as a battle of patience? W-e-ll, maybe. Maybe, too, it
was a battle of nerves. I like to think so, anyway, for that
snake-servant of the Devil had none, and the bank-vole had; and the
bank-voices broke under the awful tension--or seemed to--and the
bank-vole broke the terrifying spell. Also, he broke the silence.

Away down the ditch he went, bouncing like a tiny ball of dark
thistle-down, all in and out among the vegetation, which, worse luck
for him, the ditch being under the accursed shadow of the firs, was
scanty. And as he galloped he squeaked three times--like a little
needle stabbing the late afternoon silence, it was.

His removal was one kind of quick dodge in the art of quitting; that of
the viper another, and a very beastly one. The crawling thing was not
much more than one-tenth of a second after the poor bank-vole in
getting under way, and the rest was a--was a--oh, anything you please!
I call it a sliding flicker that you rather "felt" than saw. Also, the
thing rustled horribly, and Fact can say what she likes. I swear it
shot along quite flat, crawling, not undulating; but, ough! what a
lightning, footless, legless crawl! No wonder the poor little devil of
a bank-vole squeaked! The wonder was he didn't faint on the spot, for
he knew what was coming.

Up the bank he pattered, and into that, to him, great subterranean
highway which seems to be conjointly kept up and used by all the
mysterious little four-footed tribes of the field, and which runs the
length of practically every bank and hedgerow. The place was dark and
cool and echoing, and bare as the palm of your hand, and far cleaner
than many palms. It might have been cleaned out that very day by a
fairy vacuum-cleaner; but it hadn't. It was always like that, clean as
the proverbial new pin. Heaven alone knows who did the "charing"
there, but those little furry tribes might have given lessons on health
in trench warfare, I reckon, at a guinea a time--and cheap at that.
They had found out that dirt meant disease, you bet.

Down that tunnel drummed the bank-vole, seeking to foul his trail with
just any other creature; and, the highway being, as I have said, a sort
of public affair, he met first a mouse gone astray, then a mole asleep,
then a long-tailed wood-mouse, then a short-tailed field-vole, then a
shrew about as big as your little finger. But they must have heard the
scrape of the snake's scales down that echoing tunnel following h