The Woodcutters had just finished their work and they had been paid a good sum of money, so they were all feeling very happy.
Now the tiny Mice were not able to meet the big Woodcutters out in the field, and fight them, but they had their own way of waging warfare. Night and day, day and night, they burrowed and burrowed under the earth. First they gnawed under the treasury, where no danger was expected; and, one by one, they carried off every coin until it was all empty. Then they burrowed underneath all the houses in the village. Millions of Mice were busy all day and all night, carrying out little baskets of earth from under the foundations. They worked and worked and they gnawed and gnawed, until very soon the Woodcutters’ village was standing on a thin shell of earth, while underneath them was a big dark hole.
At last the Mouse King felt that the time had come to strike a blow. He knew that the crust of earth was so thin that the least shock would destroy it. So the Mouse King wrote a letter to the Woodcutter Chief asking once more for his Camel. And in this letter he hid a small package of snuff. He put the letter in the mail and then all of the Mice went away and waited.
When the postman brought the letter to the Woodcutter Chief, he read it through and laughed heartily.
“Ha-ha-ha! that’s a good joke. His majesty, the Mouse King, demands that I send back the Camel, or he will wage war against us. Well, let him come on. We will soon wipe the Mice from the face of the earth.”
He waved the letter in the air and said, “Let them come on at once!”
Now, as he waved the letter about, all the snuff fell out of it and flew up his nose.
“Kerchoo-Kerchoo-Kerchoo-oo!” sneezed the Chief. And “Kerchoo-Kerchoo-Kerchoo-oo!” sneezed all the men who were near him.
They sneezed so loud and so long that the house shook. The thin crust of earth under them trembled and gave way, and all the Woodcutters fell in, and all the houses in the village tumbled and sank down into the deep dark hole.
After this victory, the Mouse King led his Camel and his army back to Mouseland where they lived in peace the rest of their lives.