s, especially if your stomach is empty."

"Then the Rat from the other farm might better keep away," said this
young fellow, as he put one paw up to see that his whiskers were all
right. "I don't think very much of him anyway. He thinks he knows
everything because he has travelled. I wish you would have nothing to do
with him. I dare say you were in the grain-bin with him when you saw the
trap."

"Yes," said she, "I was."

"Well," said he, "you both got away safely, and I shall too. I may not
be very clever, but I think I do know enough to keep out of a trap."
Then he turned into his hole and went to sleep. He had been running
around all night, and was very tired. He was cross, too. This was the
second time that his cousin had told him what the Rat from the other
farm had said, and he thought she liked him altogether too well.

When he awakened, it was night again and he was aroused by the stamping
of the Dappled Gray on the floor above his head. For a minute he could
hardly think where he was. Then it all came to him. He was in his own
cozy little hole under the barn, and it was night. He remembered
something about the Yellow Kitten. What was it? Oh yes, she had begun
hunting. Well, he was not afraid of her yet. But there was something
else--the trap! He wondered if his cousin were in that bin again. As
like as not her friend, the Rat from the other farm, was showing her the
trap now. He would go up there himself, and at once, too.

He ran up the wall, through an opening, and across the barn floor to the
grain-bin. It was a moonlight night and the barn was not very dark. The
cover of the bin was raised. Perhaps the farmer's man had forgotten to
close it. Perhaps there was so little grain left in it that the man
didn't care to. At any rate, he could now see the trap quite plainly.
There was nobody else in the bin, and he went close to it.

"I would not touch it for anything," said he, as he entered the bin,
"but it will not hurt me to look at it."

When he went nearer, he was very careful to see that his tail did not
even brush against the chain which held the trap down. "So that is the
terrible, dangerous trap?" said he. "It doesn't look particularly
dreadful. That is fine-smelling cheese though." He sniffed two or three
times. "I have tasted cheese only once in my whole life," said he, "and
I am almost starved now. I wouldn't mind a nibble at that." He looked at
it and thought about it until it seemed to him he