the season had been over as much as three months. So I lost my case.
I had to pay for that cat. But the general trouble the case made was the
worst thing about it. Broke up so much good feeling. The neighbors
don't speak to each other now. Mrs. Brown had named a child after me.
But she changed its name right away. She is a Baptist. Well, in the
course of baptizing it over again it got drowned. I was hoping we might
get to be friendly again some time or other, but of course this drowning
the child knocked that all out of the question. It would have saved a
world of heartbreak and ill blood if she had named it dry."

I knew by the sigh that this was honest. All this trouble and all this
destruction of confidence in the purity of the bench on account of a
seven-shilling lawsuit about a cat! Somehow, it seemed to "size" the
country.

At this point we observed that an English flag had just been placed at
half-mast on a building a hundred yards away. I and my friends were busy
in an instant trying to imagine whose death, among the island
dignitaries, could command such a mark of respect as this. Then a
shudder shook them and me at the same moment, and I knew that we had
jumped to one and the same conclusion: "The governor has gone to England;
it is for the British admiral!"

At this moment Mr. Smith noticed the flag. He said with emotion:

"That's on a boarding-house. I judge there's a boarder dead."

A dozen other flags within view went to half-mast.

"It's a boarder, sure," said Smith.