familiar ground, the place she had passed the night of her first
escape. From that her course was sure and rapid. She knew just
where she was going and how to get there. She knew even the more
prominent features in the Dog-scape now. She went faster, felt
happier. In a little while surely she would be curled up in her
native Orient--the old junk-yard. Another turn, and the block was
in sight.

But--what! It was gone! Kitty couldn't believe her eyes; but she
must, for the sun was not yet up. There where once had stood or
leaned or slouched or straggled the houses of the block, was a
great broken wilderness of stone, lumber, and holes in the
ground.

Kitty walked all around it. She knew by the bearings and by the
local color of the pavement that she was in her home, that there
had lived the bird-man, and there was the old junk-yard; but all
were gone, completely gone, taking their familiar odors with
them, and Pussy turned sick at heart in the utter hopelessness of
the case. Her place-love was her master-mood. She had given up
all to come to a home that no longer existed, and for once her
sturdy little heart was cast down. She wandered over the silent
heaps of rubbish and found neither consolation nor eatables. The
ruin had taken in several of the blocks and reached back from the
water. It was not a fire; Kitty had seen one of those things.
This looked more like the work of a flock of the Red-eyed
Monsters. Pussy knew nothing of the great bridge that was to rise
from this very spot.

When the sun came up she sought for cover. An adjoining block