In the midst of plenty they were harmless enough, at least they
had never molested him. Moreover, they were the main tunnel builders, and
it was refreshing for a mouse, who had wormed his way through two yards of
powdery corn-husks, to find a run where he could stretch his limbs and
scamper.

And what wild scampers those were! For free, unimpeded, safe racing, there
is nothing to touch the rat tunnels of a wheat-stack.

He was a fortnight old when he first ventured out into the unknown. He
remembered but little of his earliest sensations, only the vague comfort
of nestling with six companions under his mother's soft fur, and the vague
discomfort caused by her occasional absence. But that first journey was
unforgetable. The maze of winding burrows, the myriad eyes peering at him
through the darkness, the ceaseless patter of tiny feet, before, behind,
and on all sides, the great brown rat sniffing dubiously as it passed, the
jostling, the chattering, the squeaking. He had been a proud mouse when he
had returned, and told his faint-hearted brothers what the great world
outside was really like.

* * * * *

It was a bluebottle that roused him. It floundered heavily against the
bars, crawled through, and brushed across his nose. No! he was not dead
yet, but the bluebottle soon would be. He leaped at it, and, to his
amazement, fell short and missed. Yesterday, he had cleared a flight of
stairs with one light-hearted bound, and left a bewildered kitten at the
top. He sank back heart-broken, and the bluebottle circled solemnly
overhead, buzzing, buzzing, buzzing.

[Illustration: AND LEFT A BEWILDERED KITTEN AT THE TOP.]

* * * * *

Buz-z-z-z! whir-r-r! He was back in the wheat-stack once more, listening
to the dull humming of ten thousand bluebottles. From without came the
sound of heavy tramping feet, whirring wheels, rough, human voices. The
wheaten mass rocked and vibrated above his head: half the runs were
choked, and he, with twenty more of his kind, sat cowering in a corner of
the foundations. Nearer and nearer came the voices, for the thrashing had
commenced at sunrise, and now, as evening approached, three-parts of the
stack were gone. Only once had he ventured to the edge of his shelter and
looked out. A pair of grinning jaws crashed against the outlet, and
snapped within a hair's-breadth of his nose. It was his first sight of
a terrier, and he realiz