard the wicket-gate in the great outer door click behind him, felt the fresh air of the outer world upon his anxious brow, and knew that he was free!
Dizzy with the easy success of his daring exploit, he walked quickly towards the lights of the town, not knowing in the least what he should do next, only quite certain of one thing, that he must remove himself as quickly as possible from the neighbourhood where the lady
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he was forced to represent was so well-known and so popular a character.
As he walked along, considering, his attention was caught by some red and green lights a little way off, to one side of the town, and the sound of the puffing and snorting of engines and the banging of shunted trucks fell on his ear. "Aha!"  A railway station is the thing I want most in the whole world at this moment; and what's more, I needn't go through the town to get it, and shan't have to support this humiliating character by repartees which, though thoroughly effective, do not assist one's sense of self- respect."
He made his way to the station accordingly, consulted a time-table, and found that a train, bound more or less in the direction of his home, was due to start in half-an-hour. :'More luck!" said Toad, his spirits rising rapidly, and went off to the booking-office to buy his ticket.
He gave the name of the station that he knew to be nearest to the village of which Toad Hall was the principal feature, and mechanically
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put his fingers, in search of the necessary money, where his waistcoat pocket should have been. But here the cotton gown, which had nobly stood by him so far, and which he had basely forgotten, intervened, and frustrated his efforts. In a sort of nightmare he struggled with the strange uncanny thing that seemed to hold his hands, turn all muscular strivings to water, and laugh at him all the time; while other trav- ellers, forming up in a line behind, waited with impatience, making suggestions of more or less value and comments of more or less stringency and point. At last - - somehow - - he never rightly understood how — he burst the barriers, attained the goal, arrived at where all waistcoat pockets are eternally situated, and found - - not only no money, but no pocket to hold it, and no waistcoat to hold the pocket!
To his horror he recollected that he had left both coat and waistcoat behind him in his cell, and with them his pocket-book, money, keys, watch, matches, pencil-case - - all that makes life worth living, all that distinguishes the many- pocketed animal, the lord of creation, from the
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inferior one-pocketed or no-pocketed produc- tions that hop or trip about permissively, un- equipped for the real contest.
In his misery he made one desperate effort to carry the thing off, and, with a return to his fine old manner - - a blend of the Squire and the College Don - - he said, 'Look here! I find I've left my purse behind. Just give me that ticket, will you, and I '11 send the money on to-morrow? I 'm well-kno\vn in these parts."
The clerk stared at him and the rusty black bonnet a moment, and then laughed. :'I should think you were pretty well known in these parts," he said, ':'if you 've tried this game on often. Here, stand away from the window, please, madam; you 're obstructing the other passengers!"
An old gentleman who had been prodding him in the back for some moments here thrust him away, and, what was worse, addressed him as his good woman, which angered Toad more than anything that had occurred that evening.
Baffled and full of despair, he wandered blindly down the platform where the train was
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standing, and tears trickled down each side of his nose. It was hard, he thought, to be within sight of safety and almost of home, and to be baulked by the want of a few wretched shillings and by the pettifogging mistrustfulness of paid officials. Very soon his escape would be dis- covered, the hunt would be up, he would be caught, reviled, loaded with chains, dragged back again to prison and bread-and-water and straw; his guards and penalties would be doubled; and O, what sarcastic remarks the girl would make! What was to be done? He was not swift of foot; his figure was unfortu- nately recognisable. Could he not squeeze under the seat of a carriage? He had seen this method adopted by schoolboys, when the journey-money provided by thoughtful parents had been di- verted to other and better ends. As he pondered, he found himself opposite the engine, which was being oiled, wiped, and generally caressed by its affectionate driver, a burly man with an oil-can in one hand and a lump of cotton-waste in the other.
"Hullo, mother!" said the engine-driver,
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THE AVI XI) IN THE WILLOWS
"what's the trouble? You don't look particu- larly cheerful."
"O, sir!" said Toad, crying afresh, "I am a poor unhappy washerwoman, and I 've lost all my money, and can't pay for a ticket, and I must get home to-night somehow, and whatever I am to do I don't know. O dear, O dear!"
"That's a bad business, indeed," said the engine-driver reflectively. 'Lost your money — and can't get home — and got some kids, too, waiting for you, I dare say?''
"Any amount of 'em," sobbed Toad.  O dear, O dear!"
"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do," said the good engine-driver. 'You 're a washerwoman to your trade, says you. Very well, that's that. And I 'm an engine-driver, as you well may see, and there 's no denying it's terribly dirty work. Uses up a power of shirts, it does, till my missus is fair tired of washing of 'em. If you '11 wash a few shirts for me when you get home,
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and send 'em along, I '11 give you a ride on my engine. It's against the Company's regula- tions, but we 're not so very particular in these out-of-the-way parts."
The Toad's misery turned into rapture as he eagerly scrambled up into the cab of the engine. Of course, he had never washed a shirt in his life, and couldn't if he tried and, anyhow, he wasn't going to begin; but he thought: "When I get safely home to Toad Hall, and have money again, and pockets to put it in, I will send the engine-driver enough to pay for quite a quantity of washing, and that will be the same thing, or better."
The guard waved his welcome flag, the engine- driver whistled in cheerful response, and the train moved out of the station. As the speed increased, and the Toad could see on either side of him real fields, and trees, and hedges, and cows, and horses, all flying past him, and as he thought how every minute was bringing him nearer to Toad Hall, and sympathetic friends, and money to chink in his pocket, and a soft bed to sleep in, and good things to eat, and
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praise and admiration at the recital of his adventures and his surpassing cleverness, he be- gan to skip up and down and shout and sing snatches of song, to the great astonishment of the engine-driver, who had come across washer- women before, at long intervals, but never one at all like this.
They had covered many and many a mile, and Toad was already considering what he would have for supper as soon as he got home, when he noticed that the engine-driver, with a puzzled expression on his face, was leaning over the side of the engine and listening hard. Then he saw him climb on to the coals and gaze out over the top of the train; then he returned and said to Toad: :'It 's very strange; we 're the last train running in this direction to-night, yet I could be sworn that I heard another following us!"
Toad ceased his frivolous antics at once. He became grave and depressed, and a dull pain in the lower part of his spine, communicating itself to his legs, made him want to sit down and try desperately not to think of all the possibilities.
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By this time the moon was shining brightly, and the engine-driver, steadying himself on the coal, could command a view of the line behind them for a long distance.
Presently he called out, "I can see it clearly now! It is an engine, on our rails, coming along at a great pace! It looks as if we were being pursued!"
The miserable Toad, crouching in the coal- dust, tried hard to think of something to do, with dismal want of success.
'They are gaining on us fast!" cried the engine-driver. "And the engine is crowded with the queerest lot of people! Men like ancient warders, waving halberds; policemen in their helmets, waving truncheons; and shab- bily dressed men in pot-hats, obvious and unmis- takable plain-clothes detectives even at this distance, waving revolvers and walking-sticks; all waving, and all shouting the same thing — 'Stop, stop, stop!'
Then Toad fell on his knees among the coals, and, raising his clasped paws in supplication, cried, "Save me, only save me, dear kind Mr.
