southwards week by week, easily, lazily, lingering as long as I

dared, but always heeding the call! No, I had had my warning;
never again did I think of disobedience.'

`Ah, yes, the call of the South, of the South!' twittered the
other two dreamily. `Its songs its hues, its radiant air! O, do

you remember----' and, forgetting the Rat, they slid into
passionate reminiscence, while he listened fascinated, and his

heart burned within him. In himself, too, he knew that it was
vibrating at last, that chord hitherto dormant and

unsuspected. The mere chatter of these southern-bound
birds, their pale and second-hand reports, had yet power to

awaken this wild new sensation and thrill him through and through
with it; what would one moment of the real thing work in him--one

passionate touch of the real southern sun, one waft of the
authentic odor? With closed eyes he dared to dream a moment in

full abandonment, and when he looked again the river seemed
steely and chill, the green fields grey and lightless. Then his

loyal heart seemed to cry out on his weaker self for its
treachery.

`Why do you ever come back, then, at all?' he demanded of the
swallows jealously. `What do you find to attract you in this

poor drab little country?'
`And do you think,' said the first swallow, `that the other call

is not for us too, in its due season? The call of lush meadow-
grass, wet orchards, warm, insect-haunted ponds, of browsing

cattle, of haymaking, and all the farm-buildings clustering round
the House of the perfect Eaves?'

`Do you suppose,' asked the second one, that you are the only
living thing that craves with a hungry longing to hear the

cuckoo's note again?'
`In due time,' said the third, `we shall be home-sick once more

for quiet water-lilies swaying on the surface of an English
stream. But to-day all that seems pale and thin and very far

away. Just now our blood dances to other music.'
They fell a-twittering among themselves once more, and this time

their intoxicating babble was of violet seas, tawny sands, and
lizard-haunted walls.

Restlessly the Rat wandered off once more, climbed the slope that
rose gently from the north bank of the river, and lay looking out

towards the great ring of Downs that barred his vision further
southwards--his simple horizonhitherto, his Mountains of the

Moon, his limit behind which lay nothing he had cared to see or
to know. To-day, to him gazing South with a new-born need

stirring in his heart, the clear sky over their long low outline
seemed to pulsate with promise; to-day, the unseen was

everything, the unknown the only real fact of life. On this side
of the hills was now the real blank, on the other lay the crowded

and coloured panorama that his inner eye was seeing so
clearly. What seas lay beyond, green, leaping, and crested!

What sun-bathed coasts, along which the white villas glittered
against the olive woods! What quiet harbours, thronged with

gallantshipping bound for purple islands of wine and spice,
islands set low in languorous waters!

He rose and descended river-wards once more; then changed his
mind and sought the side of the dusty lane. There, lying half-

buried in the thick, cool under-hedge tangle that bordered it, he
could muse on the metalled road and all the wondrous world that

it led to; on all the wayfarers, too, that might have trodden it,
and the fortunes and adventures they had gone to seek or found

unseeking--out there, beyond--beyond!
Footsteps fell on his ear, and the figure of one that walked

somewhat wearily came into view; and he saw that it was a Rat,
and a very dusty one. The wayfarer, as he reached him, saluted

with a gesture of courtesy that had something foreign about it--
hesitated a moment--then with a pleasant smile turned from the

track and sat down by his side in the cool herbage. He seemed
tired, and the Rat let him rest unquestioned, understanding

something of what was in his thoughts; knowing, too, the value
all animals attach at times to mere silent companionship, when

the weary muscles slacken and the mind marks time.
The wayfarer was lean and keen-featured, and somewhat bowed at

the shoulders; his paws were thin and long, his eyes much
wrinkled at the corners, and he wore small gold ear rings in his

neatly-set well-shaped ears. His knitted jersey was of a faded
blue, his breeches, patched and stained, were based on a blue

foundation, and his small belongings that he carried were tied up
in a blue cotton handkerchief.

When he had rested awhile the stranger sighed, snuffed the air,
and looked about him.

`That was clover, that warm whiff on the breeze,' he remarked;
`and those are cows we hear cropping the grass behind us and

blowing softly between mouthfuls. There is a sound of distant
reapers, and yonder rises a blue line of cottage smoke against

the woodland. The river runs somewhere close by, for I hear the
call of a moorhen, and I see by your build that you're a

freshwater mariner. Everything seems asleep, and yet going
on all the time. It is a goodly life that you lead, friend; no

doubt the best in the world, if only you are strong enough to
lead it!'

`Yes, it's THE life, the only life, to live,' responded the
Water Rat dreamily, and without his usual whole-hearted

conviction.
`I did not say exactly that,' replied the stranger cautiously;

`but no doubt it's the best. I've tried it, and I know. And
because I've just tried it--six months of it--and know it's the

best, here am I, footsore and hungry, tramping away from it,
tramping southward, following the old call, back to the old life,

THE life which is mine and which will not let me go.'
`Is this, then, yet another of them?' mused the Rat. `And where

have you just come from?' he asked. He hardly dared to ask where
he was bound for; he seemed to know the answer only too well.

`Nice little farm,' replied the wayfarer, briefly. `Upalong in
that direction'--he nodded northwards. `Never mind about it. I

had everything I could want--everything I had any right to expect
of life, and more; and here I am! Glad to be here all the same,

though, glad to be here! So many miles further on the road,
so many hours nearer to my heart's desire!'

His shining eyes held fast to the horizon, and he seemed to be
listening for some sound that was wanting from that inland

acreage, vocal as it was with the cheerful music of pasturage and
farmyard.

`You are not one of US,' said the Water Rat, `nor yet a
farmer; nor even, I should judge, of this country.'

`Right,' replied the stranger. `I'm a seafaring rat, I am, and
the port I originally hail from is Constantinople, though I'm a

sort of a foreigner there too, in a manner of speaking. You will
have heard of Constantinople, friend? A fair city, and an

ancient and glorious one. And you may have heard, too, of
Sigurd, King of Norway, and how he sailed thither with sixty

ships, and how he and his men rode up through streets all
canopied in their honour with purple and gold; and how the

Emperor and Empress came down and banqueted with him on board his
ship. When Sigurd returned home, many of his Northmen remained

behind and entered the Emperor's body-guard, and my
ancestor, a Norwegian born, stayed behind too, with the ships

that Sigurd gave the Emperor. Seafarers we have ever been, and
no wonder; as for me, the city of my birth is no more my home

than any pleasant port between there and the London River. I
know them all, and they know me. Set me down on any of their

quays or foreshores, and I am home again.'
`I suppose you go great voyages,' said the Water Rat with growing