rel, over the
corn-chest, and then he made for the middle of the room.

Now, amongst all the rubbish which Terence had collected about him,
there were many old articles of clothing belonging to the Captain,
including a pair of long riding-boots, which had been gathering mildew,
and stiffening out of shape in their present position ever since I came.
One of these was lying on the floor; and just as I was all but upon the
mouse, he darted into the boot.

A quiver of delight ran through me. With all his unwonted sagacity,
Master Mouse had run straight into a trap. The boot was wide, and head
and shoulders I plunged in after my prey.

I scented him all the way down the leg, but the painful fact is that I
could not quite get to the bottom. He must have crouched in the toe or
heel, and I could get no farther than the calf. Oh, if my master's legs
had but been two inches shorter! I should have clawed into the remotest
corner of the foot. As it was, I pushed, I struggled, I shook, I worried
the wretched boot--but all in vain.

Only when I was all but choked did I withdraw my head for a gasp of
fresh air. And there was the Captain himself, yelling with laughter, and
sprawling all over the place in convulsions of unseemly merriment, with
those long legs which--but they are not his fault, poor man!

* * * * *

That is my story--an unfinished tale, of which I do not myself know the
end. This is the one crook in my luxurious lot--that I cannot see the
last of that mouse.

Happily, I don't think that my master any longer misunderstands my
attachment to the saddle-room. The other day, he sat scribbling for a
long time with a pencil and paper, and when he had done it, he threw the
sketch to me and said, "There, Toots, look at that, and you will see
what became of your friend!"

It was civilly meant, and I append the sketch for the sake of those whom
it may inform. I do not understand pictures myself.

Those boots have a strange fascination for me now. I sit for hours by
the mouth of the one where he went in and never came back. Not the
faintest squeak from its recesses has ever stirred the sensitive hairs
of my watchful ear. He must be starving, but not a nibble of the leather
have I heard. I doze, but I am ever on the alert. Nightmares
occasionally disturb me. I fancy I see him, made desperate by hunger,
creep anxiously to the mouth of the boot, pricking his tagged ear. Once
I had a terrible v