the store-room, and plundered it of preserves and sweetmeats. They gnawed through cupboard-doors, undermined floors, and ran races behind the wainscots. The cats could not get at them: they were too cunning and too well fed to meddle with poison; and traps only now and then caught a heedless straggler. One of these, however, on being taken, was the occasion of practising a new device. This was, to fasten a collar with a small bell about the prisoner's neck, and then turn him. loose again.

Overjoyed at the recovery of his liberty, the rat ran into the nearest hole, and went in search of his companions. They heard at a distance the bell tinkle tinkle, through the dark passages, and suspecting some enemy had got among them, away they scoured, some one way and some another. The bell-bearer pursued; and soon guessing the cause

of their flight, he was greatly amused by it. Wherever he approached, it was all hurry-scurry, and not a tail of one of them was to be seen. He chased his old friends from hole to hole, and room to room, laughing all the while at their fears, and increasing them by all the means in his power. Presently he had the whole house to himself. "That's right (quoth he) the fewer, the better cheer." So he rioted alone among the good things, and stuffed till he could hardly walk.

For two or three days this course of life went on very pleasantly. He ate, and ate, and played the bugbear to perfection. At length he grew tired of this lonely condition, and longed to mix with his companions again upon the former footing. But the difficulty was, how to get rid of his bell. He pulled and tugged with his fore-feet, and almost wore the skin off his neck

in the attempt, but all in vain. The bell was now his plague and torment. He wandered from room to room, earnestly desiring to make himself known to one of his companions, but they all kept out of his reach. At last, as he was moping about disconsolate, he fell in puss's way, and was devoured in an instant.

He who is raised so much above his fellow-creatures as to be the object of their terror, must suffer for it in losing all the comforts of society. He is a solitary being in the midst of crowds. He keeps them at a distance, and they eqnally shun him. Dread and affection cannot subsist together.

THIRTEENTH EVENING.

TRIAL. *

Of a complaint made against sundry persons for breaking the windows of DOROTHY CAREFUL, Widow, and dealer in Gingerbread.

THE Court being sat, there appeared in person the widow Dorothy Careful, to make a complaint against Henry Luckless, and other person or persons unknown, for breaking three panes of glass, value nine-pence, in the house of the said widow. Being directed to tell her case to the court, she made a courtsey, and began as follows:

*This was meant as a sequel of that very pleasing and ingenious little work, entitled Juvenile Trials, in which a Court of Justice is supposed to be instituted in a boarding-school, composed of the scholars themselves, for the purpose of trying offences committed at school.

"Please your lordship, I was sitting at work by my fireside, between the hours of six and seven in the evening, just as it was growing dusk, and little Jack was spinning beside me, when all at once crack went the window, and down fell a little basket of cakes that was set up against it. I started up, and cried to Jack, Bless me, what's the matter? So, says Jack, somebody has thrown a stone and broke the window, and I dare say it is some of the schoolboys. With that I ran out of the house, and saw some boys making off as fast as they could go. So I ran after them as quick as my old legs would carry me : but I should never have come near them, if one had not happened to fall down. Him I caught, and brought back to my house, when Jack knew him at once to be master Harry Luckless. So I told him I would complain of him the next day; and I hope your