THE DARK AGES 33 



est who, hearing strange noises near his kiln at 

 night, arose from bed and stepped into the clear- 

 ing. Before him, motionless in the moonlight, sat 

 three cats. He stooped to pick up a stone, and 

 the relic of Saint Gildas he carried in his bosom 

 fell from its snapt string upon the ground. Im- 

 mediately his arm hung helpless, and he could not 

 touch the stone. Then one of the cats said to its 

 companions : " For the sake of his wife, who is my 

 gossip, sisters, let him go!" and the next morning 

 he was found lying unconscious, but unharmed, 

 across the forest road. 



From Scandinavia, where the fair white cats of 

 Freija were once as honoured as were Odin's ravens 

 and Thor's goats, comes the tale of the haunted 

 mill in which dreadful revelry was heard at night, 

 and which had been twice burned to the ground on 

 Whit sun Eve. The third year, a travelling tailor, 

 pious and brave, offered to keep watch. He 

 chalked a circle on the floor, wrote the Lord's 

 prayer around it, and waited with patience until 

 midnight. Then a troop of cats crept stealthily in, 

 carrying a great pot of pitch which they hung in 

 the fireplace, lighting the logs beneath it. Soon 

 the pitch bubbled and seethed, and the cats, swing- 

 ing the pot, tried to overturn it. The tailor drove 

 them away ; and when one, who seemed to be the 

 Leader, sought to pull him gently outside the magic 



