curtains to the bed curtains, till the room was in a blaze, and though
the bat shrieked his loudest the lady did not wake till she was very
much burnt.

"Also with the sea; for the cod-fish told the seagull, who told the
heron, who related the fact to the kingfisher, who informed me. The
cod-fish was swimming about in the sea and saw a ship at anchor, and
coming by the chain-cable the fish saw that one of the links of the
chain was nearly eaten through with rust; but as the wind was calm it
did not matter. Next time the ship came there to anchor the cod-fish
looked again; and the rust had gone still further into the link. A third
time the ship came back to anchor there, and the sailors went to sleep
thinking it was all right, but the cod-fish swam by and saw that the
link only just held. In the night there came a storm, and the sailors
woke up to find the vessel drifting on the rocks, where she was broken
to pieces, and hardly any of them escaped.

"Also, with living things, Bevis dear; for there was once a little
creeping thing (the sun-beetle told me he heard it from his grandfather)
which bored a hole into a beam under the floor of a room--the hole was
so tiny you could scarcely see it, and the beam was so big twenty men
could not lift it. After the creeping thing had bored this little hole
it died, but it left ten children, and they bored ten more little holes,
and when they died they left ten each, and they bored a hundred holes,
and left a thousand, and they bored a thousand holes, and they left a
thousand tens, who bored ten thousand holes, and left ten thousand tens,
and they bored one hundred thousand holes, and left one hundred thousand
tens, and they bored a million holes; and when a great number of people
met in the room to hear a man speak, down the beam fell crash, and they
were all dreadfully injured.

"Now, therefore, Bevis, my dear little Sir Bevis, do you take great care
and never think any more that a thing cannot hurt you, because it has
not got any legs, and cannot run after you, or because it has no hands,
and cannot catch you, or because it is very tiny, and you cannot see it,
but could kill a thousand with the heel of your boot. For as I told you
about the malice-minded elm, all these things are so terribly dangerous,
because they can wait so long, and because they never forget.

"Therefore, if you climb up a tree, be sure and remember to hold tight,
and not forget, for the earth will not forg