every Cat rose
from table, and came out among the timber. Hiding themselves behind
various logs, my father stood up and uttered a loud cry, which I
afterwards learnt was a signal for a quantity of ferrets, trained for
that purpose, to rush into the rats' holes to drive them out. As the
rats have the greatest horror of these creatures, they sprang from their
hiding-places in the wildest confusion, and were at once pounced upon by
the hidden Cats.

What a scene of confusion followed! The rats, who were scampering along,
over and under the logs to escape from the hated ferrets, were suddenly
aware of the presence of more detested and more formidable enemies, as,
one by one, the sporting Cats jumped up, and made a dash at their
bewildered prey.

My excitement at this spectacle was almost more than I could bear.
As the growls of my friends and kindred, joined to the screams of the
flying rats, became audible, and I could see the lashing of tails and
the fierce glances of bright eyes, accompanied every now and then by a
chase where some rat, which had been hiding beneath a log, suddenly
leaped across the open ground, I sprang to my feet, I ran hither and
thither, with my tail swollen to twice its natural size, from my
eagerness to participate in the so-called _sport_ of my relations.

I was not however destined to remain without my share of it, although
I did not stir from the spot where I had been concealed. I said that a
tree grew close to the hunting-box, on the roof of which I was placed,
and that it was by its help that I had climbed to my present elevation.
A large rat, with a body not very much smaller than my own, which had
managed to escape from the fight where so many of his friends and
relations had fallen, sought about for a place of refuge. Espying the
tree, and seeing that all his enemies were at that moment too much
engaged to attend to him, he sprang up the trunk and came rapidly
towards me, little expecting to find another of his foes so far away
from her companions. I watched him come, and resolved in my own mind
that he should not escape, although my heart beat a good deal at the
idea of the encounter.

The rat sprang on to the roof, and was going to scamper over it, when
his fierce little eyes,--and quick nose too, no doubt, for it moved
incessantly,--spied me out, crouching at a short distance and ready to
spring. He stopped an instant, as if considering what it were best to
do, then, thinking perhap