small hands around the furry throat.

_"Baka!"_ she cried from between her clenched teeth. _"Baka_--to eat
the baby birds! This day will I ask Oni to make you into a stone,
which every foot will kick and hurt, and you can neither move nor cry.
You cruel, cruel beast!" In vain the cat struggled. Yuki Chan held it
firmly at arm's-length while she decided what was to be its fate.

Looking sternly at the offender, her lips rounded into a long-drawn
"s-o," the light of anticipated revenge danced in her eyes. At last
she knew what to do, O most honorable but very ugly cat! She would
throw her into the ditch, where great crawling frogs with popping eyes
would stick out long tongues; where flying things would sting, and
creeping things would bite; where the great tide would come later and
take her out to the big, big ocean, where there was neither milk to
drink nor birds to eat.

At the thought of her furry playmate floating alone and hungry in the
vast place which, to Yuki Chan, had neither beginning nor end,
something of pity touched her heart, and she slightly loosened her
grasp.

The cat gained a good breath and used it. In the fight for freedom a
sharp claw was drawn down the child's arm, leaving a line of red in
its course. Compassion took flight, and Yuki Chan, clutching anew,
went swiftly down the path that led to the street, with a watchful eye
on the lodge of the keeper of the gate.

The keeper was very old, and very cross, and lately had acquired a
curious idea that little girls must ask his honorable permission to go