stration: IT WAS THE ORANGE-TIP.]

For the dormouse, one tiny penetrating note dominated all. He knew that
the singer of that note was four-footed. Have you ever heard a cricket's
serenade? It was something like that. Have you ever heard a tree-creeper
talking to itself? It was something like that also. He looked down and
saw, as he expected, a round fur ball rolling in and out the grass-stems.
At times the ball sat up and sniffed. He knew the puny fists and tapering
snout at once. It was the shrewmouse. "Shrewmouse!" he cried, "is it
time?" But the shrewmouse had crouched to dodge the shadow of a passing
bird, and he saw him no more. However, he had seen enough. He stretched
his hands and feet as though he would rack them from their sockets. Like
Tennyson's rabbit, he fondled his harmless face in the most elaborate of
toilets, then he took one nibble at the remnant of the squirrel's nut,
and dropped off to sleep till the twilight.

[Illustration: BEFORE HIM LAY THE TWILIGHT WORLD HE LOVED.]

[Illustration: "FIGURE SOMEWHAT STOUT," SAYS THE BOOK.]

It is time to describe him.

"Figure somewhat stout," says the book, "a single pair of pre-molars in
each jaw, first toe of the fore-foot rudimentary, tail cylindrical," etc.
The dormouse was anything but stout--six months' fasting, save for half a
nut, had effectually restrained any tendency that way. No doubt in other
respects he was in fair accordance with museum pattern, but he differed in
one essential particular--he was alive.

[Illustration: HIS EYES? NOR PEN NOR CAMERA CAN PRESENT THEM.]

His colour? When he had first retired to rest he had closely resembled a
young red vole, buff grey all over save for his white waistcoat and the
hair-parting along his back and down the ridges of his limbs. This was a
delicate auburn. During his sleep the auburn had overspread his back,
softened into cream colour on his sides, and thence into a pure white
front. Ages ago his ancestors had been white all over; now, amid changed
surroundings, the white only lingered where it was least conspicuous.

His eyes? Nor pen nor camera can present them. Imagine a black pearl
imprisoning a diamond; imagine a dewdrop trembling on polished jet; add
to these beauties _life_, and you will have the dormouse eye.

His tail? Distichous, say the books. Feathers are mostly distichous,
hair-partings are distichous, the moustache is distichous. So is the
dormouse tail; but the hairs along it do mor