and as if I could not
smell your great clumsy fingers: really I feel insulted that you should
treat me as if I was so foolish. However, upon the whole, this is rather
nice and considerate of you. Ha! Ha!" and the rat laughed so loud that
if the bailiff had been sharp he must have heard this unusual chuckling
in the drain. But he heard nothing, but went off down the road very
contented with himself, whistling a bar from "Madame Angot" which he had
learnt from Bevis.

When Bevis went to bed he just peeped out of the window to look at the
moon, but the sky was now overcast, and the clouds were hurrying by, and
the wind rising--which the snail had expected, or he would not have
ventured out along the wall. While Bevis was peeping out he saw the owl
go by over the orchard and up beside the hedge.

The very same evening the young hawk, as has been previously related,
had gone to the glade in the wood, and sat there in ambush waiting for
the thrush. Like Sir Bevis, the hawk was extremely impatient, and the
time as he sat on the ash passed very slowly till at last he observed
with much delight that the sun was declining, and that the shadow of the
dead oak-tree would soon reach across towards him.

The thrush, having sat at the banquet the whole of the afternoon, and
tasted every dainty that the camp of Choo Hoo afforded, surrounded all
the time by crowds of pleasant companions, on the other hand, saw the
shadows lengthening with regret. He knew that it was time for him to
depart and convey the intelligence to King Kapchack that Choo Hoo had
fully agreed to his proposal. Still loth to leave he lingered, and it
was not until dusk that he quitted the camp, accompanied a little way
over the frontier by some of Choo Hoo's chief counsellors, who sought in
every way to do him honour. Then wishing him good-night, with many
invitations to return shortly, they left him to pursue his journey.

Knowing that he ought to have returned to the king before this, the
thrush put forth his best speed, and thought to himself as he flew what
a long account he should have to give his wife and his children (who
were now grown up) of the high and important negotiation with which he
had been entrusted, and of the attentions that had been paid to him by
the emperor. Happy in these anticipations, he passed rapidly over the
fields and the woods, when just as he flew beneath the old dead oak in
the glade down swooped the hawk and bore him to the ground