52 The Book of Cats. 



In the morning the gamekeeper had released the 

 poor exhausted creature for the dogs to worry out 

 what little life was left in its body. The head dried 

 by the heat of two summers, the wrinkled fore- 

 head, the expanded eyelids, the glary eyeballs, the 

 whiskers stretched to their full extent, the spiteful 

 lips, exposing the double row of tiger-like teeth, 

 envenomed by agony, told all this. The hand of 

 death had not been powerful enough to relax the 

 muscles racked for so many hours of pain and 

 terror. 



Another Cat's head wore a very different expres- 

 sion ; she had neither been worried nor tortured. 

 Creeping, stealthily, on the tips of her beautifully 

 padded feet, behind some overhanging hedge, the 

 hidden gamekeeper had suddenly shot her dead. 

 In death her face was calm ; no expression of fear 

 ruffled her features ; she had been shot down and 

 died instantly at the moment of anticipated triumph. 

 A third head belonged to a poor little Puss that 

 had died before it had attained the age of cathood ; 

 her young life had been knocked out of her with a 

 stick : her head still retained the kitten's playful 

 look, and there was an appealing expression about 

 it- as though it had died quickly, wondering in what 

 it had done wrong. 