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Engine-driver, and I will confess everything! I am not the simple washerwoman I seem to be! I have no children waiting for me, innocent or otherwise! I am a toad - - the well-known and popular Mr. Toad, a landed proprietor; I have just escaped, by my great daring and clever- ness, from a loathsome dungeon into which my enemies had flung me; and if those fellows on that engine recapture me, it will be chains and bread-and-water and straw and misery once more for poor, unhappy, innocent Toad!"
The engine-driver looked down upon him very sternly, and said, "Now tell the truth; what were you put in prison for?"
'It was nothing very much," said poor Toad, colouring deeply. "I only borrowed a motor- car while the owners were at lunch; they had no need of it at the time. I didn't mean to steal it, really; but people — especially magis- trates — take such harsh views of thoughtless and high-spirited actions."
The engine-driver looked very grave and said,
'I fear that you have been indeed a wicked
toad, and by rights I ought to give you up to
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offended justice. But you are evidently in sore trouble and distress, so I will not desert you. I don't hold with motor-cars, for one thing; and I don't hold with being ordered about by police- men when I 'm on niy own engine, for another. And the sight of an animal in tears always makes me feel queer and soft-hearted. So cheer up, Toad! I '11 do my best, and we may beat them yet!"
They piled on more coals, shovelling furiously; the furnace roared, the sparks flew, the engine leapt and swung, but still their pursuers slowly gained. The engine-driver, with a sigh, wiped his brow with a handful of cotton-waste, and said, "I 'm afraid it's no good, Toad. You see, they are running light, and they have the better engine. There 's just one thing left for us to do, and it's your only chance, so attend very carefully to what I tell you. A short way ahead of us is a long tunnel, and on the other side of that the line passes through a thick wood. Now, I will put on all the speed I can while we are running through the tunnel, but the other fellows will slow down a bit, naturally,
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for fear of an accident. When we are through, I will shut off steam and put on brakes as hard as I can, and the moment it's safe to do so you must jump and hide in the wood, before they get through the tunnel and see you. Then I will go full speed ahead again, and they can chase me if they like, for as long as they like, and as far as they like. Now mind and be ready to jump when I tell you!"
They piled on more coals, and the train shot into the tunnel, and the engine rushed and roared and rattled, till at last they shot out at the other end into fresh air and the peaceful moonlight, and saw the wood lying dark and helpful upon either side of the line. The driver shut off steam and put on brakes, the Toad got down on the step, and as the train slowed down to almost a walking pace he heard the driver call out, "Now, jump! '
Toad jumped, rolled down a short embank- ment, picked himself up unhurt, scrambled into the wood and hid.
Peeping out, he saw his train get up speed again and disappear at a great pace. Then
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out of the tunnel burst the pursuing engine, roaring and whistling, her motley crew waving their various weapons and shouting, "Stop! stop! stop!" When they were past, the Toad had a hearty laugh - - for the first time since he was thrown into prison.
But he soon stopped laughing when he came to consider that it was now very late and dark and cold, and he was in an unknown wood, with no money and no chance of supper, and still far from friends and home; and the dead silence of everything, after the roar and rattle of the train, was something of a shock. He dared not leave the shelter of the trees, so he struck into the wood, with the idea of leaving the railway as far as possible behind him.
After so many weeks within walls, he found the wood strange and unfriendly and inclined, he thought, to make fun of him. Night-jars, sounding their mechanical rattle, made him think that the wood was full of searching warders, closing in on him. An owl, swooping noiselessly towards him, brushed his shoulder with its wing, making him jump with the
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horrid certainty that it was a hand; then flitted off, moth-like, laughing its low ho! ho! ho! which Toad thought in very poor taste. Once he met a fox, who stopped, looked him up and down in a sarcastic sort of way, and said, "Hullo, washerwoman! Half a pair of socks and a pillow-case short this week! Mind it doesn't occur again!" and swaggered off, snig- gering. Toad looked about for a stone to throw at him, but could not succeed in finding one, which vexed him more than anything. At last, cold, hungry, and tired out, he sought the shelter of a hollow tree, where with branches and dead leaves he made himself as comfortable a bed as he could, and slept soundly till the morning.
218
IX
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IX
WAYFARERS ALL
THE Water Rat was restless, and he did not exactly know why. To all appear- ance the summer's pomp was still at fullest height, and although in the tilled acres green had given way to gold, though rowans were red- dening, and the woods were dashed here and there with a tawny fierceness, yet light and warmth and colour were still present in undi- minished measure, clean of any chilly premoni- tions of the passing year. But the constant chorus of the orchards and hedges had shrunk to a casual evensong from a few yet unwearied performers; the robin was beginning to assert himself once more; and there was a feeling in the air of change and departure. The cuckoo, of course, had long been silent; but many an- other feathered friend, for months a part of the familiar landscape and its small society, was
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missing too, and it seemed that the ranks thinned steadily day by day. Rat, ever observant of all winged movement, saw that it was taking daily a southing tendency; and even as he lay in bed at night he thought he could make out, passing in the darkness overhead, the beat and quiver of impatient pinions, obedient to the peremp- tory call.
Nature's Grand Hotel has its Season, like the others. As the guests one by one pack, pay, and depart, and the seats at the table-d'hote shrink pitifully at each succeeding meal; as suites of rooms are closed, carpets taken up, and waiters sent away; those boarders who are staying on, en pension, until the next year's full re-opening, cannot help being somewhat af- fected by all these flitting^ and farewells, this eager discussion of plans, routes, and fresh quar- ters, this daily shrinkage in the stream of com- radeship. One gets unsettled, depressed, and inclined to be querulous. Why this craving for change? Why not stay on quietly here, like us, and be jolly? You don't know this hotel out of the season, and what fun we have among our-
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selves, we fellows who remain and see the whole interesting year out. All very true, no doubt, the others always reply; we quite envy you — and some other year perhaps - - but just now we have engagements — and there 's the bus at the door — our time is up! So they depart, with a smile and a nod, and we miss them, and feel resentful. The Rat was a self-sufficing sort of animal, rooted to the land, and, whoever went, he stayed; still, he could not help noticing what was in the air, and feeling some of its influence in his bones.
It was difficult to settle down to anything seriously, with all this flitting going on. Leav- ing the water-side, where rushes stood thick and tall in a stream that was becoming sluggish and low, he wandered country-wards, crossed a field or two of pasturage already looking dusty and parched, and thrust into the great sea of wheat, yellow, wavy, and murmurous, full of quiet motion and small whisperings. Here he often loved to wander, through the forest of stiff strong stalks that carried their own golden sky away over his head - - a sky that was always
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dancing, shimmering, softly talking; or swaying strongly to the passing wind and recovering it- self with a toss and a merry laugh. Here, too, he had many small friends, a society complete in itself, leading full and busy lives, but always with a spare moment to gossip, and exchange news with a visitor. To-day, however, though they were civil enough, the field-mice and har- vest mice seemed preoccupied. Many were digging and tunnelling busily; others, gathered together in small groups, examined plans and drawings of small flats, stated to be desirable and compact, and situated conveniently near the Stores. Some were hauling out dusty trunks and dress-baskets, others were already elbow- deep, packing their belongings; while every- where piles and bundles of wheat, oats, barley, beech-mast and nuts, lay about ready for trans- port.
