"At this the weasel was so wroth it woke him up from his dying, and he returned the taunt and said: 'Rat, you are by far the silliest to help the hare and the mouse; it is true they sent you a message about the gin, but that was not for love of you, I am sure, and I can't think why they should send it; but you may depend it is some trick, and very likely the gin is not where they said at all, but in another place, and you will walk into it when you are not thinking, and then you will curse the hare and the mouse'.
"'Ah,' said the rat, 'that sounds like reason; you are right, the hare and the mouse are going to play me a trick. But I will spite them, I will let you out.'
"'Will you?' said the weasel, starting up and feeling almost strong again. 'But you can't, these stones are so thick you cannot move them, nor scratch through them, nor raise them; no, you cannot let me out.'
"'Oh, yes, I can,' said the rat, 'I know a way to move the biggest stones, and if you can only wait a day or two I will make this chink large enough for you to come up.'
"'A day or two,' said the weasel in despair; 'why, I am nearly dead now with hunger.'
"'Well then,' said the rat, 'gnaw your own tail;' and off he went laughing at the joke. The miserable weasel cried and sniffed, and sniffed and cried, till by-and-by he heard the rat come back and begin to scratch outside. Presently the rat stopped, and was going away again, when the weasel begged and prayed him not to leave him to die there in the dark.
"'Very well,' said the rat, 'I will send the cricket to sing to you. In a day or two you will see the chink get bigger, and meantime you can eat your tail; and as you will get very thin, you will be able to creep through a very small hole and get out all the quicker. Ha! ha! As for me, I am going to have a capital dinner from Pan's dish, for he has fallen asleep in his tub.'
"So the weasel was left to himself, and though he watched and watched, he could not see the chink open in the least, and he got so dreadfully hungry that at last, after sucking his paws, he was obliged to bring his tail round and begin to gnaw it a little bit. The pain was dreadful, but he could not help himself, he was obliged to do it or die. In the evening the cricket came, as the rat had promised, to the top of the chink, and at once began to sing. He sang all about the lady cricket with whom he was in love, and then about the beautiful stars that were shining in the sky, and how nice it was to be a cricket, for the crickets were by far the most handsome and clever of all creatures, and everybody would like to be a cricket if they could.
"Next, he went on to praise himself, that his lady might hear what fine limbs he had, and so noble a form, and such a splendid chink to live in. Thus he kept on the livelong night, and all about himself; and his chirp, chirp, chirp filled the weasel's prison with such a noise that the wretched thing could not sleep. He kept asking the cricket to tell him if the rat had really done anything to enlarge the chink; but the cricket was too busy to answer him till the dawn, and then, having finished his song, he found time to attend to the weasel.
"'You have been very rude,' he said, 'to keep on talking while I was singing, but I suppose, as you are only an ignorant weasel, you do not understand good manners, and therefore I will condescend so far as to inform you of the measures taken by my noble friend the rat to get you out. If you were not so extremely ignorant and stupid you would guess what he has done.'
"Now all this was very bitter to the weasel, who had always thought he knew everything, to be insulted by a cricket; still he begged to be told what it was. 'The rat,' went on the cricket, 'has brought a little piece from a fungus, and has scratched a hole beside the stone and put it in there. Now, when this begins to grow and the fungus pushes up, it will move the stone and open a chink. In this way I have seen my lord the rat heave up the heaviest paving stones and make a road for himself. Now are you not stupid?' Then the cricket went home to bed.
"All day long the miserable weasel lay on the floor of his prison, driven every now and then to gnaw his tail till he squeaked with the pain. The only thing that kept him from despair was the hope of the revenge he would have, if ever he did get out, on those who had laid the trap for him. For hours he lay insensible, and only woke up when the rat looked down the chink and asked him, with a jolly chuckle, how his tail tasted, and then went off without waiting for an answer. Then the cricket came again, and taking not the least notice of the prisoner, sang all night.
