to pass about his "lawful occasions," as per custom.

Now, if you or I had taken our meals after the fashion of that "wee,
timorous beastie," we should probably have departed this life from
indigestion or nervous prostration inside a month.

He came very cautiously from his hole, and the first thing his fine
long whiskers telegraphed him the presence of was an oak-gall--one of
those round knobs that grow upon twigs like nuts, you know, but have a
fat grub inside instead of a kernel. At the same instant a leaf
rustled, and--flp!--there was no bank-vole.

Allowing one minute for the passing of whoever rustled that leaf, and a
cloud-shadow, and there he was again, back at the gall, his shining
eyes, that mirrored the moon, being the only visible part of him. He
rolled the gall over and sniffed, and--that was quite enough, thank
you. No nut there, and he knew it--by scent, I fancy. In that moment
something trod softly, ever so softly, somewhere, and a spray of laced
bracken swayed one quarter of an inch, and--the bank-vole was not.

Again about a minute's pause, and three bank-voles came out together.
Our friend was the last, and another was the first, to discover a
little hoard of seeds that some other tiny beastie--not a
bank-vole--must have collected and forgotten all about, or been killed
in the interval.

In the wild, it is the law that "they should take who have the power,
and they should keep who can." It isn't a bad law, because it has much
to do with that other law called the "survival of the fittest," but it
is apt to come expensive if persisted in.

Our vole hopped promptly towards the other vole, and made out that the
seeds were his; but before any kind of ultimatum could be delivered, a
twig fell, as twigs will sometimes, for no special reason that one can
see. The noise it made in that stilly wood was astonishing, and ere
the twig had reached the earth there wasn't a bank-vole above ground.
And yet so astonishingly quick and evasive are these little creatures
that in less than thirty seconds there were the two disputants, each
erect upon his haunches, with little hand-like forepaws held up and
joined under the chin--as if they were actresses having their
photographs taken--fighting, like little blunt-headed furies, for
possession of those seeds--so it seemed. I say "so it seemed"
advisedly, since close by, and almost invisible because sitting quite
still, was another bank-vole, who looked as if s