`Heard what?' said Toad, turning rather pale. `Go on, Ratty! Quick! Don't spare me! What haven't I heard?'
`Do you mean to tell me,' shouted the Rat, thumping with his little fist upon the table, `that you've heard nothing about the Stoats and Weasels?'
What, the Wild Wooders?' cried Toad, trembling in every limb. `No, not a word! What have they been doing?'
`--And how they've been and taken Toad Hall?' continued the Rat.
Toad leaned his elbows on the table, and his chin on his paws; and a large tear welled up in each of his eyes, overflowed and splashed on the table, plop! plop!
`Go on, Ratty,' he murmured presently; `tell me all. The worst is over. Iam an animal again. I can bear it.'
`When you--got--into that--that--trouble of yours,' said the Rat, slowly and impressively; `I mean, when you--disappeared from society for a time, over that misunderstanding about a--a machine, you know--'
Toad merely nodded.
`Well, it was a good deal talked about down here, naturally,' continued the Rat, `not only along the river-side, but even in the Wild Wood. Animals took sides, as always happens. The River-bankers stuck up for you, and said you had been infamously treated, and there was no justice to be had in the land nowadays. But the Wild Wood animals said hard things, and served you right, and it was time this sort of thing was stopped. And they got very cocky, and went about saying you were done for this time! You would never come back again, never, never!'
Toad nodded once more, keeping silence.
`That's the sort of little beasts they are,' the Rat went on. `But Mole and Badger, they stuck out, through thick and thin, that you would come back again soon, somehow. They didn't know exactly how, but somehow!'
Toad began to sit up in his chair again, and to smirk a little.
`They argued from history,' continued the Rat. `They said that no criminal laws had ever been known to prevail against cheek and plausibility such as yours, combined with the power of a long purse. So they arranged to move their things in to Toad Hall, and sleep there, and keep it aired, and have it all ready for you when you turned up. They didn't guess what was going to happen, of course; still, they had their suspicions of the Wild Wood animals. Now I come to the most painful and tragic part of my story. One dark night--it was a VERY dark night, and blowing hard, too, and raining simply cats and dogs--a band of weasels, armed to the teeth, crept silently up the carriage-drive to the front entrance. Simultaneously, a body of desperate ferrets, advancing through the kitchen-garden, possessed themselves of the backyard and offices; while a company of skirmishing stoats who stuck at nothing occupied the conservatory and the billiard-room, and held the French windows opening on to the lawn.
`The Mole and the Badger were sitting by the fire in the smoking-room, telling stories and suspecting nothing, for it wasn't a night for any animals to be out in, when those bloodthirsty villains broke down the doors and rushed in upon them from every side. They made the best fight they could, but what was the good? They were unarmed, and taken by surprise, and what can two animals do against hundreds? They took and beat them severely with sticks, those two poor faithful creatures, and turned them out into the cold and the wet, with many insulting and uncalled- for remarks!'
Here the unfeeling Toad broke into a snigger, and then pulled himself together and tried to look particularly solemn.
`And the Wild Wooders have been living in Toad Hall ever since,' continued the Rat; `and going on simply anyhow! Lying in bed half the day, and breakfast at all hours, and the place in such a mess (I'm told) it's not fit to be seen! Eating your grub, and drinking your drink, and ****** bad jokes about you, and singing vulgar songs, about--well, about prisons and magistrates, and policemen; horrid personal songs, with no humour in them. And they're telling the tradespeople and everybody that they've come to stay for good.'
`O, have they!' said Toad getting up and seizing a stick. `I'll jolly soon see about that!'
`It's no good, Toad!' called the Rat after him. `You'd better come back and sit down; you'll only get into trouble.'
But the Toad was off, and there was no holding him. He marched rapidly down the road, his stick over his shoulder, fuming and muttering to himself in his anger, till he got near his front gate, when suddenly there popped up from behind the palings a long yellow ferret with a gun.
`Who comes there?' said the ferret sharply.
`Stuff and nonsense!' said Toad, very angrily. `What do you mean by talking like that to me? Come out of that at once, or I'll----'
The ferret said never a word, but he brought his gun up to his shoulder. Toad prudently dropped flat in the road, and BANG! a bullet whistled over his head.
The startled Toad scrambled to his feet and scampered off down the road as hard as he could; and as he ran he heard the ferret laughing andother horrid thin little laughs taking it up and carrying on the sound.
He went back, very crestfallen, and told the Water Rat.
`What did I tell you?' said the Rat. `It's no good. They've got sentries posted, and they are all armed. You must just wait.'
Still, Toad was not inclined to give in all at once. So he got out the boat, and set off rowing up the river to where the garden front of Toad Hall came down to the waterside.
Arriving within sight of his old home, he rested on his oars and surveyed the land cautiously. All seemed very peaceful and deserted and quiet. He could see the whole front of Toad Hall, glowing in the evening sunshine, the pigeons settling by twos and threes along the straight line of the roof; the garden, a blaze of flowers; the creek that led up to the boat- house, the little wooden bridge that crossed it; all tranquil, uninhabited, apparently waiting for his return. He would try the boat-house first, he thought. Very warily he paddled up to the mouth of the creek, and was just passing under the bridge, when . . . CRASH!