"In the morning the weasel looked up, and saw that the chink had really opened. He crawled to it, he was so faint he could not walk, so he had to crawl over the floor, which was all red with his own blood. The fungus, a thick, yellowish-green thing, like a very large and unwholesome mushroom, was growing fast, so fast he could see it move, and very slowly it shoved and lifted up the stone. The chink was now so far open that in his thin, emaciated state, the weasel could have got through; but he was so weak he could not climb up. He called to the rat, and the rat came and tried to reach him, but it was just a little too far down.
"'If I only had something to drink,' said the weasel, 'only one drop of water, I think I could do it, but I am faint from thirst.'
"Off ran the rat to see what he could do, and as he passed the tub where Pan lived he saw a bowl of water just pumped for the spaniel. The bowl was of wood with a projecting handle-not a ring to put the fingers through, but merely a short straight handle. He went round to the other side of the tub in which Pan was dozing and began to scratch. Directly Pan heard the scratching:-
"'Ho! ho!' said he, 'that's that abominable rat that steals my food,' and he darted out, and in his tremendous hurry his chain caught the handle of the bowl, just as the rat had hoped it would. Over went the bowl, and all the water was spilt, but the rat, the instant he heard Pan coming, had slipped away back to the weasel.
"When Pan was tired of looking where he had heard the scratching, he went back to take a lap, but found the bowl upset, and that all the water had run down the drain. As he was very thirsty after gnawing a salt bacon-bone, he set up a barking, and the dairy-maid ran out, thinking it was a beggar, and began to abuse him for being so clumsy as to knock over his bowl. Pan barked all the louder, so she hit him with the handle of her broom, and he went howling into his tub. He vowed vengeance against the rat, but that did not satisfy his thirst.
"Meantime the water had run along the drain, and though the fungus greedily sucked up most of it, the weasel had a good drink. After that he felt better, and he climbed up the chink, squeezing through and dragging his raw tail behind him, till he nearly reached the top. But there it was still a little tight, and he could not manage to push through, not having strength enough left. He felt himself slipping back again, and called on the rat to save him. The rat without ceremony leant down the chink, and caught hold of his ear with his teeth, and snipped it so tight he bit it right through, but he dragged the weasel out.
"There he lay a long time half dead and exhausted, under a dock leaf which hid him from view. The rat began to think that the weasel would die after all, so he came and said: 'Wake up, coward, and come with me into the cart-house; there is a very nice warm hole there, and I will tell you something; if you stay here very likely the bailiff may see you, and if Pan should be let loose he will sniff you out in a second'. So the weasel, with very great difficulty, dragged himself into the cart-house, and found shelter in the hole.
"Now the rat, though he had helped the weasel, did not half like him, for he was afraid to go to sleep while the weasel was about, lest his guest should fasten on his throat, for he knew he was treacherous to the last degree. He cast about in his mind how to get rid of him, and at the same time to serve his own purpose. By-and-by he said that there was a mouse in the cart-house who had a very plump wife, and two fat little mouses. At this the weasel pricked up his ears, for he was so terribly hungry, and sat up and asked where they were. The rat said the wife and the children were up in the beam; the wood had rotted, and they had a hole there, but he was afraid the mouse himself was away from home just then, most likely in the corn-bin, where the barley-meal for the pigs was kept.
"'Never mind,' said the weasel, eagerly, 'the wife and the baby mice will do very well,' and up he started and climbed up through the rat's hole in the wall to the roof, and then into the hole in the beam, where he had a good meal on the mice. Now the rat hated this mouse because he lived so near, and helped himself to so much food, and being so much smaller, he could get about inside the house where you live, Bevis, without being seen, and so got very fat, and made the rat jealous. He thought, too, that when the weasel had eaten the wife and the babies, that he would be strong enough to go away. Presently the weasel came down from his meal, and looked so fierce and savage that the rat, strong as he was, was still more anxious to get rid of him as quickly as possible.
"He told the weasel that there was a way by which he could get to the corn-bin without the least danger, though it was close to the house, and there he would be certain to find the mouse himself, and very likely another Miss Mouse whom he used to meet there. At this the weasel was so excited he could hardly wait to be shown the way, and asked the rat to put him in the road directly; he was so hungry he did...
