could not go away and
leave that cheese there.

Then he thought, "If I am very careful to step over these shining steel
things and rest my feet only on the floor, it cannot spring the trap.
Then I will snatch the cheese and jump.... I am pretty sure I can do
it.... Why, yes, I know I can." So the Rat who had come just to look at
the trap, began to lift first one foot and then another over the shining
curved bars, and got all ready to catch up the cheese and run.

"Now!" he cried. "One, two, three!" He did snatch it and jump, but the
trap jumped, too, in its own trappy way, and the Rat who got the cheese
left the three tip rings of his tail to pay for it. "Ouch!" he cried.
"My tail! My tail! My beautiful, long, bony tail, all covered with
scales and short hair!" He did not care at all for the cheese now. He
did not want to see it, for he would rather have had the point on his
tail again than to eat a whole binful of cheese.

"How it will look!" said he. "So stumpy and blunt. And it has been so
very useful always. I could wind it around a stick to hold myself up
when my paws were full, and many a time I have rolled eggs across the
floor by curling it around them." Then he heard Rat voices and scampered
out and down to his own hole.

His cousin and the Rat from the other farm came into the bin. "Don't
look at the trap," he was saying, "but just eat your grain from the
farther corner."

"I won't," she answered, and she half closed her eyes to keep from
seeing it. He was beside her and they stumbled over the cheese, which
now lay on the floor away from the trap. "How does this happen?" said
he. "We will eat it first and then find out." By this advice he showed
that he was a Rat of excellent sense.

When they had eaten it, they began to look toward the trap. As there was
no longer any cheese in it to tempt them, they felt perfectly safe in
doing so. They found that it had been sprung, and there lay the last
three rings of some Rat's tail.

"How dreadful!" she exclaimed. "I hope that was not lost by any of our
friends."

"Hum-hum!" said the Rat from the other farm. "Now, whom have I seen
wearing that? I have certainly seen that tail before--it was your
cousin!"

"Poor fellow!" said she. "I must go to see him."

"Oh, don't go now," cried the Rat from the other farm. "I think he might
want to be alone for a while. Besides," he added coaxingly, "you haven't
tasted of the grain yet, and it is very good."

"W-well,"