Billy Mink.
When Billy Mink started to explore the big barn in the farmyard where he had decided to stay for a while, he didn’t know that he was entering a den of robbers. But that is what he was doing. Yes, Sir, that is just what he was doing. You see, that barn was the home of ever and ever so many of the tribe of Robber the Rat, and each one of them, big and little, was a robber. They lived by robbing, which, you know, is another name for stealing.
Now those robbers had lived in that big barn so long that they had come to look on it as belonging to them. They knew every nook and corner and cranny in it and under it. The farmer who owned it had tried his best to kill them or drive them away. But those robber Rats simply laughed at all his efforts. They were smart. Oh, yes, indeed, they were smart. Robbers often are quite as smart as honest people. They were too smart for that farmer.
All those Rats belonged to the Brown Rat tribe. Not that they were all brown. The fact is, the older ones were quite gray. But that was because they were old and had grown gray with age.
Not all Rats are bad. There is Trader the Wood Rat. He is honest and respected by his neighbors. But all the Brown Rat tribe are outcasts, despised by all the little people of the Green Meadows and the Green Forest, and hated by man. There is no good in them. They become robbers as soon as they can run about, and they remain robbers as long as they live. There is not an honest hair on one of them. They hate the sunlight, for their deeds are deeds of darkness. They are savage.
But with all this, they are clever, very clever, indeed. They are so clever that, in spite of all man’s efforts to kill them, their tribe has increased until it is probably the largest tribe of little people who wear fur in all the world, excepting the Mouse tribe.
The farmer who owned that barn had set traps of many kinds, but the wise old leader of the Rats had found each trap and warned all his relatives. The farmer had tried to poison them, but somehow their wise old leader always knew where the poison was and warned them against it. A Cat had been brought to catch them, but the tough old fighters among the Rats had driven that Cat out.
So the Rats had increased, and the greater the numbers, the more they stole. They gnawed holes wherever there was a chance of getting food. They got into the farmer’s house and did great damage there. In the spring they had killed young chickens in the henhouse. They stole eggs. In fact, these robbers did as they pleased, and the big barn was their den.
CHAPTER XVI
A ROBBER MEETING
To judge another by his size