they could smell through the darkness the friendly
fields again; and they braced themselves for the last long stretch, the
home stretch, the stretch that we know is bound to end, some time, in
the rattle of the door-latch, the sudden firelight, and the sight of
familiar things greeting us as long-absent travellers from far over-sea.
They plodded along steadily and silently, each of them thinking his own
thoughts. The Mole's ran a good deal on supper, as it was pitch-dark,
and it was all a strange country for him as far as he knew, and he
was following obediently in the wake of the Rat, leaving the guidance
entirely to him. As for the Rat, he was walking a little way ahead, as
his habit was, his shoulders humped, his eyes fixed on the straight grey
road in front of him; so he did not notice poor Mole when suddenly the
summons reached him, and took him like an electric shock.

We others, who have long lost the more subtle of the physical senses,
have not even proper terms to express an animal's inter-communications
with his surroundings, living or otherwise, and have only the word
'smell,' for instance, to include the whole range of delicate thrills
which murmur in the nose of the animal night and day, summoning,
warning? inciting, repelling. It was one of these mysterious fairy calls
from out the void that suddenly reached Mole in the darkness, making him
tingle through and through with its very familiar appeal, even while
yet he could not clearly remember what it was. He stopped dead in
his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its efforts to
recapture the fine filament, the telegraphic current, that had so
strongly moved him. A moment, and he had caught it again; and with it
this time came recollection in fullest flood.

Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft
touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and
tugging, all one way! Why, it must be quite close by him at that moment,
his old home that he had hurriedly forsaken and never sought again, that
day when he first found the river! And now it was sending out its scouts
and its messengers to capture him and bring him in. Since his escape on
that bright morning he had hardly given it a thought, so absorbed had he
been in his new life, in all its pleasures, its surprises, its fresh and
captivating experiences. Now, with a rush of old memories, how clearly
it stood up before him, in the darkness! Shabby in