Had the harvest mouse ever seen a windmill, he would assuredly have concluded that a young one had escaped, and was walking in ever-narrowing circuits, round the field. The mist lifted further, and he saw the thing more clearly. Its great red arms swung dark against the sky, gathering the corn in a giant's grasp to feed its ravenous cutters. Round and round the field it went. Each time as it travelled to the distant corners the mouse dropped down to earth; each time as it thundered close at hand, he dashed like lightning up the stalk to look. Sometimes his wife came with him. Closer it drew and closer. Nor was the mouse the only thing that noticed it. All things that lived within the field, all things that loved its borders, were crowding in mad confusion to its centre. [Illustration: THE MOUSE CREPT TWO GRAINS HIGHER WHEN HE SAW HIM.] First came the hare. His was a wild, blundering, panic-stricken stampede. He hurtled through the corn, crossing his fore feet at every second leap, his eyes starting backwards from his head, his ears pressed flat against his back. He passed the harvest mouse heading for the farther side, and the harvest mouse saw him no more, for he broke cover, trusting to his speed. Then, one by one, bewildered rabbits. Backwards and forwards they rushed. Now they sat up and listened; now they flung their white tails skywards, and vanished down some friendly seeming alley. In two minutes they were headed off. Among the rabbits, of all things, a stoat! The mouse crept two grains higher when he saw him. He stole in and out the undergrowth with easy confidence, yet in some sense unstoatlike. The mouse looked down, and for a moment caught his eye--the most courageous eye in all the world. Something was very wrong indeed with the stoat--he never even bared his teeth. Next, a flurried brood of nestling partridges, flattened to earth, and piping dismally to one another. Time after time they passed and repassed below him, until at last they were utterly weary, and crouched in a huddled mass together, with uplifted hunted eyes. Then the rats and mice and voles. House-mice and wood-mice, red voles, and grey. Last of all, Berus the adder. Not a mouse stepped aside, as he worked his slow, sinuous length between the cornstalks. He, too, was of the hunted to-day. Nearer and nearer drew the hoarse rattle of the reaper. More and more crowded were the few yards round the harvest mice. A large brown rat limped through, bleeding about the head. He had come in from the firing-line, and had incompletely dodged a stone. The stoat flung its head up as it scented him, but let him pass. He had never let a rat pass in his life before. * * * * * Only a square of forty yards remained, packed from end to end with desperate field-folk. Each prepared for its last stand in different fashion. [Illustration: BERUS THE ADDER MADE A FLATTENED SPIRAL OF HIS COILS.]