uch as they liked. But Bevis, though he was so
hasty, was also very persevering, and presently he succeeded in setting
up the trap, and then taking his spade he spread the dust over it and so
hid it as the weasel had told him to. He then went and put his spade
back in the summer-house, and having told Pan that in the morning there
would be a fine big rat for him to worry, went indoors.

Now it is most probable that what the weasel had arranged so well would
all have happened just as he foresaw, and that the trap so cleverly set
up would have caught the rat, had not the bailiff, when he came home
from the fields, chanced to see Bevis doing it. He had to attend to
something else then, but by-and-by, when he had finished, he went and
looked at the place where Bevis had set the gin, and said to himself:
"Well, it is a very good plan to set up the gin, for the rat is always
taking the pigs' food, and even had a gnaw at my luncheon, which was
tied up in my handkerchief, and which I--like a stupid--left on the
ground in my hurry instead of hanging up. But it is a pity Sir Bevis
should have set it here, for there is no grass or cover, and the rat is
certain to see it, and Bevis will be disappointed in the morning, and
will not find the rat. Now I will just move the gin to a place where the
rat always comes, and where it will be hidden by the grass, that is,
just at the mouth of the drain by the cart-house; it will catch the rat
there, and Sir Bevis will be pleased."

So the bailiff, having thought this to himself, as he leant against the
wall, and listened to the pigs snoring, carefully took up the gin and
moved it down to the mouth of the drain by the cart-house, and there set
it up in the grass.

The rat was in the drain, and when he heard the bailiff's heavy
footsteps, and the noise he made fumbling about with the trap, he
laughed, and said to himself: "Fumble away, you old stupid--I know what
you are doing. You are setting up a gin in the same place you have set
it twenty times before. Twenty times you have set the gin up there and
never caught anything, and yet you cannot see, and you cannot
understand, and you never learn anything, and you are the biggest dolt
and idiot that ever walked, or rather, you would be, only I thank heaven
everybody else is just like you! As if I could not hear what you are
doing; as if I did not look very carefully before I come out of my hole,
and before I put my foot down on grass or leaves,