66 



THE FIRESIDE SPHINX 



trembling through the village streets, the children 

 pelted it with stones and clots of mud. &quot;There 

 never was a cat so ill-treated as that poor Church 

 of England animal,&quot; says Borrow indignantly ; &quot;and 

 altogether on account of the opinions which it was 

 supposed to have imbibed in the house of its late 

 master ; for I never could learn that the dissenters 

 of Llangollen were in the habit of persecuting other 

 cats. The cat was a Church of England cat, and 

 that was enough.&quot; Einally he was obliged to carry 

 away this unconscious and reluctant martyr, and 

 to seek for it an asylum in another village, where 

 it was charitably received by a young woman, who, 

 being herself an Anglican, was all the more ready 

 to aid an oppressed scion of the Establishment. 



It is a touch of comedy with which to ring down 

 the curtain on Pussy s tragic past. 



