In the middle of the summer Moses the raven suddenly reappeared on the farm, after an absence of several years. 🔊 He was quite unchanged, still did no work, and talked in the same strain as ever about Sugarcandy Mountain. 🔊 He would perch on a stump, flap his black wings, and talk by the hour to anyone who would listen. 🔊 "Up there, comrades," he would say solemnly, pointing to the sky with his large beak−"up there, just on the other side of that dark cloud that you can see−there it lies, Sugarcandy Mountain, that happy country where we poor animals shall rest for ever from our labours!" 🔊 He even claimed to have been there on one of his higher flights, and to have seen the everlasting fields of clover and the linseed cake and lump sugar growing on the hedges. 🔊 Many of the animals believed him. Their lives now, they reasoned, were hungry and laborious; was it not right and just that a better world should exist somewhere else? 🔊 A thing that was difficult to determine was the attitude of the pigs towards Moses. 🔊 They all declared contemptuously that his stories about Sugarcandy Mountain were lies, and yet they allowed him to remain on the farm, not working, with an allowance of a gill of beer a day. 🔊

After his hoof had healed up, Boxer worked harder than ever. Indeed, all the animals worked like slaves that year. 🔊 Apart from the regular work of the farm, and the rebuilding of the windmill, there was the schoolhouse for the young pigs, which was started in March. 🔊 Sometimes the long hours on insufficient food were hard to bear, but Boxer never faltered. 🔊 In nothing that he said or did was there any sign that his strength was not what it had been. 🔊 It was only his appearance that was a little altered; his hide was less shiny than it had used to be, and his great haunches seemed to have shrunken. 🔊 The others said, "Boxer will pick up when the spring grass comes on"; but the spring came and Boxer grew no fatter. 🔊 Sometimes on the slope leading to the top of the quarry, when he braced his muscles against the weight of some vast boulder, it seemed that nothing kept him on his feet except the will to continue. 🔊 At such times his lips were seen to form the words, "I will work harder"; he had no voice left. 🔊 Once again Clover and Benjamin warned him to take care of his health, but Boxer paid no attention. 🔊 His twelfth birthday was approaching. He did not care what happened so long as a good store of stone was accumulated before he went on pension. 🔊

Late one evening in the summer, a sudden rumour ran round the farm that something had happened to Boxer. 🔊 He had gone out alone to drag a load of stone down to the windmill. 🔊 And sure enough, the rumour was true. A few minutes later two pigeons came racing in with the news: "Boxer has fallen! 🔊 He is lying on his side and can't get up!"

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