but the fox neither saw, nor heard, nor thought of
anything except his own degradation. He had been cast forth as
unworthy--even the very mouse had received some instructions, but he,
the descendant of illustrious ancestors, was pointedly told that the wit
for which they had been famous did not exist in him.

As the night drew on, the wind rose higher, the clouds became thicker
and darker, the branches crashed to the earth, the tempest rushed along
bearing everything before it. The owls, alarmed for their safety, hid in
the hollow trees, or retired to their barns; the bats retreated into the
crevices of the tiles; nothing was abroad but the wildfowl, whose cries
occasionally resounded overhead. Now and then, the fall of some branch
into a hawthorn bush frightened the sleeping thrushes and blackbirds,
who flew forth into the darkness, not knowing whither they were going.
The rabbits crouched on the sheltered side of the hedges, and then went
back into their holes. The larks cowered closer to the earth.

Ruin and destruction raged around: in Choo Hoo's camp the ash poles beat
against each other, oaks were rent, and his vast army knew no sleep that
night. Whirled about by the fearful gusts, the dying hawk, suspended
from the trap, no longer fluttered, but swung unconscious to and fro.
The feathers of the murdered thrush were scattered afar, and the leaves
torn from the boughs went sweeping after them. Alone in the scene the
fox raced along, something of the wildness of the night entered into
him; he tried, by putting forth his utmost speed, to throw off the sense
of ignominy.

In the darkness, and in his distress of mind, he neither knew or cared
whither he was going. He passed the shore of the Long Pond, and heard
the waves dashing on the stones, and felt the spray driven far up on the
sward. He passed the miserable hawk. He ran like the wind by the camp of
Choo Hoo, and heard the hum of the army, unable to sleep. Weary at last,
he sought for some spot into which to drag his limbs, and crept along a
mound which, although he did not recognise it in his stupefied state of
mind, was really not far from where he had started. As he was creeping
along, he fancied he heard a voice which came from the ground beneath
his feet; it sounded so strange in the darkness that he started and
stayed to listen.

He heard it again, but though he thought he knew the voices of all the
residents in the field, he could not tell who it was, no