around an instant for a place whereon to lay her, and when I looked at
her again found that her eye had become fixed on the side of the Virgin.
Following its direction I saw the black cat crouching out of sight. Her
green eyes shone like danger lamps in the gloom of the place, and their
colour was heightened by the blood which still smeared her coat and
reddened her mouth. I cried out:

'The cat! look out for the cat!' for even then she sprang out before the
engine. At this moment she looked like a triumphant demon. Her eyes
blazed with ferocity, her hair bristled out till she seemed twice her
normal size, and her tail lashed about as does a tiger's when the quarry
is before it. Elias P. Hutcheson when he saw her was amused, and his
eyes positively sparkled with fun as he said:

'Darned if the squaw hain't got on all her war paint! Jest give her a
shove off if she comes any of her tricks on me, for I'm so fixed
everlastingly by the boss, that durn my skin if I can keep my eyes from
her if she wants them! Easy there, Judge! don't you slack that ar rope
or I'm euchered!'

At this moment Amelia completed her faint, and I had to clutch hold of
her round the waist or she would have fallen to the floor. Whilst
attending to her I saw the black cat crouching for a spring, and jumped
up to turn the creature out.

But at that instant, with a sort of hellish scream, she hurled herself,
not as we expected at Hutcheson, but straight at the face of the
custodian. Her claws seemed to be tearing wildly as one sees in the
Chinese drawings of the dragon rampant, and as I looked I saw one of
them light on the poor man's eye, and actually tear through it and down