"'Oh, yes, I can,' said the rat, 'I know a way to move the biggest stones, and if you can only wait a day or two I will make this chink large enough for you to come up.'
"'A day or two,' said the weasel in despair; 'why, I am nearly dead now with hunger.'
"'Well then,' said the rat, 'gnaw your own tail;' and off he went laughing at the joke. The miserable weasel cried and sniffed, and sniffed and cried, till by-and-by he heard the rat come back and begin to scratch outside. Presently the rat stopped, and was going away again, when the weasel begged and prayed him not to leave him to die there in the dark.
"'Very well,' said the rat, 'I will send the cricket to sing to you. In a day or two you will see the chink get bigger, and meantime you can eat your tail; and as you will get very thin, you will be able to creep through a very small hole and get out all the quicker. Ha! ha! As for me, I am going to have a capital dinner from Pan's dish, for he has fallen asleep in his tub.'
"So the weasel was left to himself, and though he watched and watched, he could not see the chink open in the least, and he got so dreadfully hungry that at last, after sucking his paws, he was obliged to bring his tail round and begin to gnaw it a little bit. The pain was dreadful, but he could not help himself, he was obliged to do it or die. In the evening the cricket came, as the rat had promised, to the top of the chink, and at once began to sing. He sang all about the lady cricket with whom he was in love, and then about the beautiful stars that were shining in the sky, and how nice it was to be a cricket, for the crickets were by far the most handsome and clever of all creatures, and everybody would like to be a cricket if they could.
"Next, he went on to praise himself, that his lady might hear what fine limbs he had, and so noble a form, and such a splendid chink to live in. Thus he kept on the livelong night, and all about himself; and his chirp, chirp, chirp filled the weasel's prison with such a noise that the wretched thing could not sleep. He kept asking the cricket to tell him if the rat had really done anything to enlarge the chink; but the cricket was too busy to answer him till the dawn, and then, having finished his song, he found time to attend to the weasel.
"'You have been very rude,' he said, 'to keep on talking while I was singing, but I suppose, as you are only an ignorant weasel, you do not understand good manners, and therefore I will condescend so far as to inform you of the measures taken by my noble friend the rat to get you out. If you were not so extremely ignorant and stupid you would guess what he has done.'
"Now all this was very bitter to the weasel, who had always thought he knew everything, to be insulted by a cricket; still he begged to be told what it was. 'The rat,' went on the cricket, 'has brought a little piece from a fungus, and has scratched a hole beside the stone and put it in there. Now, when this begins to grow and the fungus pushes up, it will move the stone and open a chink. In this way I have seen my lord the rat heave up the heaviest paving stones and make a road for himself. Now are you not stupid?' Then the cricket went home to bed.
"All day long the miserable weasel lay on the floor of his prison, driven every now and then to gnaw his tail till he squeaked with the pain. The only thing that kept him from despair was the hope of the revenge he would have, if ever he did get out, on those who had laid the trap for him. For hours he lay insensible, and only woke up when the rat looked down the chink and asked him, with a jolly chuckle, how his tail tasted, and then went off without waiting for an answer. Then the cricket came again, and taking not the least notice of the prisoner, sang all night.
"In the morning the weasel looked up, and saw that the chink had really opened. He crawled to it, he was so faint he could not walk, so he had to crawl over the floor, which was all red with his own blood. The fungus, a thick, yellowish-green thing, like a very large and unwholesome mushroom, was growing fast, so fast he could see it move, and very slowly it shoved and lifted up the stone. The chink was now so far open that in his thin, emaciated state, the weasel could have got through; but he was so weak he could not climb up. He called to the rat, and the rat came and tried to reach him, but it was just a little too far down.