'Here's old Ratty!" they cried as soon as they saw him. :'Come and bear a hand, Rat, and don't stand about idle!"
'What sort of games are you up to?" said the Water Rat severely. "You know it isn't
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time to be thinking of winter quarters yet, by a long way!"
"O yes, we know that," explained a field- mouse rather shamefacedly; ;<but it's always as well to be in good time, isn't it? We really must get all the furniture and baggage and stores moved out of this before those horrid machines begin clicking round the fields; and then, you know, the best flats get picked up so quickly nowadays, and if you 're late you have to put up with anything; and they want such a lot of doing up, too, before they 're fit to move into. Of course, we 're early, we know that; but we 're only just making a start."
"O, bother starts," said the Rat. "It's a splendid day. Come for a row, or a stroll along the hedges, or a picnic in the woods, or something."
'Well, I think not to-day, thank you," replied the field-mouse hurriedly. "Perhaps some other day — when we 've more time —"
The Rat, with a snort of contempt, swung round to go, tripped over a hat-box, and fell, with undignified remarks.
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"If people would be more careful," said a field-mouse rather stiffly, "and look where they 're going, people wouldn't hurt themselves - and forget themselves. Mind that hold-all, Rat! You 'd better sit down somewhere. In an hour or t\vo we may be more free to attend to you."
'You won't be 'free' as you call it, much this side of Christmas, I can see that," retorted the Rat grumpily, as he picked his way out of the field.
He returned somewhat despondently to his river again - - his faithful, steady-going old river, which never packed up, flitted, or went into winter quarters.
In the osiers which fringed the bank he spied a swallow sitting. Presently it was joined by another, and then by a third; and the birds, fidgeting restlessly on their bough, talked to- gether earnestly and low.
'What, already" said the Rat, strolling up to them. 'What's the hurry? I call it simply ridiculous."
0, we 're not off yet, if that's what you
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mean," replied the first swallow. 'We 're only making plans and arranging things. Talking it over, you know — what route we 're taking this year, and where we '11 stop, and so on. That's half the fun!"
"Fun?" said the Rat; "now that's just what I don't understand. If you 've got to leave this pleasant place, and your friends who will miss you, and your snug homes that you 've just settled into, why, when the hour strikes I 've no doubt you '11 go bravely, and face all the trouble and discomfort and change and newness, and make believe that you 're not very unhappy. But to want to talk about it, or even think about it, till you really need —
"No, you don't understand, naturally," said the second swallow. "First, we feel it stirring within us, a sweet unrest; then back come the recollections one by one, like homing pigeons. They flutter through our dreams at night, they fly with us in our wheelings and circlings by day. We hunger to inquire of each other, to compare notes and assure ourselves that it was all really true, as one by one the scents and
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sounds and names of long-forgotten places come gradually back and beckon to us."
"Couldn't you stop on for just this year?'' suggested the Water Rat, wistfully. "We '11 all do our best to make you feel at home. You 've no idea what good times we have here, while you are far away."
'I tried 'stopping on' one year," said the third swallow. 'I had grown so fond of the place that when the time came I hung back and let the others go on without me. For a few weeks it was all well enough, but afterwards, O the weary length of the nights! The shivering, sunless days! The air so clammy and chill, and not an insect in an acre of it! No, it was no good; my courage broke down, and one cold, stormy night I took wing, flying well inland on account of the strong easterly gales. It was snowing hard as I beat through the passes of the great mountains, and I had a stiff fight to win through; but never shall I forget the bliss- ful feeling of the hot sun again on my back as I sped down to the lakes that lay so blue and placid below me, and the taste of my first fat
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insect! The past was like a bad dream; the future was all happy holiday as I moved south- wards week by week, easily, lazily, lingering as long as I dared, but always heeding the call! No, I had had my warning; never again did I think of disobedience."
"Ah, yes, the call of the South, of the South!" twittered the other two dreamily. "Its songs, its hues, its radiant air! O, do you remember —" and, forgetting the Rat, they slid into pas- sionate reminiscence, while he listened fasci- nated, and his heart burned within him. In himself, too, he knew that it was vibrating at last, that chord hitherto dormant and unsus- pected. The mere chatter of these southern- bound birds, their pale and second-hand reports, had yet power to awaken this wild new sensa- tion and thrill him through and through with it; what would one moment of the real thing work in him - - one passionate touch of the real southern sun, one waft of the authentic odour? With closed eyes he dared to dream a moment in full abandonment, and when he looked again the river seemed steely and chill, the green
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THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
fields grey and lightless. Then his loyal heart seemed to cry out on his weaker self for its treachery.
"Why do you ever come back, then, at all?" he demanded of the swallows jealously. 'What do you find to attract you in this poor drab little country?"
"And do you think," said the first swallow, :'that the other call is not for us too, in its due season? The call of lush meadow-grass, wet orchards, warm, insect-haunted ponds, of brows- ing cattle, of haymaking, and all the farm- buildings clustering round the House of the perfect Eaves?"
'Do you suppose," asked the second one, 'that you are the only living thing that craves with a hungry longing to hear the cuckoo's note again?"
:'In due time," said the third, "we shall be home-sick once more for quiet water-lilies sway- ing on the surface of an English stream. But to-day all that seems pale and thin and very far away. Just now our blood dances to other
music.'
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They fell a-twittering among themselves once more, and this time their intoxicating babble was of violet seas, tawny sands, and lizard- haunted walls.
Restlessly the Rat wandered off once more, climbed the slope that rose gently from the north bank of the river, and lay looking out towards the great ring of Downs that barred his vision further southwards — his simple hori- zon hitherto, his Mountains of the Moon, his limit behind which lay nothing he had cared to see or to know. To-day, to him gazing South with a new-born need stirring in his heart, the clear sky over their long low outline seemed to pulsate with promise; to-day, the unseen was everything, the unknown the only real fact of life. On this side of the hills was now the real blank, on the other lay the crowded and col- oured panorama that his inner eye was seeing so clearly. What seas lay beyond, green, leaping, and crested! What sun-bathed coasts, along which the white villas glittered against the olive woods! What quiet harbours, thronged with gallant shipping bound for purple islands of
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THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
wine and spice, islands set low in languorous waters!
He rose and descended river-wards once more; then changed his mind and sought the side of the dusty lane. There, lying half-buried in the thick, cool under-hedge tangle that bordered it, he could muse on the metalled road and all the wondrous world that it led to; on all the way- farers, too, that might have trodden it, and the fortunes and adventures they had gone to seek or found unseeking — out there, beyond — be- yond!
Footsteps fell on his ear, and the figure of one that walked somewhat wearily came into view; and he saw that it was a Rat, and a very dusty one. The wayfarer, as he reached him, saluted with a gesture of courtesy that had something foreign about it — hesitated a mo- ment - - then with a pleasant smile turned from the track and sat down by his side in the cool herbage. He seemed tired, and the Rat let him rest unquestioned, understanding something of what was in his thoughts; knowing, too, the value all animals attach at times to mere silent
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companionship, when the weary muscles slacken and the mind marks time.
