CHAPTER 10

Years passed. The seasons came and went, the short animal lives fled by.

A time came when there was no one who remembered the old days

before the Rebellion, except Clover, Benjamin, Moses the raven, and a

number of the pigs.

CHAPTER 9

Boxer’s split hoof was a long time in healing. They had started the

rebuilding of the windmill the day after the victory celebrations were

ended. Boxer refused to take even a day off work, and made it a point of

honour not to let it be seen that he was in pain. In the evenings he would

admit privately to Clover that the hoof troubled him a great deal.

CHAPTER 8

A few days later, when the terror caused by the executions had died

down, some of the animals remembered — or thought they remembered

— that the Sixth Commandment decreed “No animal shall kill any other

animal.”

CHAPTER 7

It was a bitter winter. The stormy weather was followed by sleet and

snow, and then by a hard frost which did not break till well into

February. The animals carried on as best they could with the rebuilding

of the windmill, well knowing that the outside world was watching them

and that the envious human beings would rejoice and triumph if the mill

were not finished on time.

CHAPTER 6

All that year the animals worked like slaves. But they were happy in their

work; they grudged no effort or sacrifice, well aware that everything that

they did was for the benefit of themselves and those of their kind who

would come after them, and not for a pack of idle, thieving human

beings.

CHAPTER 5

As winter drew on, Mollie became more and more troublesome. She was

late for work every morning and excused herself by saying that she had

overslept, and she complained of mysterious pains, although her appetite

was excellent. On every kind of pretext she would run away from work

and go to the drinking pool, where she would stand foolishly gazing at

her own reflection in the water. But there were also rumours of

something more serious. One day, as Mollie strolled blithely into the

yard, flirting her long tail and chewing at a stalk of hay, Clover took her

aside.

CHAPTER 4

By the late summer the news of what had happened on Animal Farm had

spread across half the county. Every day Snowball and Napoleon sent out

flights of pigeons whose instructions were to mingle with the animals on

neighbouring farms, tell them the story of the Rebellion, and teach them

the tune of ‘Beasts of England’.

CHAPTER 3

How they toiled and sweated to get the hay in! But their efforts were

rewarded, for the harvest was an even bigger success than they had

hoped.