e so many false
stories that I can scarce believe you now it is plain you are telling me
the truth; nor shall I feel certain that you are this time (for once in
your wicked life) saying the truth, unless I know why you are so anxious
for the rat to be caught."

"Why," said the weasel, "I will tell you the reason; this afternoon the
rat played me a very mean and scurvy trick; he disgraced me before the
king, and made me a common laughing-stock to all the council, for which
I swore to have his life. Besides, upon one occasion he bit his teeth
right through my ear--the marks of it are there still. See for
yourself." So the weasel thrust his head out of his hole, and Bevis saw
the marks left by the rat's teeth, and was convinced that the weasel,
out of malice, had at last been able for once to tell the truth.

"You are a horrid wretch," said Bevis, "still you know how to catch the
rat, and I will go home and do it; but I cannot find my way out of this
thicket--the squirrel ought to come."

"The way is under the ash bough there," said the weasel, "and when you
are outside the thicket turn to your left and go downhill, and you will
come to the timber--and meantime I will send for the dragon-fly, who
will overtake you."

"All right, horrid wretch," said Bevis, and away he went. Now all this
that the weasel had said really was true, except about the cake; it was
true that the rat was very careful going through the grass, and that he
knew where the bailiff set the gin, and that he used to run very quickly
across the exposed place under the wall of the pig-sty. But the story
about the cake he had made up out of his cunning head just to set Bevis
at work to put up the trap; and he hoped too, that while Bevis was
setting up the gin, the spring would slip and pinch his fingers.

By thus catching the rat, the weasel meant in the first place to gratify
his own personal malice, and next to get rid of a very formidable
competitor. For the rat was very large and very strong, and brave and
bold beyond all the others; so much so that the weasel would even have
preferred to have a struggle with the fox (though he was so much
bigger), whose nostril he could bite, than to meet the rat in fair and
equal combat. Besides, he hated the rat beyond measure, because the rat
had helped him out of the drain, which was when his ear was bitten
through. He intended to go down to the farmyard very early next morning
when the rat was caught, and to go