Through the long nights the Magic Moon lights the little beasts to their hunting, but ice fingers lock the shallow pools before day dawn, and, in spite of alluring sunny noons, both man and beast seek shelter, one by the fireside, where the singing logs repeat the songs they once learned from the rain on the leaves in the forest, the other in ground hole, rock lair, or, if sociably inclined, in house chinks, and crannies. In this particular November, however, the village of Oaklands was undergoing a new and strange experience born of the sudden preference of a nimble, four-footed rodent for houses with warm cellars and well-stocked larders, over the more remote barns and granaries. In short, the north end of the village, and some of the outlying houses as well, were suffering from a raid of rats that would have competed in numbers with the army lured to cover by the Pied Piper. All country dwellers expect to house a few of the wood folk in the hard season, whether they will or no. The bats hang themselves up in the attic behind the chimney, and the squirrels use a loose shingle as a storehouse door; the wood rats burrow under the stable floor, and the pretty, white-footed mouse with pelt and eyes like a deer will often venture to the hearth corner, and not only remain unharmed, but even make himself a welcome guest by his strange singing. Rats, however,—the great relentless rats of city docks and sewers, that carry both destruction and disease in their march,—are a wholly different matter.