The wayfarer was lean and keen-featured, and somewhat bowed at the shoulders; his paws were thin and long, his eyes much wrinkled at the corners, and he wore small gold ear rings in his neatly-set well-shaped ears. His knitted jersey was of a faded blue, his breeches, patched and stained, were based on a blue foundation, and his small belongings that he carried were tied up in a blue cotton handkerchief.
When he had rested awhile the stranger sighed, snuffed the air, and looked about him.
"That was clover, that warm whiff on the breeze," he remarked; "and those are cows we hear cropping the grass behind us and blowing softly between mouthfuls. There is a sound of distant reapers, and yonder rises a blue line of cottage smoke against the woodland. The river runs somewhere close by, for I hear the call of a moorhen, and I see by your build that you 're a freshwater mariner. Everything seems asleep, and yet going on all the time. It is a goodly life that you lead, friend; no doubt the
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THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
best in the world, if only you are strong enough to lead it!"
"Yes, it's the life, the only life, to live," re- sponded the Water Rat dreamily, and without his usual whole-hearted conviction.
"I did not say exactly that," replied the stranger cautiously; :'but no doubt it's the best. I 've tried it, and I know. And because I 've just tried it — six months of it - - and know it's the best, here am I, footsore and hungry, tramping away from it, tramping south- wards, following the old call, back to the old life, the life which is mine and which will not let me go."
"Is this, then, yet another of them?" mused the Rat. "And where have you just come from? " he asked. He hardly dared to ask where he was bound for; he seemed to know the answer only too well.
 " Upalong in that direction- he nod- ded northwards. ''Never mind about it.  Glad to be here all the same, though, glad to be here! So many miles further on the road, so many hours nearer to my heart's desire!"
His shining eyes held fast to the horizon, and he seemed to be listening for some sound that was wanting from that inland acreage, vocal as it was with the cheerful music of pasturage and farmyard.
"You are not one of us" said the Water Rat, "nor yet a farmer; nor even, I should judge, of this country."
"Right," replied the stranger. "I 'm a sea- faring rat, I am, and the port I originally hail from is Constantinople, though I 'm a sort of a foreigner there too, in a manner of speaking. You will have heard of Constantinople, friend? A fair city and an ancient and glorious one. And you may have heard too, of Sigurd, King of Norway, and how he sailed thither with sixty ships, and how he and his men rode up through streets all canopied in their honour with purple and gold; and how the Emperor and Empress came down and banqueted with him on board
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THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
his ship. When Sigurd returned home, many of his Northmen remained behind and entered the Emperor's body-guard, and my ancestor, a Nor- wegian born, stayed behind too, with the ships that Sigurd gave the Emperor. Seafarers we have ever been, and no wonder; as for me, the city of my birth is no more my home than any pleasant port between there and the London River. I know them all, and they know me. Set me down on any of their quays or foreshores, and I am home again."
"I suppose you go great voyages," said the Water Rat writh growing interest. "Months and months out of sight of land, and provisions running short, and allowanced as to water, and your mind communing with the mighty ocean, and all that sort of thing?"
"By no means," said the Sea Rat frankly. "Such a life as you describe would not suit me at all. I 'm in the coasting trade, and rarely out of sight of land. It's the jolly times on shore that appeal to me, as much as any sea- faring. O, those southern seaports! The smell of them, the riding-lights at night, the glamour!"
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" Well, perhaps you have chosen the better way," said the Water Rat, but rather doubtfully. "Tell me something of your coasting, then, if you have a mind to, and what sort of harvest an animal of spirit might hope to bring home from it to warm his latter days with gallant memories by the fireside; for my life, I confess to you, feels to me to-day somewhat narrow and circumscribed."
"My last voyage," began the Sea Rat, "that landed me eventually in this country, bound with high hopes for my inland farm, will serve as a good example of any of them, and, indeed, as an epitome of my highly-coloured life. Fam- ily troubles, as usual, began it. The domestic storm-cone was hoisted, and I shipped myself on board a small trading vessel bound from Con- stantinople, by classic seas whose every wave throbs with a deathless memory, to the Grecian Islands and the Levant. Those were golden days and balmy nights! In and out of harbour all the time — old friends everywhere — sleep- ing in some cool temple or ruined cistern during the heat of the day - - feasting and song after
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THE AVINB IN THE WILLOWS
sundown, under great stars set in a velvet sky! Thence we turned and coasted up the Adriatic, its shores swimming in an atmosphere of amber, rose, and aquamarine; we lay in wide land- locked harbours, we roamed through ancient and noble cities, until at last one morning, as the sun rose royally behind us, we rode into Venice down a path of gold. O, Venice is a fine city, wherein a rat can wander at his ease and take his pleas- ure! Or, when \veary of wandering, can sit at the edge of the Grand Canal at night, feasting with his friends, when the air is full of music and the sky full of stars, and the lights flash and shimmer on the polished steel prows of the swaying gondolas, packed so that you could walk across the canal on them from side to side! And then the food - - do you like shell-fish? Well, well, we won't linger over that now."
He was silent for a time; and the Water Rat, silent too and enthralled, floated on dream- canals and heard a phantom song pealing high between vaporous grey wave-lapped walls.
"Southwards we sailed again at last," con- tinued the Sea Rat, "coasting down the Italian
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shore, till finally we made Palermo, and there I quitted for a long, happy spell on shore. I never stick too long to one ship; one gets narrow-minded and prejudiced. Besides, Sicily is one of my happy hunting-grounds. I know everybody there, and their ways just suit me. I spent many jolly weeks in the island, staying with friends upcountry. When I grew restless again I took advantage of a ship that was trading to Sardinia and Corsica; and very glad I was to feel the fresh breeze and the sea-spray in my face once more."
:'But isn't it very hot and stuffy, down in the -hold, I think you call it?" asked the Water Rat.
The seafarer looked at him with the suspicion of a wink. "I 'm an old hand," he remarked with much simplicity. 'The captain's cabin 's good enough for me."
'It's a hard life, by all accounts," murmured the Rat, sunk in deep thought.
'For the crew it is," replied the seafarer gravely, again with the ghost of a wink.
'From Corsica," he went on, "I made use of
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THE WIND IN THE WALLOWS
a ship that was taking wine to the mainland. We made Alassio in the evening, lay to, hauled up our wine-casks, and hove them overboard, tied one to the other by a long line. Then the crew took to the boats and rowed shorewards, singing as they went, and drawing after them the long bobbing procession of casks, like a mile of porpoises. On the sands they had horses waiting, which dragged the casks up the steep street of the little town with a fine rush and clatter and scramble. When the last cask was in, we went and refreshed and rested, and sat late into the night, drinking with our friends, and next morning I took to the great olive-woods for a spell and a rest. For now I had done with islands for the time, and ports and shipping were plentiful; so I led a lazy life among the peasants, lying and watching them work, or stretched high on the hillside \vith the blue Mediterranean far below me. And so at length, by easy stages, and partly on foot, partly by sea, to Marseilles, and the meeting of old shipmates, and the visiting of great ocean- bound vessels, and feasting once more. Talk
240
It'.i it liiinl lij'i', lit/ nil accounts,"
»i it mi nrcil tin- Jldt
WAYFARERS ALL
of shell-fish! Why, sometimes I dream of the shell-fish of Marseilles, and wake up crying!"
