Only when I was all but choked did I withdraw my head for a gasp of fresh air.  And there was the Captain himself, yelling with laughter, and sprawling all over the place in convulsions of unseemly merriment, with those long legs which—­but they are not his fault, poor man!

* * * * *

That is my story—­an unfinished tale, of which I do not myself know the end.  This is the one crook in my luxurious lot—­that I cannot see the last of that mouse.

Happily, I don’t think that my master any longer misunderstands my attachment to the saddle-room.  The other day, he sat scribbling for a long time with a pencil and paper, and when he had done it, he threw the sketch to me and said, “There, Toots, look at that, and you will see what became of your friend!”

It was civilly meant, and I append the sketch for the sake of those whom it may inform.  I do not understand pictures myself.

Those boots have a strange fascination for me now.  I sit for hours by the mouth of the one where he went in and never came back.  Not the faintest squeak from its recesses has ever stirred the sensitive hairs of my watchful ear.  He must be starving, but not a nibble of the leather have I heard.  I doze, but I am ever on the alert.  Nightmares occasionally disturb me.  I fancy I see him, made desperate by hunger, creep anxiously to the mouth of the boot, pricking his tagged ear.  Once I had a terrible vision of his escaping, and of his tail as it vanished round the corner.

But these are dreams.  He has never returned, I suspect that the truth is, that he had a fit from fright, in the toe of the boot, and is dead.  Some day Terence will shake out his skeleton.

It grows very cold.  This place is full of draughts, and the floor is damp.

He must be dead.  He never could have lasted so long without a move or a nibble.

And it is tea-time.  I think I shall join the Captain.

[Illustration]

THE HENS OF HENCASTLE.

(Translated from the German of VICTOR BLUeTHGEN.)

What a hot, drowsy afternoon it was.

The blazing sun shone with such a glare upon the farmyard that it was almost unbearable, and there was not a vestige of grass or any green thing to relieve the eye or cast a little shade.

But the fowls in the back yard were not disturbed by the heat the least bit in the world, for they had plenty of time in which to doze, and they were fond of taking a siesta in the hottest place that could be found.  Certainly the hottest place that afternoon, by far, was the yard in which they reposed.

There were five of them—­a cock and four hens.  Two of the hens were renowned throughout the whole village, for they wore tufts of feathers on their heads instead of the usual red combs; and the cock was very proud of having such distinguished-looking wives.