It was getting on toward midnight when the gray rats after a search succeeded in finding an open air-hole in the cellar. This was pretty high upon the wall; but the rats got up on one another's shoulders, and it wasn't long before the most daring among them sat in the air-hole, ready to force its way into Glimminge castle, outside whose walls so many of its forebears had fallen.  
The gray rat sat still for a moment in the hole, and waited for an attack from within. The leader of the was certainly away, but she assumed that the black rats who were still in the castle wouldn't surrender without a struggle. With heart she listened for the slightest sound, but everything remained quiet. Then the leader of the gray rats plucked up courage and jumped down in the coal-black cellar.
 
One after another of the gray rats followed the leader. They all kept very quiet; and all expected to be by the black rats. Not until so many of them had crowded into the cellar that the floor couldn't hold any more, did they venture farther.
 
Although they had never before been inside the building, they had no difficulty in finding their way. They soon found the passages in the walls which the black rats had used to get to the upper floors. Before they began to clamber up these narrow and steep steps, they listened again with great attention. They felt more frightened because the black rats held themselves in this way, than if they had met them in open battle. They could hardly believe their luck when they reached the first story without any .
 
Immediately upon their entrance the gray rats caught the of the grain, which was stored in great on the floor. But it was not as yet time for them to begin to enjoy their conquest. They searched first, with the utmost caution, through the sombre, empty rooms. They ran up in the fireplace, which stood on the floor in the old castle kitchen, and they almost tumbled into the well, in the inner room. Not one of the narrow peep-holes did they leave uninspected, but they found no black rats. When this floor was wholly in their possession, they began, with the same caution, to acquire the next. Then they had to venture on a bold and dangerous climb through the walls, while, with breathless anxiety, they awaited an assault from the enemy. And although they were by the most delicious odour from the grain bins, they forced themselves most to inspect the old-time ' pillar-propped kitchen; their stone table, and fireplace; the deep window-niches, and the hole in the floor—which in olden time had been opened to pour down boiling pitch on the enemy.
 
All this time the black rats were invisible. The gray ones groped their way to the third story, and into the lord of the castle's great banquet hall—which stood there cold and empty, like all the other rooms in the old house. They even groped their way to the upper story, which had but one big, barren room. The only place they did not think of exploring was the big stork-nest on the roof—where, just at this time, the lady Akka, and informed her that Flammea, th............