tes, half-dozing in the hot sun.

But no answer came. He looked, and understood the silence. With a smile
of much happiness on his face, and something of a listening look still
lingering there, the weary Rat was fast asleep.

VIII. TOAD'S ADVENTURES

When Toad found himself immured in a dank and noisome dungeon, and knew
that all the grim darkness of a medieval fortress lay between him and
the outer world of sunshine and well-metalled high roads where he had
lately been so happy, disporting himself as if he had bought up every
road in England, he flung himself at full length on the floor, and shed
bitter tears, and abandoned himself to dark despair. 'This is the end
of everything' (he said), 'at least it is the end of the career of Toad,
which is the same thing; the popular and handsome Toad, the rich and
hospitable Toad, the Toad so free and careless and debonair! How can I
hope to be ever set at large again' (he said), 'who have been imprisoned
so justly for stealing so handsome a motor-car in such an audacious
manner, and for such lurid and imaginative cheek, bestowed upon such a
number of fat, red-faced policemen!' (Here his sobs choked him.) 'Stupid
animal that I was' (he said), 'now I must languish in this dungeon, till
people who were proud to say they knew me, have forgotten the very name
of Toad! O wise old Badger!' (he said), 'O clever, intelligent Rat and
sensible Mole! What sound judgments, what a knowledge of men and matters
you possess! O unhappy and forsaken Toad!' With lamentations such as
these he passed his days and nights for several weeks, refusing his
meals or intermediate light refreshments, though the grim and ancient
gaoler, knowing that Toad's pockets were well lined, frequently pointed
out that many comforts, and indeed luxuries, could by arrangement be
sent in--at a price--from outside.

Now the gaoler had a daughter, a pleasant wench and good-hearted,
who assisted her father in the lighter duties of his post. She was
particularly fond of animals, and, besides her canary, whose cage hung
on a nail in the massive wall of the keep by day, to the great annoyance
of prisoners who relished an after-dinner nap, and was shrouded in an
antimacassar on the parlour table at night, she kept several piebald
mice and a restless revolving squirrel. This kind-hearted girl, pitying
the misery of Toad, said to her father one day, 'Father! I can't bear to
see that poor beast so unhappy, and getting so