The mischievous will find some day

That for their mischief they must pay.

-Billy Mink.

If Billy Mink didn’t know where the Rats who had left the big barn had gone to, the farmer who owned the big barn and the henhouse and the woodpile knew. Yes, indeed, the farmer and his family knew just where those Rats were. They were in the farmhouse!

You see, the wise, gray old leader of the Rats knew that the safest place for them was in that farmhouse. In the first place it was big, and that meant that there was plenty of room with ever and ever so many hiding-places. There was food there, plenty of it, to be stolen. They could be very comfortable in that farmhouse. More than this, they would be safe from Billy Mink. That gray old leader knew that Billy Mink would hesitate a long time about actually entering the house, because of his fear of man. He didn’t believe that Billy would dream of looking for them in that house, especially if he couldn’t track them over there. This Billy couldn’t do, as the wise old leader very well knew, because it had been snowing when the Rats left the big barn, and the falling snow had covered their tracks and destroyed the scent.

So, while Billy Mink was looking under the woodpile and in the henhouse for those Rats, they were making themselves very much at home in the farmhouse. They could climb about between the walls and go where they pleased. The first thing to do was to make homes for the babies. It didn’t take some of those Rats long to find the way to the attic. Now the attic was filled with trunks and boxes and papers and all sorts of odds and ends. It was just such a place as Rats love. Right away the mother Rats began to tear up papers and make rags of clothing that hung in the attic. Rags and paper make the finest kind of a nest for a Rat. These nests they hid in dark places behind boxes and trunks.

And while they were busy with this, the father Rats set out to search for food. It didn’t take them long to find the pantry and gnaw holes through the wall into it. And they were not quiet about their work, either. The farmer and the farmer’s wife knew what was going on. They could hear the scamper of little feet across the attic floor and faint squeaks.

“Gracious!” exclaimed the farmer. “I should think all the Rats in the barn had moved over here.” He little guessed how exactly he had hit on the truth.