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'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 horizon hitherto, 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 gallant shipping 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.

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