ay all that seems pale and thin and very far away. Just now our
blood dances to other music.'

They fell a-twittering among themselves once more, and this time their
intoxicating babble was of violet seas, tawny sands, and lizard-haunted
walls.

Restlessly the Rat wandered off once more, climbed the slope that rose
gently from the north bank of the river, and lay looking out towards
the great ring of Downs that barred his vision further southwards--his
simple horizon hitherto, his Mountains of the Moon, his limit behind
which lay nothing he had cared to see or to know. To-day, to him gazing
South with a new-born need stirring in his heart, the clear sky over
their long low outline seemed to pulsate with promise; to-day, the
unseen was everything, the unknown the only real fact of life. On this
side of the hills was now the real blank, on the other lay the crowded
and coloured panorama that his inner eye was seeing so clearly. What
seas lay beyond, green, leaping, and crested! What sun-bathed coasts,
along which the white villas glittered against the olive woods! What
quiet harbours, thronged with gallant shipping bound for purple islands
of wine and spice, islands set low in languorous waters!

He rose and descended river-wards once more; then changed his mind
and sought the side of the dusty lane. There, lying half-buried in the
thick, cool under-hedge tangle that bordered it, he could muse on the
metalled road and all the wondrous world that it led to; on all the
wayfarers, too, that might have trodden it, and the fortunes and
adventures they had gone to seek or found unseeking--out there,
beyond--beyond!

Footsteps fell on his ear, and the figure of one that walked somewhat
wearily came into view; and he saw that it was a Rat, and a very dusty
one. The wayfarer, as he reached him, saluted with a gesture of courtesy
that had something foreign about it--hesitated a moment--then with a
pleasant smile turned from the track and sat down by his side in the
cool herbage. He seemed tired, and the Rat let him rest unquestioned,
understanding something of what was in his thoughts; knowing, too, the
value all animals attach at times to mere silent companionship, when the
weary muscles slacken and the mind marks time.

The wayfarer was lean and keen-featured, and somewhat bowed at the
shoulders; his paws were thin and long, his eyes much wrinkled at the
corners, and he wore small gold ear rings in his neatly-set well-shaped