nd one does not wonder
that he dozed....

You know that intermittent drowsing as one sits, the drooping of the
head, the nodding to the rhythm of the wheels then chin upon the breast,
and at once the sudden start up again.

_Pitter, litter, patter_.

"What was that?"

It seemed to the doctor he had heard a thin shrill squeal close at hand.
For a moment he was quite awake. He said a word or two of undeserved
rebuke to his horse, and looked about him. He tried to persuade himself
that he had heard the distant squeal of a fox--or perhaps a young rabbit
gripped by a ferret.

_Swish, swish, swish, pitter, patter, swish_--...

What was that?

He felt he was getting fanciful. He shook his shoulders and told his
horse to get on. He listened, and heard nothing.

Or was it nothing?

He had the queerest impression that something had just peeped over the
hedge at him, a queer big head. With round ears! He peered hard, but he
could see nothing.

"Nonsense," said he.

He sat up with an idea that he had dropped into a nightmare, gave his
horse the slightest touch of the whip, spoke to it and peered again over
the hedge. The glare of his lamp, however, together with the mist,
rendered things indistinct, and he could distinguish nothing. It came
into his head, he says, that there could be nothing there, because if
there was his horse would have shied at it. Yet for all that his senses
remained nervously awake.

Then he heard quite distinctly a soft pattering of feet in pursuit along
the road.

He would not believe his ears about that. He could not look round, for
the road had a sinuous curve just there. He whipped up his horse and
glanced sideways again. And then he saw quite distinctly where a ray
from his lamp leapt a low stretch of hedge, the curved back of--some
big animal, he couldn't tell what, going along in quick convulsive
leaps.

He says he thought of the old tales of witchcraft--the thing was so
utterly unlike any animal he knew, and he tightened his hold on the
reins for fear of the fear of his horse. Educated man as he was, he
admits he asked himself if this could be something that his horse could
not see.

Ahead, and drawing near in silhouette against the rising moon, was the
outline of the little hamlet of Hankey, comforting, though it showed
never a light, and he cracked his whip and spoke again, and then in a
flash the rats were at him!

He had passed a gate, and as he did so, the foremost rat ca