AFTER DARK.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 4 December 1914, Page 3

AFTER DARK.

TRhrLTNG A G HIM ADVENTURE AMONG THE RCH'RNTS.

Snow there was, and a silver moon, and delicate tracery of f.he shadows of branches, and a frozen pond, and dead leaves all brown, and the roof of the old farm house nestling, all white. among the grand, tall trees, and no end of a racket in the r'ickyard. Some creatures were whirling about among the snow and straw there. There were several of them tumbling about and grumbling like fiends in a continuous, wicked gibber. Then they separated—flew apart, lite-rally—and, dashing away into the shadows, left only two behind. One

of these two lay motionless on the ground, quite dead.; and he was the smaller. The other hopped slowly towards the gate ; and ho was the larger. And they were all rats. The big fellow went slowly, to the accompaniment of a big chorus of low, intense grumbles that followed him from every shadow, from every scrap of cover, wherein could j tie seen little, gleaming- c.v os in ! pairs. Once or twice this big chap turned i sharply, as a sudden rustling of straw here and there in the dark, places heralded a concerted rush upon him ; but it never came to anything, and in the end he passed out slowly from the warm rickyard into the bare, open field ami into the night. For a moment he paused in the gateway to pivot on hi« haunches, and glare savagely at the inky blots1 of shadow ; then he faded away. He was a "rogue" rat, who had been driven out by his kind for such trifling- little offences as murder, baby rat slaughter, and cannibalism. Very far away a. church clock in some county struck midnight, and a fox barked once—a guttural, mournful yap—from somewhere out among the fields. But the old rat took no notice. He kept straight on to the nearest hedge, and proceeded to lick his wounds. | Half, an hour later we find the old, scarred ruffian moving slowly down along the hedge. He was very alert; every stride or two he paused to listen and look round. And that, I suppose, was, why the \ movement of some bird, asleep in I the branches overhead, attracted him. | He stopped, and he climbed upwards. There was a pause, then a squak, a flutter, a silence. After a bit the old rat came down again, and hopped away as if nothing had happened ; but something had happened, for if you iiad looked there next (morning you-would, have found, perched on a slender bough, stillupright, but stark, shrivelled, and stiff, the corpse of a bloodless thrush. A few minutes later out from the hedge on to the bare, white snow hopped the grim shadow of the rat. He was following a trail. The trail was of blood, and it ended, ten yards further on out in the field, was a fieldfare, which had beeu wounded by another rat. You know fieldfares ? They laugh, "Chack, chack ! Chaotole-chack !". across the winter sky. They can put up a fight, though, at the worst. This one did. Ho threw himself on his back, ready wiith beak and claw. Now for it ! The rat was no coward. He threw himself on the bird with a careless rus-h —too careless. There was a peck, a flutter, a squak, and it was over. . The bird was dead, but The rat was slowly turning round anil round like a dazed thing, the blood streaming from his right eye. Then he rushed for the hedge, leaving the fieldfare untouched where it lay. In three seconds lie was at a gateway. In another entering the hedge. There was a glint of something lying in his path on his right side. It looked like metal. The rat failed to see it. There was a metallic clash. The rat stopped dead, straightened out, and yelled aloud. He was caught in a trap. Next morning the farmer, going round his traps, found and killed the rat. He weighed one pound twelve ounces, and he was tblind in the right eye.