"That reminds me," said the polite Water Rat; "you happened to mention that you were hungry, and I ought to have spoken earlier. Of course, you will stop and take your midday meal with me? My hole is close by; it is some time past noon, and you are very welcome to whatever there is."
"Now I call that kind and brotherly of you," said the Sea Rat. "I was indeed hungry when I sat down, and ever since I inadvertently happened to mention shell-fish, my pangs have been extreme. But couldn't you fetch it along out here? I am none too fond of going under hatches, unless I 'm obliged to; and then, while we eat, I could tell you more concerning my voyages and the pleasant life I lead — at least, it is very pleasant to me, and by your attention I judge it commends itself to you; whereas if we go indoors it is a hundred to one that I shall presently fall asleep."
'That is indeed an excellent suggestion," said the \Vater Rat, and hurried off home. There
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he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stran- ger's origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw- covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes. Thus laden, he returned with all speed, and blushed for pleasure at the old seaman's commendations of his taste and judgment, as together they unpacked the basket and laid out the contents on the grass by the roadside.
The Sea Rat, as soon as his hunger was some- what assuaged, continued the history of his latest voyage, conducting his simple hearer from port to port of Spain, landing him at Lisbon, Oporto, and Bordeaux, introducing him to the pleasant harbours of Cornwall and Devon, and so up the Channel to that final quayside, where, landing after winds long contrary, storm-driven and weather-beaten, he had caught the first magical hints and heraldings of another Spring, and, fired by these, had sped on a long tramp
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inland, hungry for the experiment of life on some quiet farmstead, very far from the weary beating of any sea.
Spell-bound and quivering with excitement, the Water Rat followed the Adventurer league by league, over stormy bays, through crowded roadsteads, across harbour .bars on a racing tide, up winding rivers that hid their busy little towns round a sudden turn; and left him with a regretful sigh planted at his dull inland farm, about which he desired to hear nothing.
By this time their meal was over, and the Sea- farer, refreshed and strengthened, his voice more vibrant, his eye lit with a brightness that seemed caught from some far-away sea-beacon, filled his glass with the red and glowing vintage of the South, and, leaning towards the Water Rat, compelled his gaze and held him, body and soul, while he talked. Those eyes were of the changing foam-streaked grey-green of leaping Northern seas; in the glass shone a hot ruby that seemed the very heart of the South, beating for him who had courage to respond to its pulsation. The twin lights, the shifting grey
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and the steadfast red, mastered the Water Rat and held him bound, fascinated, powerless. The quiet world outside their rays receded far away and ceased to be. And the talk, the wonderful talk flo\ved on - - or was it speech entirely, or did it pass at times into song - - chanty of the sailors weighing the dripping anchor, sonorous hum of the shrouds in a tearing North-Easter, ballad of the fisherman hauling his nets at sun- dowrn against an apricot sky, chords of guitar and mandoline from gondola or caique? Did it change into the cry of the wind, plaintive at first, angrily shrill as it freshened, rising to a tearing whistle, sinking to a musical trickle of air from the leech of the bellying sail? All these sounds the spell-bound listener seemed to hear, and with them the hungry complaint of the gulls and the sea-mews, the soft thunder of the breaking wave, the cry of the protesting shingle. Back into speech again it passed, and with beating heart he was following the adven- tures of a dozen seaports, the fights, the es- capes, the rallies, the comradeships, the gallant undertakings; or he searched islands for treas-
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ure, fished in still lagoons and dozed day-long on warm v/hite sand. Of deep-sea fishings he heard tell, and mighty silver gatherings of the mile-long net; of sudden perils, noise of breakers on a moonless night, or the tall bows of the great liner taking shape overhead through the fog; of the merry home-coming, the headland rounded, the harbour lights opened out; the groups seen dimly on the quay, the cheery hail, the splash of the hawser; the trudge up the steep little street towards the comforting glow of red-curtained windows.
Lastly, in his waking dream it seemed to him that the Adventurer had risen to his feet, but was still speaking, still holding him fast with his sea-grey eyes.
"And now," he was softly saying, "I take to the road again, holding on southwestwards for many a long and dusty day; till at last I reach the little grey sea town I know so well, that clings along one steep side of the harbour. There through dark doorways you look down flights of stone steps, overhung by great pink tufts of valerian and ending in a patch of
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sparkling blue water. The little boats that lie tethered to the rings and stanchions of the old sea-wall are gaily painted as those I clambered in and out of in my own childhood; the salmon leap on the flood tide, schools of mackerel flash and play past quay-sides and foreshores, and by the windows the great vessels glide, night and day, up to their moorings or forth to the open sea. There, sooner or later, the ships of all seafaring nations arrive; and there, at its destined hour, the ship of my choice will let go its anchor. I shall take my time, I shall tarry and bide, till at last the right one lies waiting for me, warped out into midstream, loaded low, her bowsprit pointing down harbour. I shall slip on board, by boat or along hawser; and then one morning I shall wake to the song and tramp of the sailors, the clink of the cap- stan, and the rattle of the anchor-chain coming merrily in. We shall break out the jib and the foresail, the white houses on the harbour side will glide slowly past us as she gathers steering- way, and the voyage will have begun! As she forges towards the headland she will clothe her-
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self with canvas; and then, once outside, the sounding slap of great green seas as she heels to the wind, pointing South!
"And you, you will come too, young brother; for the days pass, and never return, and the South still waits for you. Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! 'Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company. You can easily overtake me on the road, for you are young, and I am ageing and go softly. I will linger, and look back; and at last I will surely see you coming, eager and light-hearted, with all the South in your face!"
The voice died away and ceased as an in- sect's tiny trumpet dwindles swiftly into silence; and the Water Rat, paralysed and staring, saw at last but a distant speck on the white surface of the road.
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Mechanically he rose and proceeded to re- pack the luncheon-basket, carefully and without haste. Mechanically he returned home, gath- ered together a few small necessaries and special treasures he was fond of, and put them in a satchel; acting with slow deliberation, moving about the room like a sleep-walker; listening ever with parted lips. He swung the satchel over his shoulder, carefully selected a stout stick for his wayfaring, and with no haste, but with no hesitation at all, he stepped across the threshold just as the Mole appeared at the door.
"Why, where are you off to, Ratty?" asked the Mole in great surprise, grasping him by the arm.
" Going South, with the rest of them," mur- mured the Rat in a dreamy monotone, never looking at him. "Seawards first and then on shipboard, and so to the shores that are calling me!"
 Grap- pling with him strongly he dragged him inside, threw him down, and held him.
The Rat struggled desperately for a few mo- ments, and then his strength seemed suddenly to leave him, and he lay still and exhausted, with closed eyes, trembling. Presently the Mole assisted him to rise and placed him in a chair, where he sat collapsed and shrunken into him- self, his body shaken by a violent shivering, passing in time into an hysterical fit of dry sobbing. Mole made the door fast, threw the satchel into a drawer and locked it, and sat down quietly on the table by his friend, waiting for the strange seizure to pass. Gradually the Rat sank into a troubled doze, broken by starts and confused murmurings of things strange and wild and foreign to the unenlightened Mole; and from that he passed into a deep slumber.
