as still a little tight, and he could not manage to push
through, not having strength enough left. He felt himself slipping back
again, and called on the rat to save him. The rat without ceremony leant
down the chink, and caught hold of his ear with his teeth, and snipped
it so tight he bit it right through, but he dragged the weasel out.

"There he lay a long time half dead and exhausted, under a dock leaf
which hid him from view. The rat began to think that the weasel would
die after all, so he came and said: 'Wake up, coward, and come with me
into the cart-house; there is a very nice warm hole there, and I will
tell you something; if you stay here very likely the bailiff may see
you, and if Pan should be let loose he will sniff you out in a second'.
So the weasel, with very great difficulty, dragged himself into the
cart-house, and found shelter in the hole.

"Now the rat, though he had helped the weasel, did not half like him,
for he was afraid to go to sleep while the weasel was about, lest his
guest should fasten on his throat, for he knew he was treacherous to the
last degree. He cast about in his mind how to get rid of him, and at the
same time to serve his own purpose. By-and-by he said that there was a
mouse in the cart-house who had a very plump wife, and two fat little
mouses. At this the weasel pricked up his ears, for he was so terribly
hungry, and sat up and asked where they were. The rat said the wife and
the children were up in the beam; the wood had rotted, and they had a
hole there, but he was afraid the mouse himself was away from home just
then, most likely in the corn-bin, where the barley-meal for the pigs
was kept.

"'Never mind,' said the weasel, eagerly, 'the wife and the baby mice
will do very well,' and up he started and climbed up through the rat's
hole in the wall to the roof, and then into the hole in the beam, where
he had a good meal on the mice. Now the rat hated this mouse because he
lived so near, and helped himself to so much food, and being so much
smaller, he could get about inside the house where you live, Bevis,
without being seen, and so got very fat, and made the rat jealous. He
thought, too, that when the weasel had eaten the wife and the babies,
that he would be strong enough to go away. Presently the weasel came
down from his meal, and looked so fierce and savage that the rat, strong
as he was, was still more anxious to get rid of him as quickly as
possible.

"He told th