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.
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