"Why, how queer! What became of her?"

"We never knew. We inquired in the neighborhood, and searched the barn
and the wood-shed, and in every place we could think of where she would
be likely to hide, but we could get no trace of her, and when weeks
passed and she did not return we concluded that she was dead."

"You don't think--_do_ you think, Miss Ruth, that she understood what
was said and knew if she stayed she would have to be killed?"

"_I_ do," said Mollie, positively. "I'm sure of it!--and so the poor
thing went off and drowned herself, or, maybe, died of a broken heart."

"Oh!" said Nellie Dimock, "poor Dinah Diamond!"

"Nonsense, Mollie!" said Susie Elliot. "Cats don't die of broken
hearts."

"She had been ailing for some days," Miss Ruth explained, "refusing her
food and looking forlorn and miserable, and I am inclined to think
instinct taught her that her end was near. You know wild animals creep
away into some solitary place to die, and Dinah had a drop or two of
wild-cat blood in her veins. I fancy she hid herself in some hole under
the barn and died there. It was a curious coincidence, that she should
have chosen that particular time, just after her doom was pronounced, to
take her departure. But what grieved me most was that, excepting myself,
every member of the family rejoiced that she was dead.

"Poor Dinah Diamond! She was beautiful and clever, and constant and
brave, but she lived unloved and died unlamented because of her bad