“Give me some rough-on-rats, and any other poison you have; if they die in the house, and we have to leave, so be it. My patience is exhausted. To-day, while we were out driving, the rats, or a rat, actually got into my little book room, though it has a hardwood floor and high wainscot, and gnawed the corner off the antique leather binding of my ‘Denton’s History of New York’; if this continues, imagine the condition of my library!” “Why don’t you cover all the food in the house and try traps, Mr. Cortright?” asked Tom Scott, turning abruptly from the group who were discussing the merits of a litter of bull pups that were asleep in a box behind the candy counter. “Traps!” ejaculated Martin. “We have tried five different kinds, and rats managed to take the bait from four, without snapping the springs, and the fifth, the wire-cage variety, they must have rolled about the kitchen like a toy, for we found it in a corner standing on end. My belief is, Mr. Scott, that intelligence in rats varies, as it does in human beings, and that these particular specimens are what might be called intellectual, and are only to be circumvented and trapped, if at all, by some one who understands their own methods. How do they get into the house? The foundations are solid, the cellar plastered, and with a cement floor that shows no holes, and yet in the space of a month there is hardly a door in the house that does not show the marks of their teeth.” “You are perfectly right,” said Scott, with the utmost seriousness, interest sparkling in his eyes; “they must be understood and met on their own ground, for they have surely some runway by which they enter and leave, and no two tribes of rats work in exactly the same way, any more than any two gangs of housebreakers handle their tools alike.” Then, as he saw that all eyes were fixed on him inquiringly, he added, in the most casual way possible, “I’ve always been keen on watching animals to learn their ways, and as a young chap I had some queer experiences with rats.” “Why don’t you take up the reward offered, and clear the town of the rats?” asked the drummer, sneeringly; “a gent who’s so well acquainted with their ways ought to find it a cinch.” The sneer passed unnoticed. “Have the Selectmen offered a reward in the matter?” Scott asked. “Yes, posted this afternoon,” said the druggist; “there is one of the bills on the tree opposite. One hundred dollars’ reward for any one who will either do the job or suggest a remedy.” For a full minute Tom Scott stood with his hands in his pockets looking into the show window and whistling softly to himself as if he were alone; then squaring about he almost called, so loud was his voice, “I’ve time on my hands now, and I’m going to take up that challenge, boys: if I make the rats go in my traps, I’ll give the hundred to the Bridgeton Hospital; if they don’t, I’ll add a hundred to the sum to make it bigger bait for a smarter fellow.”