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might have a sensible concern for his own life.
    “The sounds have not actually materialised, have they?” he said calmly. “In fact they seem to be dying away again. Strange that!”
    Tryfan looked at him quizzically, and more so because he was smiling slightly.
    Then, thinking swiftly, and looking much calmer himself, Tryfan said, “Fine, then we’ll pretend to retreat!” and with that he thumped his paws and rattled his talons on the tunnel floor, even shouting out in a fading kind of voice: “Come on, let’s get out of here.” And then they froze into silence to see what happened.
    Ahead of them the tunnel turned out of sight, the turn demarcated by an abutment of flint. Beyond it, Boswell had said, was the final few feet of tunnel to the Library portals.
    There was silence for a few moments, and then, briefly, a final roaring of rushing moles and warlike voices all of which came to an abrupt stop and once more did not materialise. A long silence followed, in which Tryfan hardly dared breathe. Then, beyond the tunnel turn there was the slightest movement, so slight indeed that it was evident only from a marginal change of the air current over their backs from the top of the tunnel.
    Then there was the shuffle of timid talon on chalk. Then a sigh and cough, rather nervous. Then a muttering by mole, solitary mole, very solitary mole indeed, and a gulping sound as of timid, solitary, nervous mole summoning up courage to move down the tunnel towards them.
    Tryfan began to move forward himself, so smoothly and with such grace that he was like a fox in the final moments of taking static prey. The shuffling head became bolder and a voice said, “Better take a look old fellow. Come on, just round the corner. Just to check they’ve gone.”
    Tryfan stopped still, only feet from the turn. The shuffling approached. They heard breathing, nervous and short. Then a humming as of a mole trying to make himself believe there is nothing to be afraid of.
    Then round that flint came a whisker, then a snout. Rather a thin one, rather long.
    Then the voice again, preceded by a sniffing and a snouting. “Mole was here. I can smell mole. Good smell that. Gone now.”
    Then the snout came forward again and beneath it a thin paw of weak talons. Tryfan had shrunk back into the wall of the tunnel to take advantage of the great flint’s shadow. Boswell was further back, his already pale and now very dusty coat making him hard to see.
    Then the mole’s head and upper part of his body came into view, a weak-looking thin-looking mole doing his very best to be bold and resolute.
    “Gone they have and good riddance. Up to no good. Bet they were scared.” Sniff sniff. “But it’s good to smell mole. Mmm. Wait! May come back! Gone but may return. Well, old fellow, you’d better do one more.”
    The mole disappeared back around the corner, or at least his front half did, and there was a brief scratching of talons and, to Tryfan’s astonishment, the threatening sound of an army of moles surged up again before suddenly dying away and the mole muttering irritably to himself: “Oh bother, I’ve broken my talon!”
    Tryfan advanced round the corner and saw the mole beside an extraordinary scribing on the wall, down which presumably he had dragged his talons and produced the sound.
    “Greetings!” said Tryfan calmly.
    “Oh!” cried out the mole. “Oh!” And turning round saw Tryfan’s large and menacing form and nearly tripped over himself in his alarm. Tryfan backed respectfully away and to his surprise the mole advanced upon him, crying out as boldly as he could, “And well you might! Retreat! Get away before my many friends, who are very close behind me, come and kill you. Yes!” But Tryfan merely stopped, and immediately the mole did the same.
    “Retreat!” he said again, a command no doubt meant to be threatening but which came out more like a mole choking on a dead worm. He gulped and stared along his thin snout at Tryfan and