Very anxious in mind, the Mole left him for a time and busied himself with household mat- ters; and it was getting dark when he returned
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to the parlour and found the Rat where he had left him, wide awake indeed, but listless, silent, and dejected. He took one hasty glance at his eyes; found them, to his great gratification, clear and dark and brown again as before; and then sat down and tried to cheer him up and help him to relate what had happened to him.
Poor Ratty did his best, by degrees, to explain things; but how could he put into cold words what had mostly been suggestion? How recall, for another's benefit, the haunting sea voices that had sung to him, how reproduce at second- hand the magic of the Seafarer's hundred rem- iniscences? Even to himself, now the spell was broken and the glamour gone, he found it diffi- cult to account for what had seemed, some hours ago, the inevitable and only thing. It is not surprising, then, that he failed to convey to the Mole any clear idea of what he had been through that day.
To the Mole this much was plain: the fit, or attack, had passed away, and had left him sane again, though shaken and cast down by the reaction. But he seemed to have lost all inter-
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est for the time in the things that went to make up his daily life, as well as in all pleasant fore- castings of the altered days and doings that the changing season was surely bringing.
Casually, then, and with seeming indifference, the Mole turned his talk to the harvest that was being gathered in, the towering wagons and their straining teams, the growing ricks, and the large moon rising over bare acres dotted with sheaves. He talked of the reddening apples around, of the browning nuts, of jams and pre- serves and the distilling of cordials; till by easy stages such as these he reached midwinter, its hearty joys and its snug home life, and then he became simply lyrical.
By degrees the Rat began to sit up and to join in. His dull eye brightened, and he lost some of his listening air.
Presently the tactful Mole slipped away and returned with a pencil and a few half-sheets of paper, which he placed on the table at his friend's elbow.
"It's quite a long time since you did any poetry," he remarked. "You might have a try
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at it this evening, instead of - - well, brooding over things so much. I 've an idea that you '11 feel a lot better when you 've got something jotted down - - if it's only just the rhymes." The Rat pushed the paper away from him wearily, but the discreet Mole took occasion to leave the room, and when he peeped in again some time later, the Rat was absorbed and deaf to the world; alternately scribbling and sucking the top of his pencil. It is true that he sucked a good deal more than he scribbled; but it was joy to the Mole to know that the cure had at least begun.
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X
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TOAD
X
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TOAD
THE front door of the hollow tree faced eastwards, so Toad was called at an early hour; partly by the bright sunlight streaming in on him, partly by the exceeding coldness of his toes, which made him dream that he was at home in bed in his own handsome room with the Tudor window, on a cold winter's night, and his bedclothes had got up, grumbling and protesting they couldn't stand the cold any longer, and had run downstairs to the kitchen fire to warm themselves; and he had followed, on bare feet, along miles and miles of icy stone- paved passages, arguing and beseeching them to be reasonable. He would probably have been aroused much earlier, had he not slept for some weeks on straw over stone flags, and
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almost forgotten the friendly feeling of thick blankets pulled well up round the chin.
Sitting up, he rubbed his eyes first and his complaining toes next, wondered for a moment where he was, looking round for familiar stone wall and little barred window; then, with a leap of the heart, remembered everything - his escape, his flight, his pursuit; remembered, first and best thing of all, that he was free!
Free! The word and the thought alone were worth fifty blankets. He was warm from end to end as he thought of the jolly world outside, waiting eagerly for him to make his triumphal entrance, ready to serve him and play up to him, anxious to help him and to keep him com- pany, as it always had been in days of old be- fore misfortune fell upon him. He shook him- self and combed the dry leaves out of his hair with his fingers; and, his toilet complete, marched forth into the comfortable morning sun, cold but confident, hungry but hopeful, all ner- vous terrors of yesterday dispelled by rest and sleep and frank and heartening sunshine.
He had the world all to himself, that early
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summer morning. The dewy woodland, as he threaded it, was solitary and still: the green fields that succeeded the trees were his own to do as he liked with; the road itself, when he reached it, in that loneliness that was every- where, seemed, like a stray dog, to be looking anxiously for company. Toad, however, was looking for something that could talk, and tell him clearly which way he ought to go. It is all very well, when you have a light heart, and a clear conscience, and money in your pocket, and nobody scouring the country for you to drag you off to prison again, to follow where the road beckons and points, not caring whither. The practical Toad cared very much indeed, and he could have kicked the road for its helpless silence when every minute was of importance to him.
The reserved rustic road was presently joined by a shy little brother in the shape of a canal, which took its hand and ambled along by its side in perfect confidence, but with the same tongue-tied, uncommunicative attitude towards strangers. "Bother them!" said Toad to him-
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self. "But, anyhow, one thing's clear. They must both be coming from somewhere, and going to somewhere. You can't get over that, Toad, my boy!" So he marched on patiently by the water's edge.
Round a bend in the canal came plodding a solitary horse, stooping forward as if in anxious thought. From rope traces attached to his collar stretched a long line, taut, but dipping with his stride, the further part of it dripping pearly drops. Toad let the horse pass, and stood waiting for what the fates were sending him.
With a pleasant swirl of quiet water at its blunt bow the barge slid up alongside of him, its gaily painted gunwale level with the towing- path, its sole occupant a big stout woman wearing a linen sun-bonnet, one brawny arm laid along the tiller.
"A nice morning, ma'am!" she remarked to Toad, as she drew up level with him.
'I dare say it is, ma'am!" responded Toad politely, as he walked along the tow-path abreast of her.  Here 's my married daughter, she sends off to me post-haste to come to her at once; so off I comes, not knowing what may be happening or going to happen, but fearing the worst, as you will understand, ma'am, if you 're a mother, too. And I Ve left my business to look after itself — I 'm in the washing and laundering line, you must know, ma'am — and I 've left my young children to look after themselves, and a more mischievous and troublesome set of young imps doesn't exist, ma'am; and I 've lost all my money, and lost my way, and as for what may be happening to my married daughter, why, I don't like to think of it, ma'am!"
'Where might your married daughter be liv- ing, ma'am?" asked the barge-woman.
"She lives near to the river, ma'am," replied Toad. ''Close to a fine house called Toad Hall, that's somewheres hereabouts in these parts. Perhaps you may have heard of it."
'Toad Hall? Why, I 'm going that way my- self," replied the barge-woman. 'This canal joins the river some miles further on, a little above Toad Hall; and then it's an easy walk.
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You come along in the barge with me, and I '11 give you a lift."
She steered the barge close to the bank, and Toad, with many humble and grateful acknowl- edgments, stepped lightly on board and sat down with great satisfaction. 'Toad's luck again!" thought he. "I always come out on top!"
"So you 're in the washing business, ma'am?" said the barge-woman politely, as they glided along. "And a very good business you 've got too, I dare say, if I 'm not making too free in saying so."
"Finest business in the whole country," said Toad airily. "All the gentry come to me — wouldn't go to any one else if they were paid, they know me so well. You see, I understand my work thoroughly, and attend to it all myself. Washing, ironing, clear-starching, making up gents' fine shirts for evening wear — everything's done under my own eye!"
