t, and doing a little landscape gardening at times.
There will always be a bit of dinner for my friends when they come to
see me; and I shall keep a pony-chaise to jog about the country in,
just as I used to in the good old days, before I got restless, and
wanted to _do_ things."

"Stroll quietly down to Toad Hall?" cried the Rat, greatly excited.
"What are you talking about? Do you mean to say you haven't _heard_?"

"Heard what?" said Toad, turning rather pale. "Go on, Ratty! Quick!
Don't spare me! What haven't I heard?"

"Do you mean to tell me," shouted the Rat, thumping with his little
fist upon the table, "that you've heard nothing about the Stoats and
Weasels?"

"What, the Wild Wooders?" cried Toad, trembling in every limb. "No,
not a word! What have they been doing?"

"--And how they've been and taken Toad Hall?" continued the Rat.

Toad leaned his elbows on the table, and his chin on his paws; and a
large tear welled up in each of his eyes, overflowed and splashed on
the table, plop! plop!

"Go on, Ratty," he murmured presently; "tell me all. The worst is
over. I am an animal again. I can bear it."

"When you--got--into that--that--trouble of yours," said the Rat,
slowly and impressively; "I mean, when you--disappeared from society
for a time, over that misunderstanding about a--a machine, you know--"

Toad merely nodded.

"Well, it was a good deal talked about down here, naturally,"
continued the Rat, "not only along the riverside, but even in the Wild
Wood. Animals took sides, as always happens. The River-bankers stuck
up for you, and said you had been infamously treated, and there was no
justice to be had in the land nowadays. But the Wild Wood animals said
hard things, and served you right, and it was time this sort of thing
was stopped. And they got very cocky, and went about saying you were
done for this time! You would never come back again, never, never!"

Toad nodded once more, keeping silence.

"That's the sort of little beasts they are," the Rat went on. "But
Mole and Badger, they stuck out, through thick and thin, that you
would come back again soon, somehow. They didn't know exactly how, but
somehow!"

Toad began to sit up in his chair again, and to smirk a little.

"They argued from history," continued the Rat. "They said that no
criminal laws had ever been known to prevail against cheek and
plausibility such as yours, combined with the power of a long purse.
So they arranged to m