rat;
but he, honest fellow, only lifted up his snub nose with a sort of
bull-dog look, which seemed to say, "Well, there's no accounting for
taste."

"Bob," said little Billy one evening, with more animation than usual,
"I'se been a-watching the rats, and I saw-- only think what I saw!"

"Eh, what did ye see?" replied Bob, drowsily, rubbing his eyes with the
back of his hand. He looked very hungry and tired.

"I was a-watching for the fat spotted one which ran across yesterday,
when out came creeping, creeping, two others" --the child with his
fingers on the floor suited his action to his words,-- "and one had some
white on its back; it looked old and weak; and Bob, I saw as how it was
blind."

"A blind rat!" cried Bob; "'twould soon starve, I take it."

"But there was the other rat at its side, with such shining eyes, and
such a sharp little nose!" I plead guilty to vanity; I could not hear
such a description of myself with Oddity's sober composure. "And the old
blind rat had a little bit of stick in its mouth, just as the blind man
in the lane has a stick in his hand, and the pretty black rat took the
other end in his teeth, and so pulled the old un on his way."

"I'se never heard of rats doing that afore," said Bob.

"That's not all that I saw about 'em," continued Billy. "Out comes the
funny spotted rat from its hole; so I keeps very quiet, not to frighten
it away. And it pattered up to the place where I put the little crumbs;
and what do you think as it did?"

"Ate them," was Bob's quiet reply.

"No, but it didn't though!" cried Billy, triumphantly; "it pushed them
towards the old blind rat. Neither the black un nor the spotted un ate
up one crumb; they left 'em all for the poor blind rat! Now wasn't them
famous little fellows!"

"So rats help one another," said Bob. He did not speak more; but as he
leant back his head, and looked straight up at the roof of the shed,
(there was a great hole in it which the stars shone through, and now and
then a big drop of water from the top came plash, plash, on the muddy
floor below,) he looked up, I say, and I wonder whether he was thinking
the same thing as I was at that moment: "Rats help one another; do none
but human beings leave their fellow-creatures to perish!"

CHAPTER IV.

HOW I MADE A FRIEND.

I always ate my supper in the warehouse, but I need hardly say that
Oddity and I carefully avoided the spot where the tragedy of our six
brothers had oc