won't bring back your little one to you. Say! I wouldn't have had such a
thing happen for a thousand! Just shows what a clumsy fool of a man can
do when he tries to play! Seems I'm too darned slipperhanded to even
play with a cat. Say Colonel!' it was a pleasant way he had to bestow
titles freely--'I hope your wife don't hold no grudge against me on
account of this unpleasantness? Why, I wouldn't have had it occur on no
account.'

He came over to Amelia and apologised profusely, and she with her usual
kindness of heart hastened to assure him that she quite understood that
it was an accident. Then we all went again to the wall and looked over.

The cat missing Hutcheson's face had drawn back across the moat, and was
sitting on her haunches as though ready to spring. Indeed, the very
instant she saw him she did spring, and with a blind unreasoning fury,
which would have been grotesque, only that it was so frightfully real.
She did not try to run up the wall, but simply launched herself at him
as though hate and fury could lend her wings to pass straight through
the great distance between them. Amelia, womanlike, got quite concerned,
and said to Elias P. in a warning voice:

'Oh! you must be very careful. That animal would try to kill you if she
were here; her eyes look like positive murder.'

He laughed out jovially. 'Excuse me, ma'am,' he said, 'but I can't help
laughin'. Fancy a man that has fought grizzlies an' Injuns bein' careful
of bein' murdered by a cat!'

When the cat heard him laugh, her whole demeanour seemed to change. She
no longer tried to jump or run up the wall, but went quietly over, and