The sunlight slowly faded, and the shadow of the stable fell across the mouth of the well. Night was coming—night, when the rats would surely attack me. I was desperately hungry, though I do not think that just then I could have eaten the finest nut in the coppice. At last the first star twinkled overhead. For some time the rats had been moving again. I could hear them, though I could not see them. The bustle increased with the darkness, and there was more squeaking. Presently I heard something climbing towards me. It was the father rat. Of that I was certain, though I could not see him. He came up slowly but steadily, and I shook all over with fresh panic. All day I had sat quite still in my nook, staring upwards in the hope of seeing Jack’s head up above. I had not even once taken a look round my place of refuge. Now, as my enemy came stealthily nearer I backed into the recess. The hole ran in further than I had supposed, and I went in twice my own length before touching the brickwork. Suddenly there was a slight snuffing sound. The rat was over the edge, and right upon me. What happened next I hardly know. I made a blind, panic-stricken rush, and found myself wedged between two bricks. The rat’s jaws closed upon my brush. I struggled madly, and suddenly I was free and scuttling away down a sort of tunnel. Away I went, bumping against the top and sides, but still finding room to run. Seemingly the great rat had been unable to squeeze through the narrow aperture in which even my small self had been caught for the moment, but at the time I do not think that I knew that. My one idea was to run, and run I did, plunging blindly on and on through the black dark like a rabbit with a stoat at its scut. I remember very little about that horrible tunnel or how I got through it. I only know that it was wet and slimy in places, and that it seemed as though I could not breathe. If it had not been for the fear of the rat I should never have been able to go on. But I fully believed that the bloodthirsty monster was behind me all the time, and each instant expected to feel the sharp teeth close upon me; so, breathless and suffocating, I kept on, until at last there was a break in the darkness, and next instant I tumbled headlong out of the mouth of a drain-pipe into the muddy bed of a dried-up pool. I was so absolutely exhausted that there I lay, quite unable to stir brush or claw. If any prowling cat or weasel had happened upon me I could not have lifted a paw to get away. But nothing did molest me, and after a long time I managed to struggle out of the mud and up the bank on to a patch of grass. When I looked round I found that I was in the Hall kitchen-garden. I knew my way from there to the house, and slowly and wearily dragged myself back. I made for the elm by Jack’s window, climbed up it, and, finding a nook in a fork between two boughs, curled up, and was fast asleep in a moment.