The fields became more and more deserted, and the ditches and hedges more muddy and bare; only the shelter in the lee of the rising stacks grew and grew.
Mice were also scarce! The lucky ones had completed the miraculous journey with the wagon, hidden in the middle of the sheaves, after having successfully evaded the eagerly sniffing noses of the farm dogs. The others were now emigrating towards the big “human” dwellings.... They scented the warm, heavy odour from the stacks and followed in the wake of the corn.
And Grey Puss followed in the wake of the mice; and came each evening a little nearer to the farm ... the dear old farm with its dry beams and warm, quiet barns.
She longs to move among the cobwebs in the loft once more, to hear the everlasting rushing of the wind through its thatch. Most of all she thinks of the pot-bellied, piebald tomcat, whose drawling, wailing love-song seems to her irresistibly alluring. With every day that passes she seems to hear his pleading voice more and more plainly, and she sees him in her mind’s eye with his restless, swinging tail and his wild, burning eyes....
One October evening, when all colours have withered from the marshes and the deep, black shadows along the tufted banks make the water gleam still more brightly, Grey Puss slinks home through the fields towards Hill Farm.
All day the long waggons have rocked their loads of yellow turnips along to the shelter of the poplars, where the turnip-heaps grow in size and number.
She watches the tame cats sit in ambush at the foot of the stacks. They have only to sit there and doze, and the mice, which are not yet accustomed to their elevated residence, will tumble down on their heads.
Listen! The children are singing in the farm.... “Three blind mice; see how they run.”... Dear little children, who used so often to play with her when she was a tiny kitten in the house, and give her sweet milk to drink!
But now the dog is barking ... a new Box probably—one she has not yet seen. And clogs clatter suddenly on the bridge—no, no, she can not, she dare not—she must go out to the fields again....
But she longs....