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But I need hardly say that I would not leave him. It was no want of love for him that led me to the saddle-room. I was not base enough to forget that he had been my friend in need, even if he had been less amiable to me since. All that evening I lay on his breast and slept. But I dreamt of the mouse!

The next morning he went out riding.

“He will not miss me now,” thought I. “I will devote the morning to hunting through that wretched room inch by inch, for the last time. It will satisfy me that the mouse is not there, and it really is a duty to try and convince myself of this, that I may be cured of an infatuation which causes annoyance to so excellent a master.”

I hurried off as rapidly as befitted the vigour of the resolution, and when I got into the saddle-room I saw the mouse. And when the mouse saw me he fled like the wind.

I confess that I should have lost him then, but that a hole on which he had reckoned was stopped up, and he had to turn.

What a chase it was! Never did I meet his equal for audacity and fleetness. But I knew the holes as well as he did, and cut him off at every one. Round and round we went–behind the barrel, over the corn-chest, and then he made for the middle of the room.

Now, amongst all the rubbish which Terence had collected about him, there were many old articles of clothing belonging to the Captain, including a pair of long riding-boots, which had been gathering mildew, and stiffening out of shape in their present position ever since I came. One of these was lying on the floor; and just as I was all but upon the mouse, he darted into the boot.

A quiver of delight ran through me. With all his unwonted sagacity, Master Mouse had run straight into a trap. The boot was wide, and head and shoulders I plunged in after my prey.

I scented him all the way down the leg, but the painful fact is that I could not quite get to the bottom. He must have crouched in the toe or heel, and I could get no farther than the calf. Oh, if my master’s legs had but been two inches shorter! I should have clawed into the remotest corner of the foot. As it was, I pushed, I struggled, I shook, I worried the wretched boot–but all in vain.

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.