''But surely you don't do all that work your- self, ma'am?" asked the barge-woman respect- fully.
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"O, I have girls," said Toad lightly: 'twenty girls or thereabouts, always at work. But you know what girls are, ma'am! Nasty little hussies, that's what I call 'em!"
"So do I, too," said the barge-woman with great heartiness. "But I dare say you set yours to rights, the idle trollops! And are you very fond of washing?"
"I love it," said Toad. :'I simply dote on it. Never so happy as when I Ve got both arms in the wash-tub. But, then, it comes so easy to me! No trouble at all!
'What a bit of luck, meeting you!" observed the barge-woman, thoughtfully. "A regular piece of good fortune for both of us!"
'Why, what do you mean?" asked Toad, nervously.
"Well, look at me, now," replied the barge- woman. "7 like washing, too, just the same as you do; and for that matter, whether I like it or not I have got to do all my own, naturally, moving about as I do. Now my husband, he 's such a fellow for shirking his work and leaving
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the barge to me, that never a moment do I get for seeing to my own affairs. By rights he ought to be here now, either steering or attend- ing to the horse, though luckily the horse has sense enough to attend to himself. Instead of which, he 's gone off with the dog, to see if they can't pick up a rabbit for dinner somewhere. Says he '11 catch me up at the next lock. Well, that's as may be — I don't trust him, once he gets off with that dog, who 's worse than he is. But meantime, how am I to get on with my washing?':
"O, never mind about the washing," said Toad, not liking the subject. 'Try and fix your mind on that rabbit.   There 's a heap of things of mine that you '11 find in a corner of the cabin.  You '11 find a tub handy, and soap, and a kettle on the stove, and a bucket to haul up water from the canal with. Then I shall know you 're enjoying yourself, instead of sitting here idle, looking at the scenery and yawning your head off."
"Here, you let me steer!" said Toad, now thoroughly frightened, "and then you can get on with your washing your own way. I might spoil your things, or not do 'em as you like. I 'm more used to gentleman's things myself. It's my special line."
"Let you steer?'" replied the barge-woman, laughing. "It takes some practice to steer a barge properly. Besides, it's dull work, and I want you to be happy. No, you shall do the washing you are so fond of, and I '11 stick to the steering that I understand. Don't try and deprive me of the pleasure of giving you a treat!"
Toad was fairly cornered. He looked for
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escape this way and that, saw that he was too far from the bank for a flying leap, and sullenly resigned himself to his fate. 'If it comes to that," he thought in desperation, 'I suppose any fool can wash!'
He fetched tub, soap, and other necessaries from the cabin, selected a few garments at ran- dom, tried to recollect what he had seen in casual glances through laundry windows, and set to.
A long half-hour passed, and every minute of it saw Toad getting crosser and crosser. Noth- ing that he could do to the things seemed to please them or do them good. He tried coax- ing, he tried slapping, he tried punching; they smiled back at him out of the tub unconverted, happy in their original sin. Once or twice he looked nervously over his shoulder at the barge- woman, but she appeared to be gazing out in front of her, absorbed in her steering. His back ached badly, and he noticed with dismay that his paws were beginning to get all crinkly. Now Toad was very proud of his paws. He muttered under his breath words that should never pass
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the lips of either washerwomen or Toads; and lost the soap, for the fiftieth time.
A burst of laughter made him straighten him- self and look round. The barge-woman was leaning back and laughing unrestrainedly, till the tears ran down her cheeks.
"I 've been watching you all the time," she gasped. "I thought you must be a humbug all along, from the conceited way you talked. Pretty washerwoman you are! Never washed so much as a dish-clout in your life, I '11 lay!"
Toad's temper, which had been simmering viciously for some time, now fairly boiled over, and he lost all control of himself.
 he shouted; "don't you dare to talk to your betters like that! Washerwoman indeed! I would have you to know that I am a Toad, a very well-known, respected, distinguished Toad! I may be under a bit of a cloud at present, but I will not be laughed at by a barge-woman!"
The woman moved nearer to him and peered under his bonnet keenly and closely. 'Why, so you are!" she cried. 'Well, I never! A
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horrid, nasty, crawly Toad! And in my nice clean barge, too! Now that is a thing that I will not have."
She relinquished the tiller for a moment. One big, mottled arm shot out and caught Toad by a fore-leg, while the other gripped him fast by a hind-leg. Then the world turned suddenly upside down, the barge seemed to flit lightly across the sky, the wind \vhistled in his ears, and Toad found himself flying through the air, revolving rapidly as he went.
The water, when he eventually reached it with a loud splash, proved quite cold enough for his taste, though its chill was not sufficient to quell his proud spirit, or slake the heat of his furious temper.
He struck out for the shore, but the cotton gown greatly impeded his efforts, and when at
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length he touched land he found it hard to climb up the steep bank unassisted. He had to take a minute or two's rest to recover his breath; then, gathering his wet skirts well over his arms, he started to run after the barge as fast as his legs would carry him, wild with indignation, thirsting for revenge.
The barge-woman was still laughing when he drew up level with her. " Put yourself through your mangle, washerwoman," she called out, "and iron your face and crimp it, and you'll pass for quite a decent-looking Toad!"
Toad never paused to reply. Solid revenge was what he wanted, not cheap, windy, verbal triumphs, though he had a thing or two in his mind that he would have liked to say. He saw what he wanted ahead of him. Running swiftly on he overtook the horse, unfastened the tow- rope and cast off, jumped lightly on the horse's back, and urged it to a gallop by kicking it vigorously in the sides. He steered for the open country, abandoning the tow-path, and swinging his steed down a rutty lane. Once he looked back, and saw that the barge had run
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aground on the other side of the canal, and the barge-woman was gesticulating wildly and shouting, "Stop, stop, stop!" 'I 've heard that song before," said Toad, laughing, as he contin- ued to spur his steed onward in its wild career.
The barge-horse was not capable of any very sustained effort, and its gallop soon subsided into a trot, and its trot into an easy walk; but Toad was quite contented with this, knowing that he, at any rate, was moving, and the barge was not. He had quite recovered his temper, now that he had done something he thought really clever; and he was satisfied to jog along quietly in the sun, steering his horse along by-ways and bridle-paths, and trying to forget how very long it was since he had had a square meal, till the canal had been left very far behind him.
He had travelled some miles, his horse and he, and he was feeling drowsy in the hot sun- shine, when the horse stopped, lowered his head, and began to nibble the grass; and Toad, waking up, just saved himself from falling off by an effort. He looked about him and found he was
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on a wide common, dotted with patches of gorse and bramble as far as he could see. Near him stood a dingy gipsy caravan, and beside it a man was sitting on a bucket turned upside down, very busy smoking and staring into the wide world.  Also smells — warm, rich, and varied smells — that twined and twisted and wreathed themselves at last into one complete, voluptuous, perfect smell that seemed like the very soul of Nature taking form and appearing to her children, a true God- dess, a mother of solace and comfort. Toad now knew well that he had not been really hungry before. What he had felt earlier in the day had been a mere trifling qualm. This was the real thing at last, and no mistake; and it would have to be dealt with speedily, too, or there would be trouble for somebody or some- thing. He looked the gipsy over carefully, won- dering vaguely whether it would be easier to fight him or cajole him. So there he sat, and
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sniffed and sniffed, and looked at the gipsy; and the gipsy sat and smoked, and looked at him.

