ld corn-bin, with half his mouth torn away, and his front paws mangled
and useless. He had bowed his head and waited sullenly for the _coup de
grace_. But the _coup de grace_ never came. There had been a diversion in
the rear, and into the cause of that diversion he had not troubled to
inquire.

He had seen neither him nor her since, and, until he had recovered from
his wounds, had hardly felt his loneliness. For a wounded rat, loneliness
is normal and necessary. Of late, as he sniffed dubiously round the old
familiar corners, the sense of desolation had forced itself upon him.

He recalled, dimly, the few weeks before his misfortune. Every day the
number of the tribe had lessened. First went the patriarch, white about
the muzzle, grizzled all over, tottering and feeble, but still of eminent
distinction--the black rat does not coarsen with age--then, one by one,
with fearless inconsequence, the younger ones; lastly, save two, his own
contemporaries.

* * * * *

The scratching seemed to get louder. The black rat glided, like a shadow,
towards it. It sounded from the bottom of the door.

[Illustration: FIRST THE PATRIARCH, WHITE ABOUT THE MUZZLE, GRIZZLED ALL
OVER, BUT STILL OF EMINENT DISTINCTION.]

Three sides of the cellar--for a hundred years the cellar had been the
rats' stronghold--were solid masonry. The fourth side was a wooden
partition. At one corner of this stood the door, close-fitted to its
sill and frame, and shrouded in cobwebs, which, in rats' memory, had
never parted. Along the wall opposite ran a six-inch shelf, and, at the
extremity of this shelf, where the fittings entered the brickwork, was
the entrance of the run.

Generations of rats had used that run. Its sides were smooth and polished
as a metal tube. Here it was narrower, there wider, but throughout its
length it was free and unimpeded.

For the most part it lay between wall and wainscot. At times it seemed
to pierce the masonry itself. Midway in the ascent the path of least
resistance had been towards the outer wall. Two round holes pierced its
surface--a brick's length dividing them. One can understand the making of
the first hole, but the making of the second? Fifteen feet below resounded
the busy traffic of the city. Did two tunnels converge by chance? did they
converge by design? or was the second made by some colossal rat, stretched
at full length, and trusting his life to his superhuman hearing? I can