, menacing, compact,
grimly set in vast white surroundings; simultaneously they turned and
made swiftly for home, for firelight and the familiar things it played
on, for the voice, sounding cheerily outside their window, of the river
that they knew and trusted in all its moods, that never made them afraid
with any amazement.
As he hurried along, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would be at
home again among the things he knew and liked, the Mole saw clearly that
he was an animal of tilled field and hedge-row, linked to the ploughed
furrow, the frequented pasture, the lane of evening lingerings,
the cultivated garden-plot. For others the asperities, the stubborn
endurance, or the clash of actual conflict, that went with Nature in the
rough; he must be wise, must keep to the pleasant places in which his
lines were laid and which held adventure enough, in their way, to last
for a lifetime.
V. DULCE DOMUM
The sheep ran huddling together against the hurdles, blowing out thin
nostrils and stamping with delicate fore-feet, their heads thrown back
and a light steam rising from the crowded sheep-pen into the frosty air,
as the two animals hastened by in high spirits, with much chatter and
laughter. They were returning across country after a long day's outing
with Otter, hunting and exploring on the wide uplands where certain
streams tributary to their own River had their first small beginnings;
and the shades of the short winter day were closing in on them, and they
had still some distance to go. Plodding at random across the plough,
they had heard the sheep and had made for them; and now, leading from
the sheep-pen, they found a beaten track that made walking a lighter
business, and responded, moreover, to that small inquiring something
which all animals carry inside them, saying unmistakably, 'Yes, quite
right; THIS leads home!'
'It looks as if we were coming to a village,' said the Mole somewhat
dubiously, slackening his pace, as the track, that had in time become
a path and then had developed into a lane, now handed them over to the
charge of a well-metalled road. The animals did not hold with villages,
and their own highways, thickly frequented as they were, took an
independent course, regardless of church, post office, or public-house.
'Oh, never mind!' said the Rat. 'At this season of the year they're
all safe indoors by this time, sitting round the fire; men, women,
and children, dogs and cats and
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