The mole had long wanted to meet the badger, but whenever he mentioned his wish to the water rat, he always found himself put off.
It's all right, the rat would say.
Badger will turn up someday or other, and then I'll introduce you.
The best of fellows.
But you must take him not only as you find him, but when you find him.
"'Didn't you ask him for dinner or something?' said the Mole.
"'He wouldn't come,' replied the Rat simply.
"'Badger hates society and invitations and dinner and all that sort of thing.'
"'Well, then supposing we go and call on him?' suggested the Mole.
"'Oh, I'm sure he wouldn't like that at all,' said the Rat, quite alarmed.
"'He'd be quite offended.'
Besides, he lives in the very middle of the wild wood.
Well, said the mole, you told me the wild wood was all right, you know.
Oh, I know, the rat said, trying to avoid the subject.
But it's a long way, and he wouldn't be home this time of year anyhow.
He'll be coming along some day if you wait quietly.
The Mole had to be content with this, and it was not till summer was long over and the cold and frost kept them indoors when the swollen river raced past outside their windows that he found his thoughts once again drifting toward Old Badger.
In the wintertime, the Mole had a great deal of spare time on his hands, and so one afternoon, when the Rat was dozing in his armchair before the blaze, he decided to go out by himself and explore the wild wood and perhaps look in on Mr Badger.
It was a cold still afternoon, with a steely sky overhead, when he slipped out of the warm parlor into the open air.
The country lay bare and entirely leafless around him.
All the hidden places that had been mysterious in leafy summer were now exposed.
Mole liked the country like this, undecorated, hard, and stripped of its finery.
With great cheerfulness he pushed on toward the wild wood which lay before him, low and threatening, like a black reef in a deep southern sea.
There was nothing to alarm him at first entry.
Twigs cracked under his feet, logs tripped him, but he moved farther into the woods to where the light was less.
The trees crouched nearer and nearer and holes in their trunks made ugly mouths at him on either side.
Everything was still now.
The dusk advanced on him steadily, rapidly, gathering in behind and ahead.
The light seemed to be draining away.
Then the faces began.
It was over his shoulder that he first thought he saw a face, a little wedge-shaped face looking at him from a hole.
When he turned, the thing had vanished.
He passed another hole and another and another, and then yes no yes, certainly a little narrow face with hard eyes had flashed up for an instant from a hole and was gone.
He hesitated and walked on.
Then suddenly, every hole, far and near and there were hundreds of them seemed to possess its own face, coming and going rapidly, all hard-eyed and evil and sharp.
Then the whistling began.
Very faint and shrill it was, and far behind him when he first heard it, but somehow it made him hurry forward.
Then, still very faint and shrill, it sounded far ahead of him.
Mole didn't know which way to turn, and soon the sound broke out on either side of him.
They were up and alert and ready, whoever they were.
Mole was far from any help, and the night was closing in.
Then the pattering began.
He thought it was only falling leaves at first, so soft and delicate was the sound of it.
Then, as it grew, he knew it was the pat, pat, pat of little feet.
Was it in front or behind?
It grew and then multiplied as he listened in fear, leaning this way and that.
It seemed to be closing in on him.
Whole wood seemed to be running.
Now running hard hunting chasing, closing in around something or somebody in panic mole began to run too.
He ran up against things and he fell over things and into things.
It was quite dark now.
At last he took refuge in the deep hollow of an old beech tree.
As he lay there, panting and trembling, he listened to the whistlings and patterings outside.
He now knew the terror of the wild.
