ical fit of dry sobbing. Mole made the door fast, threw the
satchel into a drawer and locked it, and sat down quietly on the table
by his friend, waiting for the strange seizure to pass. Gradually the
Rat sank into a troubled doze, broken by starts and confused murmurings
of things strange and wild and foreign to the unenlightened Mole; and
from that he passed into a deep slumber.

Very anxious in mind, the Mole left him for a time and busied himself
with household matters; and it was getting dark when he returned to the
parlour and found the Rat where he had left him, wide awake indeed, but
listless, silent, and dejected. He took one hasty glance at his eyes;
found them, to his great gratification, clear and dark and brown again
as before; and then sat down and tried to cheer him up and help him to
relate what had happened to him.

Poor Ratty did his best, by degrees, to explain things; but how could
he put into cold words what had mostly been suggestion? How recall, for
another's benefit, the haunting sea voices that had sung to him,
how reproduce at second-hand the magic of the Seafarer's hundred
reminiscences? Even to himself, now the spell was broken and the glamour
gone, he found it difficult to account for what had seemed, some hours
ago, the inevitable and only thing. It is not surprising, then, that he
failed to convey to the Mole any clear idea of what he had been through
that day.

To the Mole this much was plain: the fit, or attack, had passed
away, and had left him sane again, though shaken and cast down by the
reaction. But he seemed to have lost all interest for the time in the
things that went to make up his daily life, as well as in all pleasant
forecastings of the altered days and doings that the changing season was
surely bringing.

Casually, then, and with seeming indifference, the Mole turned his talk
to the harvest that was being gathered in, the towering wagons and their
straining teams, the growing ricks, and the large moon rising over bare
acres dotted with sheaves. He talked of the reddening apples around, of
the browning nuts, of jams and preserves and the distilling of cordials;
till by easy stages such as these he reached midwinter, its hearty joys
and its snug home life, and then he became simply lyrical.

By degrees the Rat began to sit up and to join in. His dull eye
brightened, and he lost some of his listening air.

Presently the tactful Mole slipped away and returned with a penci