haven't I heard?'

'Do you mean to tell me,' shouted the Rat, thumping with his little
fist upon the table, 'that you've heard nothing about the Stoats and
Weasels?'

What, the Wild Wooders?' cried Toad, trembling in every limb. 'No, not a
word! What have they been doing?'

'--And how they've been and taken Toad Hall?' continued the Rat.

Toad leaned his elbows on the table, and his chin on his paws; and a
large tear welled up in each of his eyes, overflowed and splashed on the
table, plop! plop!

'Go on, Ratty,' he murmured presently; 'tell me all. The worst is over.
I am an animal again. I can bear it.'

'When you--got--into that--that--trouble of yours,' said the Rat, slowly
and impressively; 'I mean, when you--disappeared from society for a
time, over that misunderstanding about a--a machine, you know--'

Toad merely nodded.

'Well, it was a good deal talked about down here, naturally,' continued
the Rat, 'not only along the river-side, but even in the Wild Wood.
Animals took sides, as always happens. The River-bankers stuck up for
you, and said you had been infamously treated, and there was no justice
to be had in the land nowadays. But the Wild Wood animals said hard
things, and served you right, and it was time this sort of thing was
stopped. And they got very cocky, and went about saying you were done
for this time! You would never come back again, never, never!'

Toad nodded once more, keeping silence.

'That's the sort of little beasts they are,' the Rat went on. 'But Mole
and Badger, they stuck out, through thick and thin, that you would come
back again soon, somehow. They didn't know exactly how, but somehow!'

Toad began to sit up in his chair again, and to smirk a little.

'They argued from history,' continued the Rat. 'They said that
no criminal laws had ever been known to prevail against cheek and
plausibility such as yours, combined with the power of a long purse. So
they arranged to move their things in to Toad Hall, and sleep there, and
keep it aired, and have it all ready for you when you turned up. They
didn't guess what was going to happen, of course; still, they had their
suspicions of the Wild Wood animals. Now I come to the most painful and
tragic part of my story. One dark night--it was a VERY dark night, and
blowing hard, too, and raining simply cats and dogs--a band of weasels,
armed to the teeth, crept silently up the carriage-drive to the front
entrance. Simultaneously, a bod