morning. Rat never been home all night--nor Mole
either--something dreadful must have happened, they said; and the snow
had covered up all your tracks, of course. But I knew that when people
were in any fix they mostly went to Badger, or else Badger got to
know of it somehow, so I came straight off here, through the Wild Wood
and the snow! My! it was fine, coming through the snow as the red sun
was rising and showing against the black tree-trunks! As you went
along in the stillness, every now and then masses of snow slid off the
branches suddenly with a flop! making you jump and run for cover.
Snow-castles and snow-caverns had sprung up out of nowhere in the
night--and snow bridges, terraces, ramparts--I could have stayed and
played with them for hours. Here and there great branches had been
torn away by the sheer weight of the snow, and robins perched and
hopped on them in their perky conceited way, just as if they had done
it themselves. A ragged string of wild geese passed overhead, high on
the grey sky, and a few rooks whirled over the trees, inspected, and
flapped off homewards with a disgusted expression; but I met no
sensible being to ask the news of. About half-way across I came on a
rabbit sitting on a stump, cleaning his silly face with his paws. He
was a pretty scared animal when I crept up behind him and placed a
heavy fore-paw on his shoulder. I had to cuff his head once or
twice to get any sense out of it at all. At last I managed to extract
from him that Mole had been seen in the Wild Wood last night by one of
them. It was the talk of the burrows, he said, how Mole, Mr. Rat's
particular friend, was in a bad fix; how he had lost his way, and
'They' were up and out hunting, and were chivvying him round and
round. 'Then why didn't any of you _do_ something?' I asked. 'You
mayn't be blessed with brains, but there are hundreds and hundreds of
you, big, stout fellows, as fat as butter, and your burrows running in
all directions, and you could have taken him in and made him safe and
comfortable, or tried to, at all events.' 'What, _us_?' he merely
said: '_do_ something? us rabbits?' So I cuffed him again and left
him. There was nothing else to be done. At any rate, I had learnt
something; and if I had had the luck to meet any of 'Them' I'd have
learnt something more--or _they_ would."

[Illustration: _Through the Wild Wood and the snow_]

"Weren't you at all--er--nervous?" asked the Mole, some of yesterday's
t