Toad was completely taken aback. He did not know that gipsies were very fond of horse- dealing, and never missed an opportunity, and he had not reflected that caravans were always on the move and took a deal of drawing. It had not occurred to him to turn the horse into cash, but the gipsy's suggestion seemed to smooth the way towards the two things he wanted so badly - - ready money, and a solid breakfast.
"What?" he said, "me sell this beautiful young horse of mine? O, no; it's out of the question. Who 's going to take the washing home to my customers every week? Besides, I 'm too fond of him, and he simply dotes on
me.'
.. i
;Try and love a donkey," suggested the gipsy. "Some people do."
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"You don't seem to see," continued Toad, "that this fine horse of mine is a cut above you altogether. He 's a blood horse, he is, partly; not the part you see, of course — another part. And he 's been a Prize Hackney, too, in his time - that was the time before you knew him, but you can still tell it on him at a glance, if you understand anything about horses. No, it's not to be thought of for a moment. All the same, how much might you be disposed to offer me for this beautiful young horse of mine?"
The gipsy looked the horse over, and then he looked Toad over with equal care, and looked at the horse again. "Shillin' a leg," he said briefly, and turned away, continuing to smoke and try to stare the wide world out of coun- tenance.
"A shilling a leg?" cried Toad. "If you please, I must take a little time to work that out, and see just what it comes to."
He climbed down off his horse, and left it to graze, and sat down by the gipsy, and did sums on his fingers, and at last he said, "A shilling a leg? Why, that comes to exactly four shillings,
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and no more. O, no; I could not think of accepting four shillings for this beautiful young horse of mine."
"Well," said the gipsy, "I'll tell you what I will do. I '11 make it five shillings, and that's three-and-sixpence more than the ani- mal 's worth. And that's my last word."
Then Toad sat and pondered long and deeply. For he was hungry and quite penni- less, and still some way — he knew not how far — from home, and enemies might still be looking for him. To one in such a situation, five shil- lings may very well appear a large sum of money. On the other hand, it did not seem very much to get for a horse. But then, again, the horse hadn't cost him anything; so what- ever he got was all clear profit. At last he said firmly, "Look here, gipsy! I tell you what we will do; and this is my last word. You shall hand me over six shillings and sixpence, cash down; and further, in addition thereto, you shall give me as much breakfast as I can pos- sibly eat, at one sitting of course, out of that iron pot of yours that keeps sending forth such
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delicious and exciting smells. In return, I will make over to you my spirited young horse, with all the beautiful harness and trappings that are on him, freely thrown in. If that's not good enough for you, say so, and I '11 be getting on. I know a man near here who 's wanted this horse of mine for years."
The gipsy grumbled frightfully, and declared if he did a few more deals of that sort he 'd be ruined. But in the end he lugged a dirty can- vas bag out of the depths of his trouser pocket, and counted out six shillings and sixpence into Toad's paw. Then he disappeared into the caravan for an instant, and returned with a large iron plate and a knife, fork, and spoon. He tilted up the pot, and a glorious stream of hot, rich stew gurgled into the plate. It was, indeed, the most beautiful stew in the world, being made of partridges, and pheasants, and chickens, and hares, and rabbits, and peahens, and guinea-fowls, and one or two other things. Toad took the plate on his lap, almost crying, and stuffed, and stuffed, and stuffed, and kept asking for more, and the gipsy never grudged
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it him. He thought that he had never eaten so good a breakfast in all his life.
When Toad had taken as much stew on board as he thought he could possibly hold, he got up and said good-bye to the gipsy, and took an affectionate farewell of the horse; and the gipsy, who knew the riverside well, gave him direc- tions which way to go, and he set forth on his travels again in the best possible spirits. He was, indeed, a very different Toad from the animal of an hour ago. The sun was shining brightly, his wet clothes were quite dry again, he had money in his pocket once more, he was nearing home and friends and safety, and, most and best of all, he had had a substantial meal, hot and nourishing, and felt big, and strong, and careless, and self-confident.
As he tramped along gaily, he thought of his adventures and escapes, and how when things seemed at their worst he had always managed to find a wray out; and his pride and conceit began to swell within him. 'Ho, ho!" he said to himself, as he marched along with his chin in the air, "what a clever Toad I am! There
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is surely no animal equal to me for cleverness in the whole world! My enemies shut me up in prison, encircled by sentries, watched night and day by warders; I walk out through them all, by sheer ability coupled with courage. They pursue me with engines, and policemen, and revolvers; I snap my fingers at them, and vanish, laughing, into space. I am, unfortu- nately, thrown into a canal by a woman fat of body and very evil-minded. What of it? I swim ashore, I seize her horse, I ride off in triumph, and I sell the horse for a whole pocket- ful of money and an excellent breakfast! Ho, ho! I am The Toad, the handsome, the popu- lar, the successful Toad!" He got so puffed up with conceit that he made up a song as he walked in praise of himself, and sang it at the top of his voice, though there was no one to hear it but him. It was, perhaps, the most conceited song that any animal ever composed.
"The world has held great Heroes, As history-books have showed; But never a name to go down to fame Compared with that of Toad!
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"The clever men at Oxford
Know all that there is to be knowed. But they none of them know one half as much As intelligent Mr. Toad!
"The animals sat in the Ark and cried,
Their tears in torrents flowed. Who was it said, 'There 's land ahead?' Encouraging Mr. Toad!
"The army all saluted
As they marched along the road. Was it the King? Or Kitchener? No. It was Mr. 'toad.
"The Queen and her Ladies-in-waiting
Sat at the window and sewed. She cried, 'Look! who 's that handsome man?' They answered, 'Mr. Toad.'"
There was a great deal more of the same sort, but too dreadfully conceited to be written down. These are some of the milder verses.
He sang as he walked, and he walked as he sang, and got more inflated every minute. But his pride was shortly to have a severe fall.
After some miles of country lanes he reached the high road, and as he turned into it and glanced along its white length, he saw approach-
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ing him a speck that turned into a dot and then into a blob, and then into something very familiar; and a double note of warning, only too well known, fell on his delighted ear.
'This is something like!" said the excited Toad. 'This is real life again, this is once more the great world from which I have been missed so long! I will hail them, my brothers of the wheel, and pitch them a yarn, of the sort that has been so successful hitherto; and they will give me a lift, of course, and then I will talk to them some more; and, perhaps, with luck, it may even end in my driving up to Toad Hall in a motor-car! That will be one in the eye for Badger!"
He stepped confidently out into the road to hail the motor-car, which came along at an easy pace, slowing down as it neared the lane; when suddenly he became very pale, his heart turned to water, his knees shook and yielded under him, and he doubled up and collapsed with a sicken- ing pain in his interior. And well he might, the unhappy animal; for the approaching car was the very one he had stolen out of the yard of
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the Red Lion Hotel on that fatal day when all his troubles began! And the people in it were the very same people he had sat and watched at luncheon in the coffee-room!