ely I have just eaten my last nut. As you see, here's the
shell. The house-mouse had been downstairs calling on me and can bear
witness that there's not a bite or a sup to be found in my place."

She winked at the house-mouse to confirm the truth of her fib. But the
house-mouse could not take her eyes off the black rat, who had lain down
in the snow and was moaning piteously:

"You're catching cold, cousin," she said kindly. "You had better go back
to the barn again. It's warmer there."

"I really don't care what becomes of me," said the rat. "To tell you the
truth, it's all the same to me whether I die in one way or another. You
say I ought to go back to the barn. That's where I've come from. There's
no existing there for those loathsome rats from Copenhagen. They call
themselves rats, but I don't believe that they are rats at all. I am
sure they're a sort of fish by the way they swim. And the way they eat!
And the way they multiply! They have children once a week, I do believe.
It's disgusting."

"It certainly is," said the wood-mouse. "Cousin House-Mouse and I were
just sitting and talking about it, cousin. But what's to be done,
cousin? I am hard pressed by the field-mouse and get the blame for all
his villainy. Some time ago, the house-mouse had to put up with harm for
your sake, because you bit the odd man in the nose or else ate and drank
things. Now one has come who is stronger than you; and so it's your
turn. Besides, it seems to me that you are big enough to send the rat
home to where she came from."

"Big enough?" said the rat. "Big enough? That great brown brute is
bigger than I am! And then there are so many of them! I am the last of
my race. When I am dead, there will be no more black rats in this part
of the country. And now I am going to die."

"Stop a bit! Cousin!" said the house-mouse. "Let us talk it over
first!... Perhaps we can hit upon something or other!..."

But it was too late. The black rat stretched out her four legs and was
dead and gone.

"Lord!" said the wood-mouse. "To think that she should go and die like
that before our eyes! If you fall to the cat now and I to the owl and
if the young forester destroys the field-mouse, then there won't be a
single member of all our big family left."

"Yes, there will be: I'm here," said a deep, gruff voice close by.

"Gracious!" said the house-mouse and jumped right into the air. "There's
the brown rat!"

And there he was. The brown rat sto